Home >> staged!
August 14, 2008
The living room is DONE!
The dining room is DONE!
The kitchen is DONE!
Our last frontier is the basement then we’re ready to go! We’re only a few weeks away from putting a sign in the yard and we’ll pray for the next miracle—wonderful people who will buy our house and be good neighbors. Our house is the epicenter of this block. 1837 Natchez is a natural gathering place on warm summer days. Our neighbors know where to get a scoop of sugar or egg. So why are we leaving? Because school is too hard in Chicago. How can I put my little Nathan on a school bus and make him ride for an hour each way? The CPS preschool which he would go to is excellent, but when he turns five, the options for his education are just plain bad. And Miika would have to attend a private school or a CPS school that would involve a long commute. I just want to walk my children to the same neighborhood school. We absolutely LOVE our Chicago neighbors which is the hardest part of this whole process. But education out-weighs all the other factors. Oh, and we’ll miss this storybook house. We’ve put our heart and soul into it. We bought it with boarded up windows, dead mice, sagging kitchen cabinets, no light fixtures, no appliances, wood floors hidden with gray carpet and a sordid past. The previous owners were running a drug ring out of here. The front door had been busted in with a ram rod by the Feds. Now that all the riff-raff is gone this is a fantastic block of Chicago for someone who does not have to worry about educational issues. The relationships in our neighborhood border on utopian. That is no exageration.
The earth is moving under our feet. Two days ago God let us in on what has been in the works all summer. He provided the perfect piece of a puzzle that has made our heads spin. We’ve been in a cloud for the past few days. Paul might have a great opportunity. I don’t think this is going to fall through. I’m amazed at the way our experience has providentially come together as a perfect fit for this next chapter. It won’t all be easy. In fact, some parts of the picture are incomplete. But I’m confident that everything will work out. I just can’t wait to tell the whole story.
Your home is absolutely gorgeous. I bet it will sell in a jiffy! Good luck!!