The real estate saga: Part III

Looking over my past blog posts, I realize that I've been spending a lot of time over the last year thinking about real estate. Unfortunately for people who read this blog, I've been writing about it a lot too. I think real estate as a blogging topic is a lot like babies: you only care about the minutiae if you're going through it too.

But it's my blog and I never bore myself, so I give you Part III. In Part I, we put an offer on an expensive house in our favorite neighborhood in town. The offer was accepted, but in Part II, it fell through after the inspection revealed some nasty issues and the sellers refused to negotiate. JW was upset -- he had already started sketching out his kitchen renovation plans. I was less upset because, being the one who talks to the real estate agent, I had seen it coming. From the beginning, it seemed like the sellers regretted accepting our offer. I was even a little relieved because I was worried that we were getting in over our heads financially.

Less than a week later, we ended up putting an offer on another house -- three doors down from the one that got away. It just so happened that even though houses in this neighborhood rarely go on sale, the family that had lived there for over sixty years was selling because the elderly father was moving to an assisted living facility and the daughter decided she couldn't afford a four-bedroom house by herself. (I knew this story, ironically, because I had seen her outside and had stopped to talk with her, introducing myself with, "Hi, I'm going to be your new neighbor!") We knew this house had the same expensive wiring and roof issues as the other house, so we offered substantially less than the purchase price and explained why in an accompanying letter. She didn't counteroffer, but accepted on the condition that we take the house as is, with no further adjustments based on the inspection. Done.

The inspection didn't turn up anything unexpected. Our inspector knocked $25 off the price and joked that the next one would be free. The mortgage approval went through. Now there's no turning back. Closing is in mid-August.

The house is similar to the one down the street: lots of wood, Arts and Crafts style, built in 1917. It has a two-car detached garage, not so easy to find in our town. There's a screened-in porch on the first floor and an indoor deck on the second floor -- no outdoor living space, but we'll see what we can do about that. The four bedrooms and bathroom are on the second floor. The walk-up attic is huge (the inspector exclaimed, "This is the biggest friggin' attic I've ever seen!") and has great bones. In the other house, they had finished the similar attic into a beautiful family room / master bedroom suite. I would love to do that here. There's a partially finished basement with a crumbling tile floor, a half bath, laundry area, and a pool table that they said we'd leave for us. We planned to turn that space into a playroom, but hey, free pool table. If we change our mind I'm sure we can get someone to take it off our hands.

The worst part is the kitchen. Forget how ugly it is, with gray plastic tile on the walls and ancient flowered wallpaper -- we can fix that. The problem is that nearly all the wall space is taken up by windows and doors. As a result, there are NO cabinets or countertops, or shelving on the wall deeper than six inches, and no way to really add any of that without major structural changes. And then there's the random staircase in one corner, the huge drywalled-over chimney that bisects the room, the sink in a separate room, and the asbestos vinyl tile on the floor. And no dishwasher, which may seem like the least of our problems but it'll be hard to go back to life without one. We had a contractor come in and give us an estimate. He said, "I hate to price myself out of this, but I want to be honest with you, and based on my experience and what I've seen here, here's my breakdown of the costs." The total came to $87,500! (To be fair, that included a half bath. There's no bathroom on the first floor, so we wanted to turn the pantry into one and move the sink into the actual kitchen.) So we no longer feel like we got such a great deal on the house. But at least the bright side is that, since we can't possibly afford to redo the kitchen now, that's one less financial obligation.

I'm getting a little nostalgic about our current house, which we love and have worked hard on for years. I am really sad to lose our open floor plan. It's so convenient when you have little kids to be able to cook dinner while watching them play in the living room. Now that K's old enough to be by himself for a little while, he'll even play in the basement while I'm upstairs. Our house is so open that I can hear every move he makes and it's easy for me to run down and check on him every few minutes. We also have huge bedrooms, central air, an attached garage, two full baths, and a lovely kitchen that we renovated about a year after we moved in -- all things that the new place doesn't have. In some ways, it feels like a downgrade.

But the new house is in our ideal neighborhood (and the neighborhood is our big problem with the current house -- in fact, we've been hearing from potential buyers that they love the house but don't like the neighborhood). It has room to expand, in either the attic or the basement. It has room for a total of four cars in the garage and driveway, which is important because our town has an overnight parking ban in winter. And JW reminded me that we've done a LOT of work on our current house to get it the way we want it. When we moved in, the kitchen was covered in pink bathroom tile and peeling Formica (and, like the bathroom, was coated in a layer of scum). There were giant hedges choking the house and leaning over the sidewalk. The basement flooded regularly, including once with sewage. There was virtually no insulation. I could go on, but you get the idea -- there will be problems with any new place, and it takes work and time to make it into the home you want. Besides, problems that seem like near-dealbreakers at the beginning can fade into the scenery over time (like the 1970s lavender bathroom in our current house, featuring a lavender tub, toilet, sink, and lavender tiles covering the entire ceiling, and a blinding light that makes you feel you've just stepped into a lavender inferno).

So, starting at the end of August, prepare for this string of real estate posts to turn into a home-improvement series. And if we don't sell our house by October, prepare for my regular posts to turn into a series of paid advertisements.

P.S. - I didn't originally list this one because it was easily removable, but for posterity I want to record my favorite horrible thing about our current house: the lavender blinds WITH ORANGE TRIM. I'm no interior designer, but lavender and orange? That goes way beyond "wacky 70s color scheme" and into crazytown.