We currently live in an adorable little house in the middle of student rentals. It was the ONLY viable option when we were looking for housing long-distance last summer, and we like it. It's also exactly one step up from our student townhouse...it has a tiny garage (not attached), a bit more space (950 sq feet) and no shared walls. Before we even moved in, though, we started looking for more permanent solutions. Housing here is SUPER reasonable, so it makes sense to buy. Our #1 consideration was ease of resale, and our target was 3 bedroom, 2 bath, attached garage, fenced or easily fence-ible yard, door from kitchen into back yard. With our lease out in June, we weren't in a rush, but over the course of a few months we saw 7-8 houses with our amazing realtor Margie.
One day this little house popped up at an incredibly low price (even for here)--1300 sq feet, 3 bed/2 bath, sort-of fenced yard.
We walked into the little entryway...little entryway?! I have always wanted a little entryway (bold color! Fun pattern!) I took off my boots, but then I realized that my socks were going to get filthy and I put them right back on. BLECH! The house reeked of stale cigarette smoke and we tried not to touch any surfaces.
No subfloor, but more on that later...
Smoke and filth aside, we got a great vibe from the house. It has good flow (in contrast to other ranches we saw), and it filled all of our requirements to a T. We knew we'd have to do all new carpet, a chemical clean of the surfaces for the smoke, and prime and paint the whole house. And maybe remodel the kitchen. No big deal!
Margie reported that a few people were coming by for a second visit of the house, so she advised against a low-ball offer. We made an offer, they countered, we accepted. As we were working out the contract, though, we hit a snag over "termite damage"--the sellers wanted us to pay for anything that was found by the termite inspector. Red flag? Margie thought so. Termites are common here, so if you don't stay up-do-date on inspection and treatment, you can get into trouble. The termite inspector came and found active termites. It wasn't his job to estimate damage, but he indicated that it was significant.
Sigh. Margie's heroic husband stopped by and went into the termite-infested crawl space to let us know whether it was even worth going forward with the house inspection. We (and he) expected him to find huge damage and tell us that we shouldn't touch the place with a 10-foot pole, but NO! It didn't look *too* bad! (although the subfloor was basically gone in the entryway)
That afternoon the inspector came by and found a bunch of other problems...water leaks, pipe issues, etc. We added up the repairs and asked the sellers for a significant price reduction. At that point we were completely ready to walk away. We liked the house, but not enough to lose money on it. They only came down a tiny bit, we made a final counter offer that still gave us what we think is a comfortable margin to make all of the repairs. They accepted! I jumped up and down pumping my arms. Jonathan looked a little green in the face (I should note here that these roles have reversed now that we have entered the demolition phase).
OK. Back to the house tour. These were taken during the home inspection.
Looking out of the entrance hall.
Turning to the left (functioning wood-burning fireplace! S'mores! (after the kids are in bed)
Looking back from the fireplace towards the bedroom hall.
There's a big master bedroom with three windows and a bathroom with an interesting tub surround. In some kind of karmic coincidence, the bathroom has the exact mirror medicine cabinet/vertical florescent bulb fixture as we had in graduate housing, and it makes the exact same humming sound. Tearing it out will be symbolic of our progress in life.
Looking down the little hall. Laundry on left, bedrooms on right.
Our future room! The other wall is covered with a dark brown adhesive cork board.
Looking down past the most incredible realtor ever into the kitchen/dining with the other bathroom on the right
Bathroom! Bathroom...carpet!
Little kitchen! Needs a little work, although who doesn't love a plaid soffit? I just learned that word a few months ago, and boy does it come in handy.
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