You've heard it said that a picture is worth a thousand words...well that might be true but in the day of Photoshop and digital cameras, not to mention the use of wide angle lenses the picture may not be quite reality.

As I mentioned before we bought a house completely online. Perhaps "completely" is a bit of an exaggeration since we did have some eyes on the ground as it were, but we relied pretty much on the online photos to give us an image of the house we bought. Well...it turned out to be pretty much as advertised. No major surprises and in fact if we had seen the house in person we would still have made an offer. We truly like our new house.

That is not to say there are not some things that we would like to change. Pictures taken from a distance do not tell you the age of the appliances for example. They did not show that the stove was an old coil burner electric stove that needed some TLC at a minimum and most likely replacement. The pictures did not show that the carpet in the master bedroom was older and more worn than the carpet in the other bedrooms. Should have been expected, i know, since there was just a couple of "old folks" living in the house but we did not see that. Still, none of these things are things that would have stopped us from buying the house.

We were fully prepared for the fact that real estate photographers use wide angle lenses which make the rooms seem bigger than they are. We had had some experience with that as we were looking or a house to buy. But in this case the dining room is much smaller than anticipated. Perhaps this is the one single surprise we found when we saw the house. The master bedroom walk in closet looked big enough in the photos to lead me to think we might be able to put the dresser in the middle of the closet as a sort of island. Well, the dresser will not fit, not even a three drawer chest, but still not a deal breaker. We will just have to be more creative.

We expected that the paint would need to be updated. Even if it had been painted for the sale it was all pretty much builder white or off white and we knew we would want to warm it up a bit. But, it turns out that the walls probably have not been painted since the house was purchased so they are pretty dry and definitely in need of some revitalization. We can do that over time, not a big deal but the major rooms all have vaulted ceilings and I have a bit of a fear of ladders but we will survive. Now to agree on a color, and wouldn't it be great to get it painted without furniture. Not going to happen.

We knew the yard was going to be small but from the photos we had been looking at small yard landscaping ideas. Well it is small but really not much to actually landscape. We will do some work as spring comes to the northwest but, the good news is that we will not be putting an inordinate amount of money into the landscaping.

Making arrangements for the move was pretty straight forward, not much different than if we were buying a home in the next city over. But getting them in place when we got here was a bit of a challenge. Even so, we now have a phone and internet working in the new house and when the household goods arrive and the TV's are ready to install I can do that myself they say. Or spend $40 to have them do them right.

We had always known that we would have more furniture than we needed, we were, afterall, downsizing. So we will have a lot of furniture in the garage and listed on Craigslist and trying to move it all as quickly as possible so that we can get the cars in instead. Ironically we will be buying some additional pieces...a reduction in scale for the downsized house.

But overall...the online purchase of a house went well. We could not be happier with the house. It will need some updating but it is just what we were looking for at this point in our lives. Today we are off to look at new kitchen appliances. Maybe we will look at paint as well or even some new light fixtures. But we are anxious to get our stuff in and start the new chapter of our lives. Life is good.