Our Journey Home: Open House(s)

If you want to read the previous entries: Part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6

We viewed five houses Saturday during our open house with the Realtor. In short:

House #1 = Had a bad case of the Stuck-in-1955-and-don’t-know-how-to-get-up. Nice elderly couple lived there (maybe since it was built?) and everything was just incredibly dated. (“Dated,” I’m learning, is the polite way to say, “This is ugly as hell.”) Cost around $160,000, which was too much to be so ugly.

House #2 = Slightly more spacious, but we didn’t like the way the bedrooms were set up. It was a ranch, with two bedrooms on the first floor, and two bedrooms in the basement. Which means that we couldn’t be on the same floor with the kids. Once they’re older and start demanding privacy, that would be fine, but now, with small kids, I don’t want to be running up and down steps to get them.

House #3 – A foreclosure home. It was snowy outside and I almost slipped when we stepped inside because the floors were like glossy paper. Not quite vinyl or linoleum, but….glossy paper. Best way I can describe it. It was a split-level, which made it look like it had a ton of room. But it was a foreclosure. It had a hole in the corner of one of the bedrooms (wtf?) and some water damage in the basement. Oh well. Never mind.

House # 4 – Lovely house with the current owners’ butt ugly furniture all around, making it darn near impossible for me to envision it with our stuff. When I say butt ugly, I mean it. Must be something about the folks who live in this town because EVERY SINGLE HOUSE had these creepy porcelain dolls with bad lipstick. How can a doll have smeared lipstick?

House #5 – Decent house, but it wasn’t in the school district we wanted and the backyard was nonexistent.

So…we’re still looking. One house that was high on our list was getting the tile replaced in the kitchen (new ceramic tile!!!) so we couldn’t come by. We’re going to see that house on Saturday. Keep your fingers crossed. The YoungFamily might find their dream home!

Takeaway tip: Make a checklist of all the things you want your house to have and bring it with you to the open house. Check off things you notice and scribble notes to yourself to remind you of which house had what features. If you view more than two or three, they all start to run together.

Up next: Open house (with the kiddos!) next Saturday. In the meantime, continuing to get rid off all this junk around here.