I feel like I have been in a half dozen different worlds today. We saw six houses, and not a single one was remotely like the others. I've always thought of house shopping as a sport (and a spectator sport on television every bit as addictive as football or basketball), and I think we are rather talented at it. We have vision that a lot of people don't always tap into, looking past existing colors, floor treatments, walls, etc, for what each house could be if given enough love and attention. But the burden with having that sort of imagination, and a history of home improvement to back it up, means that we know just how much work and how much money a place requires. We might fantasize about blowing out walls and remodeling on a grand scale, but before we have locked up a potential house and climbed back into the realtor's car, we have added up the additional costs of each place, and judged them worthy or not of further consideration. It is very rare that houses we tour survive the initial rounds of elimination. Of the six today, one warranted further study, or at least keeping watch over it online, while we wait to see whether we are even moving this year.
The house I had been interested in before today is situated on an ideal lot. There is a meadow next to it, and the area is beautiful. But inside the place, the layout is strange. It claims to have been built in 1980, but I swear the intercom system in the house is at least ten years older than that. It looked like a house within a house, and while it was at the farthest reaches of our price range, it would have needed an additional fifty to sixty thousand dollars of work, just in materials. If it were to be the house we lived in the rest of our lives, maybe we would make that investment of time and money. But I doubt that this is really my forever house.
We saw two late seventies era houses, neither of which even vaguely interested me. We saw a house in a gated community that was very nice inside, but could not have a back fence. The first time my little red-headed dog sighted a rabbit, he would be gone. We saw a flip with such rickety decking and stairs that I absolutely refused to enter it. It was at the top of a super steep driveway, with steep, crappy stairs into the house, in one of the snowiest regions on the entire front range. It didn't stand a chance. And the way they extended the deck on the front of the house was laughably unsafe. We stood under it and marveled at the improperly sistered joists, knowing that not a one of them would have passed inspection.
The house we did like was owned by a couple that could have been us in twenty years. They had interesting collections, including but not limited to a wall full of hot rod magazines to match the 1939 Mercury in the garage, and some antique radios. I swear, if I wrote an offer on this house, I would ask for at least one of the radios to stay. The big one reminded me of the gorgeous old radio that used to be in my great grandmother's apartment in Oklahoma, that my brother had for years, but left with a friend to store and never saw again. Somewhere in a box of my college memorabilia, I have the photos I took of that radio for photography class. I hope I can at least find those, even if I never see the real radio again.
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