Nesting without a house

First, the baby talk, and now nesting. I think if I had a house, I would totally be nesting right now. Unfortunately for me (or fortunately for J), we don't own a house, but instead live in a small 400 sq. ft. apartment in Wisconsin. This is far from us living in a house in California. With 400 sq. ft. of family room, dinette space, kitchen, bathroom and bedroom, this leaves very little room to really nest. So what do I do to satisfy my nesting and planning needs? I watch HGTV.

I've recently took an interest in watching HGTV. I usually avoided the channel because I wasn't 1) looking to buy my first house or 2) looking to renovate my house. But I've found that watching HGTV satisfies my eagerness to have a home. It's probably because I have one of my grand plans for a house already laid out in my head. *Insert evil laugh*

So here's the plan, which has a huge contingency. Project House will begin with J getting into a residency program in the south bay, specifically either Stanford or Santa Clara Valley Medical Center. This will happen March 2011. Once we find out that J gets into one of these programs, then the rest of the plan will definitely happen. Obviously, this is the most important step. Everything rests on him getting into one of these programs, or at the very least a bay area program.

Now for the house. My parents never sold my childhood house, they've been renting it out ever since they moved out. It's a great house to start a family in. 3 bedrooms, 2.5 bath, ~1600 square feet. It's actually only 8 houses away from my grandmother's house, which is a plus! I haven't actually been in the house for almost a decade--I didn't even know my parents had paved a little of the backyard, which btw is HUGE! Since J and I both have six figure debt from school loans, we knew that it'd be a long time before we were able to save up to buy a home, but also didn't want to spend the rest of our lives renting. So "renting" my parents' house seems like the best option. My parents' have always said that their first house would be mine, so I'm finally taking them up on the idea!

So enter HGTV. With the idea of possibly moving into a house in eighteen months, my nesting urges have been steadily increasing. I've been watching a lot of House Hunters, My First Home, and Color Splash. And now there's so much I want to do with the house. I literally lay in bed thinking of all the things I would do to change the house. Some of the things I would like to change before moving in are:

• rip out all of the carpet downstairs and put hardwood
• change the tile on the entry way to hardwood
• replace the carpet on the stairs and upstair bedroooms
• repaint the entire interior of the house
  
• change all of the chandeliers to something modern and updated
• get an automatic garage door
  

Some of the things I would like to change eventually are:

• granite countertops
• stainless steel appliances
• update the fireplace
• change the tiles in all the bedrooms
• expand the kitchen/dinette area/living room
• walnut cabinets
• landscape the backyard
• repaint the exterior of the house
  

Oh the things I would do to that house! It's been on my mind for a while now that I am probably going crazy. What has added fuel to my fire was telling my parents my plans. I casually mentioned J & I moving into the old house, just to get a sense of how they like my idea. And they were totally on board! Yippee! And even better, my dad was talking about how he'd want to change out all the carpet to hardwood, and change the garage door before we moved in. Oh my gosh, he read my mind! Now all I have to do is wait for March 2010 to find out where J matches, and then the wheels for Project House will commence!