House Hunting

The search is on. Matt and I have made some big decisions lately, we’ve decided it’s time to start looking for a house. We’ve met with the bank, we have a realtor, and we’ve been looking. We have officially looked at 15 houses. And some of those I use the term “house” pretty loosely. We have some criteria in mind as we look. We’d like 3 bedrooms, we’d like 3 garages (but we’ll settle for 1 stall), built after 1975, built before 2011, more than one bathroom, a yard for Matt to play in, not on a busy street for Nike, and in a neighborhood that has future potential.


Here’s a rundown of some of the houses we looked at:
-When the fridge dies, we’d have to remodel the kitchen.
-One had a bedroom off the kitchen/dining room, Matt didn’t like it. It also had the yard sectioned off into multiple pieces so it really was a fenced yard.
-One had been a do-it-yourselfers dream, beautiful curb appeal, but that was the only good thing about the house, the outside.
-One was purple: purple walls, purple doors, purple steel siding, purple wallpaper, and a million feet of decks to paint
-Two didn’t have garage entrances from the inside, yet they were attached.
-One had a fire hazard in the closet and was on a truck route
-One was a modular with a peek-a-boo kitchen in a questionable neighborhood, on a half lot, meaning if we ever had a fire, we probably couldn’t rebuild
-One was beautiful, new construction with a pantry, master bath, and great den and then you looked at the neighbors yard out the huge sliding glass door and you saw the swing set, the rundown dog house, the add on unfinished shed, the 3 dirt bikes, the car on blocks, the garbage everywhere, the kids cars, and the ditch filled with water five feet from the front door.
-One was so scarily messy, we even had a warning before we walked in. They told us it was a finished basement and I can’t confirm or deny because there was so much stuff I couldn’t see the walls or floor. And the utility room also served as a the secondary bath, they just put up a picture screen.
-One was the perfect image of the seventies, complete with yellow/green/white shag, ½ the wallpaper was yellow flowered, ½ was green, orange, and yellow striped, and it looked well taken care of and pristine and it was looking hopeful until we went downstairs and Matt couldn’t stand up right without the fear of bashing his head.
-One had Matt’s hopes high until we got there and the backyard was missing, the back of the house was a trailer/camper, and when we went to leave Matt remembered that a shooting had happened.
-One had no upper cupboards, only a closet. It also had 13 different colors of primary color paints, all the carpet was different, and the redesigners seemed to like platforms and cutouts. I got suckered in because there was a pic of the French doors.
-One hasn't had updates since it was built in 1975 and it said it had a fenced-in yard. The fence appeared to be missing, unless they were refering to their neighbor's fence, and it should have said, 1/3 fenced yard which contains pitbull. Great, Nike would HATE us.
-AND "eat-in kitchen" is not a beneficial attributed, it basically means, no dining room, you better have a small table

When we were finished we felt exhausted and disappointed. We did find something we like with a great open floor plan but after some more research we determined it’s in the 100-year flood plain, which means we are forced to buy flood insurance and we are also waiting to find out a bit more about the settling and the foundation. We are still looking as we sort this house info out but I did forget how it’s a difficult venture to move forward as we look. Good thing we have family to bounce ideas and questions off while we are searching.

Brendan came for guards this past weekend and him and Matt were able to spend some quality time together including a few hands of gin which escalated into yahtzee which grew eventually into drunk yahtzee.

“I had high hopes for this one.” MJR after looking at the added-on trailer “But it would be like living in a camper all year. You think you could get something in this town!”