(So tomorrow turned into a week and I’m finally posting this, though most of it was written last week! I guess the nice weather distracted me! Here’s what happened next)
After being disappointed by both our first and second choices, Ray, our realtor and I drove on to see the next four. During the drive to the third house, I kept trying to process just what we had seen in the last house that we were in. The upstairs was a mental mess of clutter, closets with missing doors, more clutter, water heaters in odd places, home made dub waiters, clutter, ugly marble in the bathroom addition, odd layout of the master bath, and oh yeah… more clutter. I wanted this house to have a chance… I wanted it to work out somehow for us… I needed to see what the other homes looked like.
The other homes were a bit of a mix. There was a ranch that we looked at that I thought had some potential. I loved it’s great room, it had a very large basement and a nice view of the lake across the street. The house had a smell though, the bedrooms were tiny, the kitchen and bathrooms were very outdated and even though the basement was finished, it would all have to be redone (raising the drop ceiling, tearing down walls etc). There was a house with a backyard that was small compared to the others, but very nicely landscaped… unfortunately the house itself wasn’t much larger than our townhouse, had water damage and also a “smell”.
House number four… this home was one of two that wasn’t a short sale or bank owned and yet it looked much like the others. Not to mention that it literally gave me a headache. This house smelled so terribly like cat urine and flowery room spray that it made my head hurt. Ray had a soft spot for this one in his heart… it was in a great location with fantastic schools (though all of the homes we looked at had schools in the same district), an all brick front, no neighbors behind it and it was the largest of the 6 homes we looked at. The last house was in a nice neighborhood right across from an elementary school. The house itself was a decent size and in good shape… the best shape out of all of the others. Like house number 4 though it was just slightly larger than our current home.
When Ray and I got home, we were in a bit of a mental overload. We had seen so much that day, good and bad… and yet not one of those houses gave us the feeling of home like our current home does… none of them felt right. Later that night we talked about what we had seen, what we wanted and what we wanted to do… and then we went to bed, because quite honestly, there came a point where I just couldn’t talk about it anymore… my head hurt, both from thinking so much about the homes and from the smells in house number 5. The next day Ray and I talked about it all some more… and we came to a decision that we both felt comfortable with.
Sooooo….
Our big news is that there is no big news. When I first hinted at the “BIG news” last week, I really thought that house 1 or 2 would be the one that we would be moving into. I really wanted it, first house 1 and then house 2 even more than that… heck if house 2 had felt better, safer, less “what iffy”, we probably would have put an offer on it. It really could have felt like home… it still had potential for me. But after a lot of talking, both Ray and I agreed we wouldn’t have felt safe bringing the children into that home. It just needed too much work. It would have taken us years to get it fixed up and neither one of us wanted to live with that on our shoulders. It was a shame, because we both really, really loved that yard! Talk about relaxing!!!
We considered the price range that we had been looking in, as well as looking at homes that were more expensive. While we could have chosen to up our price, right now we prefer to live in a home that allows us to enjoy living life the way that we want to. Looking at these homes… homes that cost more than ours… and seeing the work that was needed to make them feel right, opened our eyes and let us realize that although our home isn’t perfect (and still needs some work), it isn’t nearly as bad as we had thought it was.
So for now we will stay where we are and fix up our house so that it is the way that we would like it to be. I’m sure we’ll still look and see what’s out there, but we won’t be actively or aggressively pursuing a new home for now. We still fit in this house and though there are times where we would like to have the big deck and back yard, we don’t need to move just yet.
Sorry if I got you all excited about something that isn’t going to happen now. We do have some big plans for our place though and I can’t wait to show you the updates we make to our home.
Oh the dreaded house hunting! Blech! However, I know that you and Ray are disappointed, but also commend you on being patient with the hunt. Jeff and I were so anxious to be homeowners, during the craze in 2005, that while we found our perfect house, we didn’t take into consideration all the long term issues we would be looking at…like adding a baby to the mix. We outgrew the house literally overnight, and we were miserable. Thankfully we were able to sell last summer, and move into a MUCH larger home, but we did lose out on some money because of the market.
And I know that when you walk into your future home, you will feel it.
And I’m so sorry for missing out on so much! I’m trying to play catch up. Promise!! 🙂
It’s such a pain to find a new house! Hope you can make the most of where you are now!