Sunday, August 21, 2011

This Weekend

Did you hear?  Our house is officially UNDER CONTRACT!  Hooray!  Do you know what that means?  We have about 5 weeks to find a new house, pack our belongings, and hit the road.  So guess what we did this weekend?  Yup!  We looked at houses.

I got to say, I love our realtor.  She's great.  She's a lot of fun and I really feel like she's "got our back".  We met her at 9 AM Saturday morning to look for houses.  She had sent about 30 listings to us a few weeks ago.  Our task was to hit 6 houses.  We found out that 2 of the 6 we wanted to see were no longer available, but we picked up a few more along the way.  Here are the houses we saw, according to our thoughts on them:

  1. Angry man's house with dog poop in living room.
    1. These people weren't ready for us to be there and the man wasn't too happy about us being a bit early.  We rushed through and when we left Ryan asked me if I saw the poop on the living room floor.  I didn't, thank goodness!
  2. 80's House
    1. This is the house that Ryan said reminded him of one his parents had owned.  It was built in the 80's and it showed in many ways.  Updates had begun in the kitchen (which is what sold me in the pictures and made me think we needed to see it), but the rest of the house was far behind.
  3. Dream House
    1. This is the one we liked the best.  It seems to be perfect.  It's a short sale.  The agent still hasn't called our agent back to let us know where in the process the house is...we haven't got high hopes for it working out
  4. Long house, tiny master
    1. This was a ranch, we saw the For sale sign and Lisa called to set up the appointment.  It was set up with two long sides.  On one, a huge front room, a giant wall, kitchen, dining.  The other side (they were separated by stairs going downstairs) was tiny master, bathroom, bedroom, bedroom.
  5. Very Religious & 3 Kitty House
    1. This was one we saw as we were driving.  The owners were home.  They let us look.  They had not done much de-personalizing.  There were tons of photos everywhere!  There were also tons of Virgin Mary's and saints and crosses.  They were displayed in a manner that I felt was a little overboard/tacky.  (We had, up until we started packing away a lot of extras in our house, a cross wall.  I felt it was done nicely.  The crosses all had special meanings to us--our baptisms, our confirmations, our wedding, one made from Camp Luther wood, etc.  I think you can decorate with religious symbols nicely.  This house was a bit extreme.)  It had four bedrooms upstairs.  One was decorated perfectly for a baby.  (Winnie the Pooh--I LOVE Pooh!)
  6. Schizophrenic House
    1. This one had essentially 4 levels.  The "100% completed basement" was about 5 stairs down from the hallway into a giant den/bedroom area.  (This area was the greatest craft room I've ever seen.  I asked if we could request that the craft stuff stay...)  The main floor was the formal dining, the kitchen, a bathroom, a front room/bedroom, a laundry room.  The next level up was just the master bed & bath, the next level was a loft and two other bedrooms.
I don't remember much about the back yards and what not.  Most were pretty decent.  We realize that we are probably going to not have the great yard we currently have.  We're giving up space outside to gain space inside.

Tuesday we are going to go see two or three more houses.

Saturday night was spent entertaining the teachers at the annual Back to School BBQ at the Glover's.

I have tons of pictures from today.  I'll share them later this week.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm curious about the 80's house... we have only "owned" 3 and none were built in that decade. Was he thinking of one in the States or England?
- Ryan's Parents

Kristen said...

Congrats, Sarah and Ryan! House hunting is so much fun...and a little overwhelming. Don't be afraid to look past the lime green shag carpet and dated gold hanging 60s lamps...oh wait! That was the house that we bought! :-) Two years later, and it's shaping up into a charming house which we love.