Inspection...

We had the inspection today, which was a good opportunity to get into the house, count cabinets, measure walls, check light switches and insulation, and measure the barn for new stall fronts! The house passed inspection with no issues to speak of. There's a little bit of cracking in the stucco, which will have to be caulked. At one time, probably long ago, there was water in the crawlspace. And the neighbor's horses, which have been in the back pastures for years, probably, have girdled the trees along the south line of the property.

Otherwise, all checks out! The barn is better than we remembered, and really needs very little work, most of it cosmetic and/or shoveling. Next up: appraisal.

We are now in layout version number 3 for the 'back 40'. We've moved the arena to the north side of the property, to account for the fact that the irrigation ditches run along the south side of the property. We've added a twenty foot buffer all the way around back part of the property, so that we can isolate our horses from the neighbors', and also have a multi-use space to plant fruit trees, use as a little riding path and have a place for the dogs to run where they can't get at the ponies. The chickens will go in a run next to the greenhouse, and there's still the whole south lawn for bocce ball, badminton and croquet.

Wait?! Wait for what?!

WE JUST BOUGHT A FARM!!!! Well, our offer was accepted. We get the inspector out there this week...

Here it is:

http://www.utahrealestate.com/929623

Click on the 'tour' at the top of the page to see inside the house, and view the property with no snow on it.

It sits on 2.19 acres, with no back neighbors and horse neighbors on either side. It has a 5-stall horse barn and huge detached garage and a hay barn. There's a greenhouse and a gazebo and a swimming pool. ~1.5 acres is cross-fenced into four pastures, each the size of a large dressage arena. We'll turn one of those into a dressage arena right away. It comes with plenty of water shares, xeri-scaping in the front yard, a lovely circular drive for visiting horse trailers on lesson day, mature trees, and an old pole barn that needs to come down. Also, several piles of manure that need shoveling very badly. ; )

The house is absolutely gorgeous, and set up for two people. It's all on one floor, and has lovely arched doorways, French doors all over the place, a jetted tub, a huge kitchen, miles and miles of storage for brewing and canning supplies in the garage and kitchen, a huge back patio piped for gas, water and electric, a new furnace (90% efficient) and water heater. They even finished the garage floor with that rubbery concrete covering stuff.

AND, it's in a quiet little horse neighborhood eight miles from work, an easy bike ride down the hill to get home. It's about 1/2 mile walk from a bus stop that goes downtown (4 miles away), where we can catch a bus to work (a further 4 miles). So when the weather is nice, we can ride bikes downtown, put 'em on the bus up the hill (because we are lazy), and then ride home after work. At the far end of the cross street is a bike overpass that goes over the highway, so that we can ride bikes from our house all the way out into the nice biking by the bird refuge without having to go on 12th or 24th.

The IFA is 2 miles away in one direction, CAL Ranch is 2 miles in the other direction, and Golden Spike track and X-Country course is about 1 mile away in a third direction.

Minuses? It's across the street from a ward house (but so is practically every other property in Utah!), and kitty-corner to an elementary school. The house is partly stuccoed, which can be a problem if not done right, but we saw no cracks, and the inspector will tell us more about it. It doesn't have a 'real' fireplace. It has a weird brick cowboy stuck to the wall over the mantle. It does NOT back up to hundreds of miles of trails, like our current house. It needs a lot of paint, because it's mostly peach-colored on the inside. We'll have to move, which is a pain. I just asked John, and those are all the minuses we could think of.