When my husband and I decided to move back to his hometown to raise our kids many things changed to drastically.
The first major change came when we went to look for a house and realized that the prices were much higher than we thought they were.
We came to the realization quickly that we would have to buy something that was older and in need of repairs but when we settled on the house we live in now I don’t think we were prepared for all of the obstacles that we would face. The location is great because it’s located in the middle of town and we figured when the kids got older they could walk to school. but it is an old farmhouse and was built in the early 1800s. Our first major obstacle was the layout of the house as it was trapped into many small rooms. Back in the time it was built homes were constructed for accommodating large families. Having that many small spaces makes it difficult to heat and cool a space efficiently as well. There was no ductwork installed in the house so we had no choice but to open the walls to put it in. I am not sure how they pulled their house at all years before because there was really no way for the cool air to flow from one space to the other. I’m used to having air conditioning for warm summer nights when I can’t sleep so I knew we needed to install a full HVAC system. At first we tried using portable and window air conditioners but soon found that many of the windows in the house were too small to accommodate even those. We didn’t want to start reconstructing the outside of the house and enlarging the windows because that would have been very costly and require many permits. Our local HVAC dealer was great and when they finished installing the system and the ductwork we were very happy that we had made the investment.