New Home Adventures

Our journey to New Jersey has been very interesting. The DH has wanted to go back to his home state for many years. A change in policy at DH's employer now enables him to work anywhere in the country. With his parents getting older and mine gone, being closer to them is more important than staying in MN.

So, last summer we started looking in earnest for a home in NJ, close to family, but not too close, with a master bedroom on the main floor and space for an office for him and a studio for me.

We found a floor plan we liked in an Active Adult Community and were going to build. But within a week the lot we wanted was sold. We were offered a completed house at a price we couldn't refuse and so began our move to NJ.
This is the house as it looked before we bought it. It has 3 bedrooms, 3 1/4 baths, a family room, office, sunroom and now a studio. It's much biger on the inside than it looks (3400 square feet).

It's a little more than hour from Manhattan, 20 minutes to the beach and 45 minutes to Philadelphia, 10 minutes to Great Adventure, smack dab in the middle of New Jersey.

The house came with builder grade (which means really cheap) carpet and light fixtures,black formica countertops in the kitchen and white contractor paint on all the walls.

Before picture of the Kitchen

The second story had a partially enclosed large loft are on one side, a smaller area in the middle and the third bedroom on the other side. Of course, the large loft was designated my studio.

This is the studio before it was enclosed. And on the right is the before view from the living room. While it is a big space, it's about half the size of my current studio.

This is a view from the back of the house with one of our neighbors - There is a flock of turkeys in the woods and a herd of white tail deer along with other critters and birds

It's taken me three weeks to get this posted. Between working on the house and Minnesota Quilters' show in June, I haven't been doing much quilting, though I did get to take a class from Susan Cleveland (the Piping Hot quilter).

Most of the work is done in NJ. The hardwood floors go in the end of February. And hopefully it won't take another three weeks to get the almost after pictures up.

The Movers come the first week of March to take 90% of our goods to NJ. We confident it will be warmer next month. Check back soon for more pictures.