Week 1 Down.

Garner is a suburb of Raleigh with a population of 29,462. Garner is in Wake County and is one of the best places to live in North Carolina. Living in Garner offers residents a dense suburban feel and most residents own their homes. In Garner there are a lot of parks. Many young professionals live in Garner and residents tend to lean liberal. The public schools in Garner are highly rated. 

This above is from niche.com 

This is my new suburb. 

We saw the house yesterday with the inspector. The house is solid! The house was very well maintained. How lucky are we buying this online and trusting our realtor and everything he told us was true? 

The house is very small. 

The house has a lot of older people things in it that will change. 

It will be a long process of work. The master shower is so small that Rick can only go in sideways because he is too broad. I have no issue. But until we can change it he can use the other bathroom shower or walk in sideways and barely move. :-) 

We received the inspection notice with all the pictures today. We are so freakin' lucky that this was such good news. 

The 3 things that were considered bad - 

1. A crack in our driveway that could be a tripping hazard. (we didn't even notice it and we notice a lot more than average) 

2. The Hot water tank is 14 yrs old. 

 3. There once was a leak under the sink so the floor wood under the sink had that damage. Easy to fix. No longer a leak. That was all the negative, so pretty damn good to us. 

What we found odd - the circuit breaker panel was outside. Who the hell does that?The realtor and inspector said most of the homes there were like this. 

Really odd to us. 

That room above the garage that I mentioned has plumbing and electrical going up there. So it shouldn't be hard to finish it out...someday. 

It's small and I can't say that enough. I had 36 cabinets in my kitchen and they were all full. Now I have just a few cabinets. Oiy Vay. What to toss? But the cabinets are very nice ones and they weren't painted they came this way. The backsplash is nice and the countertop in the kitchen and bath are the same. It is honed granite. Would not have been my choice but it's nice. 

The appliances we are getting because it's an estate sale. We got lucky. All fairly new and I like that they are all that new black stainless steel. Not a fan of the regular stainless steel due to finger prints etc. It was such high maintenance to keep it looking nice. Still no word on washer/dryer which in NC  does not convey. Another oddity to us. And still no word on the lawnmower. 

The house was still full of oversized furniture and things while we were there. 

So that's it. 

What do we do with our time? Today we explored the western side of Raleigh and western down town. We did laundry...I did laundry. Rick and Izzy sat in the courtyard enjoying the cooler weather. It was only 82 and had a breeze. Ida caused us to leave the high 90s and weren't upset. The courtyard is nice. This place is nice.

I mean it's not easy living in 500 sq ft so at least I'm getting used to living on top of one another. (trying like hell to be positive)  But overall this is a good location for us, it's nice, it's clean and it's comfortable for the most part. Besides it could be worse, we could live in Texas. 

Here is the kitchen/living room  - or 1/2 the place. 🤣😂

This is the living area. Yes it is messy here.

they give you two of these tv's. One this size in the bedroom.

I have attempted to show you all a video of the cute courtyard but this piece of crap laptop is not playing nice with me. Rick is always screaming about something when he uses this. I now understand!

Here are 3 things we have noticed since coming here so much recently and this week of living here.

1. Streets signs seem to be optional.  Not good for those of us that are new around these parts.

2. There are so many trees everywhere - even downtown.  We sure like that but it's odd for us because we are not used to that.

3. Besides cheaper real estate we had a good laugh when we saw a menu. Wow we can be fatter alcoholics here.

4.When you allow someone out in traffic, or allow them to pull in front, they wave and thank you. We haven't had that in a very very long time.

There is a burger joint near our temporary home. We pulled up the menu online and I read some options to him. After reading the one burger I thought he'd like I saw the price. I asked him to guess. He said, $15.95. I said nope. He said less? I said yes. He smiled and said, $12.95?  Nope. I finally had to tell him it was $6.49.  We laughed. The place got great reviews on yelp and the place is always packed and that is always a good sign at a restaurant. So I see a burger in Rick's future. I mean come on only $6.95 for a big bacon burger with the works and fries? 

Yep, alcohol is cheaper and so is food. We're in trouble.