Here it is: our new 117 year old house.  The best thing about it is the location, in one of the best neighbourhoods in the city, across from a wonderful park with a playground, spray pad, basketball court/skating rink, community pool, and lots of grass to run around on.  A block away is shopping, with a bakery, butcher, organic grocer, coffee shops and more antique stores and hair salons than anyone needs.  Iain can walk to the office downtown when he works in town, and its less than a 10 minute drive to Bella's school.  Next year she can walk to grade 1!  

We are missing the people in the old neighbourhood, but so far our new neighbours have been great, and we look forward to meeting lots of kids and their parents, since this is a very family friendly area.  And most nights we go for walks after dinner, around the quiet tree lined streets, admiring the century old mansions and row houses.

The house itself is great too, it has been completely renovated with new wiring, plumbing, drywall, etc., and has a new roof and high efficiency furnace.  There are 4 very small bedrooms, and a half bath on the main floor, and the living room overlooks the beautifully landscaped park.  Our only complaints with the house are that when they renovated it they removed all the old trim, so the inside is missing its original character, but we can rectify that over time.  And it is about 10% too small in every room, but we have found ways of dealing with that.  The kitchen will need a rehaul in a year or 2, as it isn't laid out how Iain likes it, and is a bit dated.

  But for the time being we feel lucky to have found a house that needs so little capitol investment!  The backyard is small, but has a nice paving stone patio, and lots of flowery shrubs.  It needs some work to make it beautiful, but i look forward to doing some planting in the fall and lots of work on it next spring.  

Its still the Hammer, but much more livable than our last 'hood, and we never have to drive through the steel mills and the east side ghettos again!