Our Journey Home: House-hunting in a blizzard

I think I’m just now beginning to thaw from our house-hunting expedition on Saturday.

I live in Ohio, where we got about a foot and a half of snow dumped on us in a matter of hours. We asked our Realtor if she wanted to go out (we could hear in her voice that she would prefer to stay nice and warm) but she kept insisting that it was fine, that she would just take her husband’s Explorer and meet us at 2 p.m, like we had agreed the day before.

So we slowly made our way to five houses, getting stuck a few times, but we made it nonetheless.

The rundown:

House #1 – This house wasn’t in the school district I wanted, but it was gorgeous. Beautiful kitchen, large living room with a gorgeous fireplace, and a HUGE family room with vaulted ceilings. I could definitely see myself living there, but I wanted my top school district choice, so I forced myself to focus on the dust on the windowsills and the ugly awnings out front.

House #2 – We went back to the house with the ugly dolls, so I could view it again and attempt to look past the “dated” decorating scheme and instead focus on how big the house was. On the second time around, I had to admit that the house was more spacious than I remembered, and would make a nice house.

House #3 – First thing we noticed pulling up was that this was definitely Steelers country. Steelers flag in the front, bookbag right inside the front door, Steelers magnets on the fridge, the son’s room was a complete tribute to the team, etc. (My lack of description about the actual house should be a sign that we didn’t like that one.)

House #4 – The house my hubby said he wanted to move into based on the few pictures our Realtor sent us. I had to admit that it photographed well,  but I had learned by this time that you can’t trust pictures! We went in and it was every bit as beautiful as we thought it would be. Beautiful dining room, HUGE master bedroom, the kid’s rooms would be a nice size, and I would have my own office!

House # 5- Really spacious bi-level that looked like it was stuck in the 1950s. It was vacant, but still horribly ugly. The wallpaper didn’t match from room to room and the themes were all over the place. They had a country kitchen, a floral living room, a striped master bedroom – just ugh! It was a lot of space for the price, but we would have to spend a lot of money on it before I would feel comfortable having anyone over.

Up next: Stay tuned as we prepare to make an offer! (I bet you can tell which house!)