Okay, this is a very delayed "part two" for my previous entry Urban Living Woes. This is the blog announcement that we will be moving again! Within Ottawa this time. We have decided to build a new house in a new subdivision called Jackson Trails.

Our search for the perfect house didn't really lead us anywhere. We were being pretty picky about what we wanted. There are certain layout things that we like and don't like for the house itself. We really want a main floor den, for one thing, so that Ted will be able to work from home more. We found very few houses for sale that had that feature. And, with the dogs and kid(s) we wanted a fairly big yard. Ideally, one that backs on greenspace would be nice. Also, so that we wouldn't miss our current location too much, we were hoping we could find something that had some shopping, restaurants, and so on within walking distance. That is very difficult to find in the suburbs, but there were a few areas we were considering. But anyway, after looking for houses during August, September, and October we hadn't found anything we liked.

However, around mid-October we checked out "Jackson Trails" for the first time, and were really impressed with it. We liked the general location. It is walking distance from Stittsville's little shopping area which is currently growing quickly. They had some larger lots left, some of which backed on protected greenspace. The expected completion date for the houses is summer 2007 which seemed reasonable to us (some of the new developments we checked into were selling now for spring 2008!). Jackson Trails is also "Canada's first energy-star community" (all houses will be built to energy star standards) and is more "environmentally friendly" in other respects also, like how they've been working with environmental groups to have a minimal effect on the greenspace there, and so on. Ted and I really liked all that.

So, we have now signed on with a builder out there (Tartan Homes) to have our new house built! We have a larger lot backing on greenspace and a floorplan picked out that is perfect for our family. Construction has not yet started on our house, but it should be soon I think. The completion date is July 25th 2007. So, we have a bit of time to get things in order to sell our current house. That's the part I'm really dreading. I HATE people coming to look at the house, and then later, the packing up and actual moving is not much fun either. But, it'll be worth it to get into our nice new house! And, we've never before had the opportunity to pick our own flooring or countertops and so on, so I'm really looking forward to that.

I'm sure I'll write more news about the house as it progresses.