Adventures in House Hunting

Through a lot of discussions, arguments, and spreadsheets, Andy and I have come around to the decision that we could start looking for our first house.

This started with a literal bombardment of Zillow pages from Andy, with "What do you think about this?" and "Look at the kitchen on this one!" and a number of other things.  I felt overwhelmed almost immediately, to say the least and we had a discussion about the right way to approach the process that would meet both of our needs.  Eventually, we came around to a thorough conversation of identifying what features we really wanted in a house, what were our dealbreakers and what were our "it'd be nice if it had X, but it's not necessary" features.  This was all compiled into a mean spreadsheet that gave each possible house a point value.  Then another round of math came, sorting out what our budget might be to best meet our goals.

I had two main rules--the move must lower our monthly bills by a reasonable amount and we had to purge the house before moving.  I absolutely refused to unpack something and have us both question why we even brought it with.

Well, with so far six bags of items donated and a lot of paper recycled, we're working through that purging goal, and with a couple of meetings with some loan officers we had an idea of what our budget should tap out at to meet our monthly goals.

And then a fresh bombardment of Zillow links, but this time the search could be more focused, changing the question from "what do you think of this one?" to "should we include this on our list of things to see?"

Our realtor had taken care of other members of our family before, and it was good to have that trust pre-established, meeting her on a wintery day to start off with five houses up for contention, including three that we had sent her and two that she had found.  We've seen a few more since then with her.  Here are some of those stories.  Names have been omitted to protect the innocent.

• House 9.812, aka "The one with the murder closet," two story home that had a nice fenced in porch and a couple of bathrooms.  Main area upon entry and kitchen had been recently updated and seemed true to the photographs.  We began to realize immediately, though, that all photographs are set in such a way to make the room seem larger than it is.  Upstairs was comparatively tiny.  Then we went to the basement.  A radon pipe was placed in front of a cabinet, so that it would only open a couple of inches.  There were nails visible from the floorboards when you looked up.  To the right, there was an oddly shaped door.  A door with questionable stains and age.  A door that would not open.  This door was promptly dubbed "The Murder Closet."  I do not want to live in a house with a Murder Closet, where surely something would crawl out of it and possess us in our sleep.

  

  Walking around with my internal Vincent Price monologuing...

• House 10.432, aka "They tried their best" two story, connects to a busy street, which could be less than fun at certain times of day.  There was a lovely skylight in the kitchen and cool bar piece with stonework in the basement.  The rest was done in earnestness but no expertise.  They tried.  By golly, they tried to update things.  But, well, there were a lot of obvious flaws, such as windows that didn't actually fit, sloppily cut holes around ducts, carpet that wasn't fit properly, the list goes on.  Even the closets were consistently put on backwards.

  

  Not a picture from the exact house, but this kind of stuff, yo

• House 3.666, aka "Doom basement" was a ranch style with a good size backyard.  Definitely a "grandparent" home, in the sense that it needed some updating in a few places, as though someone had lived here for years and years and changed nothing in that time.  It was billed as having two bathrooms, but the one in the basement, well, it was not what I would have called a full bath--it was a cinderblock shower, like what you'd see at camp, with a single light bulb and a sad, isolated toilet in the corner, and a giant washtub sink.  The rest of the basement had a rocking chair with--I shit you not--a framed 8x10 of a clown just outside of a basement door that had a chain lock on the inside, like a front door chain lock.  The only think in that room was a rusty pole.  Vincent Price started setting the stage again in my head, that someone was tied to that pole and then the attacker went out to clean off in the cinderblock shower while evil grandma rocked in front of the room while holding the clown picture, and I was ready to leave very quickly.

  

  Something like this, but my memory might be exaggerating a bit

  Maybe.

• House 7.219 aka "House of the sun worshipers" was a split level with a beautiful backyard, with a screened in porch that had skylights and a fan, a brick patio, lights, and a pool.  The previous owners must have loved their backyard and probably practically lived in their backyard.  The inside of the house, though, had been...neglected.  It was a weird floor plan, particularly in the basement where the ceiling took an awkward angle near one of the walls and the tiny hallway to go through to the bathroom, and just a solid meh from us.  The garage had a side door attached to it where there was an unfinished but heated and airconditioned side room.  We could not figure out the purpose of this room at all.
• House 9.230, aka "It's a relief to see something plausible" was a ranch with charming white brickwork at the fireplace.  The cabinets were older, but painted a very fun green that matched the right level of quirky for me.  A LOT of built in shelving.  Basement was vast but finished.  Wish it had one more half-bath or an ensuite bathroom, given my particular needs.
• House 4.320 aka "Andy's first love" was a two story that had a wide, open communal space, spanning both levels.  Andy made the mistake of falling in love with this one, since it apparently went the day after we came to see it.  The basement was awkward as hell, with a random, wide bar making the space feel tiny.  It did have an ensuite bathroom at least but I had a hard time seeing what we would place where.  Was I secretly relieved that it was off the market?  Yeah, a little.  We also invoked a new rule--don't fall in love with anything.
• House 8.723 "Scentsory overload" was an L split level.  The siding was new and a fun color so it looked very sharp outside.  Going into the garage, it was clear they were smokers.  Upstairs was not so bad, but entering the basement, the air freshener was completely overwhelming.  I'm not sure if they were trying to cover something or if the smoking had dulled their sense of smell where they couldn't tell how much they were using.  Either way, a quick scan of the basement later, Andy and I knew it would need some serious updating and popping our head into the furnace room smelled like gas, and I was feeling lightheaded and wanted to leave immediately because my body was certain it was being poisoned.  That basement invoked a fight-or-flight response for me, and it took about twenty minutes to calm down.  Hard pass.

There were a couple in there that were unremarkable, in the sense of "it's a nice little home, but not for us" or we weren't willing to do the necessary work of updating that particular space.  Yet for all that adventure, we did end last weekend with this:

Assuming all goes according to plan, we're home owners, ya'll.  :)