Another few crossed off the list

As soon as Pat got home last night, we loaded up Nina (the Nav system) with the last few addresses we hadn't seen in our preferred town. These houses were all slightly outside of our comfort zone as far as price was concerned, but every one of them felt like it deserved a look. Plus, we drove past our number one, just because it was on the way :)

First was our standby house.

Calling it a standby house really isn't fair, because we love a lot of things about it. We don't, however, seem to love it enough to jump on it. If the price happens to drop, we may end up owning it. It's not that the price is too high on it, it's just that nothing is compelling us to march into the bank on this one.

Next on the list was a house we really thought we'd love, based on the pictures and the ad.

"This home is completely redone, nothing to do except come and relax
on your deck outside your master bedroom on the second level and view the Bay.
Enjoy the breath taking views - lighthouse, ships, bridges, and more."

We went to see this knowing we were willing to pay a little more to be on the water - a huge selling point when we need to sell in a few years. What the ad doesn't mention, though, is that there isn't actually any water access at the end of the road, just marsh, and that to put those great decks in, the other side of the house is thisclose from the neighbor's 8ft high fence. We DID love the house, but the location just wasn't for us.

A new home was our next stop. I hadn't brought my pen and paper with me, but we remembered the ad saying that if we acted fast, we could still choose our finishes. Perfect! We didn't expect that when we got there, it would only be a framed outline of a house. That didn't bother us, though, so we went in (probably illegally) to take a look around and try to imagine the rooms.

The raised ranch's upper floor seemed fine enough. Everything was on the smaller side, but we don't need a lot of room. No Walk in closets, but we knew we'd have plenty of storage downstairs. Cool.

We walked downstairs and were just turned off. Using a couple of the 2x6's (a good point of this house) as a handrail to help with the stairs really wasn't an option because there were a couple that were warped and not nailed down at the floor end. When we got into the lower story, there were a few spots in the plywood walling where we could see about an 1/8th of an inch of daylight. We got back in the car. Looking back at the house, we noticed that the stairway into the house (a large slab of concrete that looked good enough for my taste) was propped up by a couple of smaller chunks of concrete on the 4 corners. All we could think of was that there was nothing to keep the stairs from settling and sinking into the ground.

The first thing we admitted while driving away was that we know nothing about construction and house building. Maybe these "issues" are all normal, and they're just not seen once the drywall goes up. We just knew that we would always be wondering if our house was poorly made if we moved into this place. Onto the next.

Hmmm, to tell you the truth, I have no idea why the next one was vetoed on the spot, but it was. We continued on to our last destination of the evening:

And we actually kept it on our list. 1/4 isn't so bad. This home is lived in and looks really well maintained, even if it's completely outdated on the inside. There's nothing WRONG with this house. It's got a huge yard, and somebody takes pride in it. It's a little expensive for what it is, especially considering it has such bad decoration on the inside. It's going to take a little bit of money to update it. So, we are just going to keep following it and see what happens.

We finished right as it was starting to get dark - home for tacos :)