We had been to see so many houses. We only put offers on two others. One would have been perfect, right by my parents, an acre of land, a tiny swimming pool, a tiny pool house, and a two bay, double-length garage for Mr. It was ab-fab! We filled out the paperwork that day, on-the-spot, then found out there were six other offers on the house. Boo-hoo...
The 2nd offer we put in was for a 1963 rambling ranch that had never been updated. It had no internally accessible basement, only a cellar; wall-to-wall shag hiding beautiful peg-and-plank flooring; and what our realtor liked to call "the Elks Lodge", a rec room that was probably 26 x 26, with wood-look linoleum, dark-stained wood panelled walls, a wet bar, and a pass-through from the kitchen(which you could actually open and close). Crazy. But it needed to be hooked up to the city sewer system and was going to end up costing an easy 30 grand. Argh. Which was really fine with me because what do you do with 1,900 sq.ft. and only 5 rooms? Total. 2 bedrooms, the living room(which had no place to put a couch), a kitchen, and the "bar" room. Plus, a bath and a half. AND, the half bath was blue, all blue. Blue toilet, blue sink, blue tile walls.... Like peeing in an ice cube.
I knew the day I saw it online that the pink house was the house for us. We had an appointment that evening to re-see a house that I loved, but Mr. hated (he would have had to build a garage). I saw this one while I was trolling the real estate pages and I fell in love. I called our agent (the lovely and patient Mrs. Nancy Dumeyer) and cancelled the appointment we had in favor of seeing this one. As soon as I pulled up to it, I knew. People always say a house is like a wedding dress, when you see it you just know. That was the argument I kept getting from Himself whenever I liked a house and he didn't. Well, this one we both just knew. This is it, our house...
Of course this one has issues as well. The fabu pink shingles are asbestos, as is the plumbing insulation and the basement floors. It has (had) active termites and carpenter ants, radon, leaky bathroom plumbing, a failed septic system, and needs part of a new roof, but check out this fireplace...
(see the black thing on the wall? Apparently that is to keep your couch from scuffing your walls.)
Fabulous, right? Totally makes up for all the elbow grease that will need to go into making our home our own. Well it's hard to tell from this stolen MLS pic, but that fireplace is made from quartz. Pink, purple, and grey quartz and bright yellow sulphur chucks... Here is a closer shot.
(see the black thing on the wall? Apparently that is to keep your couch from scuffing your walls.)
Crazy, right? See the date on the close-up? That is when we put the offer in, it was accepted the next day and we were scheduled to close on June 4th. Then we had our inspection. We found out about all the work the house needed, but we weren't willing to give it up, so we asked them to fix all of the about mentioned items. And they agreed! For a higher asking price. So we countered their counter and once again they accepted. Weeks had gone by at this point, so by the time they accepted the countered counter offer, we had to extend the closing date! Now it's only two weeks away and they haven't started the county sewer hook up(!) or the roofing project(!!). Plus, the day we finally do close, we can't even savor our new home, because that is the same night as the Willie Nelson concert!! Yee-Haw!
