House-Hunting Day 2

Despite a serious case of stomach flu last week, which pretty much had me laying on my bathroom floor for 3 days, I am carrying on with the search for a new place to live. When last we chatted, I had seen several scary places, one real possibility and had another real possibility on the list for the next scouting mission. Well, things have changed a bit since then. The "workman's cottage" pictured below ended up being a dead-end. Suzy called the owner to ask if he would even entertain what I could offer before she took me to see it (no point in falling in love with a house you can't have). The owner really did consider it, but finally said he really needed a bit more than I could pay. Darn. Another one off the list.

So, this past Sunday, G joined me for another day of hunting. Suzy took us to another bungalow just down the street from the first cute bungalow - a much lower asking price, but also a "short sale". I'm still not exactly clear on what a short sale is, but according to Suzy, the owner will get way more than what he's asking, and I would probably have to engage in something of a bidding war with other buyers. Hmmm. Also, the house is right on the edge of where the neighborhood starts to go downhill. Suzy seemed a tad concerned, but she didn't outright say that she wouldn't choose to live there. I think I'm starting to read her signals, though.

We also saw an absolutely awesome house very close to the river. It was a big, old monster of a house that currently has pot-growing college kids living in it, so you can kinda imagine the state its in. Because it hasn't really been taken care of over the years, it needs a ton of work, but for the same reason it still has its original woodowork and windows and all the cool stuff that makes an old house great. I really did think about it seriously for a while, but a conversation with Mr. Renovation (my dad) finally convinced me that it was a bit more than I could handle in my first house.

The last place we saw was just hysterical. It was a foreclosure, and was, well, whacky. Outside, it had a basketball court, a horseshoe pitch, a wrap-around deck for an above-ground pool (minus the pool), and a Greek-style tiled surround for a hot tub (minus the hot tub). It also had a smll forest of cactuses (cacti?) in the front yard, and several outbuildings of unspecified use. Inside, it was just bizarrely renovated to the point that I can't really even explain it. Later, while dissecting the properties we had seen that day in line at the local ice cream joint, G finally decided that the former owners used the house to film porn movies. And maybe deal drugs. One of the two anyway. Needless to say, its off the list.

And perhaps it was because of the stomach flu, but I started to feel not so great about the other real possibility house (the one pictured two posts down). I don't know if this is just me, but whenever I make a connection in my mind between nausea and something else, however completely unrelated, I can never quite get past it again. In this case, while I was laying on my bathroom floor for those 3 days, I spent a lot of time thinking about the houses I've seen, and I started to associate the one at the top of the list with being sick. Bad news. But now that I'm not sick anymore, I really am having actual, practical doubts. For one, it really has been stripped of all of its old charm inside. Its all bright and shiny clean with new fixtures everywhere, but nothing to tell you that it was built in the '40's. Secondly, there's really nothing left for me to do with it. Its done. I could paint the walls, but that's about it. That's kinda boring. Sigh. Anyway, its still on the list, I'm just not as enthused as I once was.

Sadly, I have no pictures of future houses to look at today. Suzy says there a quite a few houses that will be popping up in the next few weeks, but at the moment I've seen just about everything in my price-range. I've never been good with delayed gratification!

Stay tuned...