The Life, Times and Travels of CJ, MJ, Joanna and Maki: The New House

Sometime last year, I visited my friend Judith, who turns out to have an elevator in her townhome. Oh, what a glorious thing! The elevator was tucked neatly beneath a stairwell and it made visits by her mom, moving furniture and grocery shopping, so much easier. So I went on the hunt for a home in Alexandria with an elevator. I wasn't really serious about it since we loved our old house, we loved our super easy commute and CJ is thriving at his school.

On a whim, I called our Realtor, Gary Chute of Weichert Realtors, who had helped us buy our house and sell my condo nearly ten years ago. He took me around town to see a bunch of single family homes and townhomes, a few of which had elevators. There was one crazy house in Ford's Landing that felt like an Escher painting; there were so many small, cramped staircases going in every which direction, it was awful!

There is a fairly new development behind our house and I asked Gary to call the builder to find out if it was possible to put an elevator in any of the models. I had previously walked into the sales office to ask just that same question and was told no. But I figured it didn't hurt to have an expert give a ring. As it turns out there was one (exactly one) model that COULD accommodate an elevator and there was one still available. Trouble was, that one last home was already sold, but with a home sale contingency.

So Gary and I waited, followed up with the builder, looked at the house several times, showed the house to Maki, waited, followed up, etc. And yep, the day the contingent sale fell through, Maki and I made an offer and we made a deal! We had to close fast (in less than 30 days) to get the price and upgrades we wanted because it was the end of the quarter and our house was going to be THE last house to close in the entire development! We decided not to put in a home sale contingency because we felt comfortable we could sell our house and we had already been pre-approved by our mortgage banker.

So on March 31, we closed on our new house. It's gorgeous. It's about 8 short blocks north of our old house, it's got a similar floor plan, it's about 500 sq. ft. bigger, and it's got taller ceilings. The appeal of the house are the guest room on the 4th floor that has a closet and bathroom, the sitting area on the 4th floor (separate from the guest room), two closets in the master bedroom, the laundry/utility room, and larger island in the kitchen. New house, hooray!