Options Insomnia

Apparently I have house hunting insomnia. I am hoping that if I just blog about what we've seen and what our options are, I will be able to sleep.

This is the back of the house I liked the most from our house hunting jaunt yesterday. I will tell you why. It has a HUGE bonus room upstairs, off of the kitchen. And the bonus room has two bedrooms off of it. I can just imagine it as the Emma & Macey suite. All their toys in that main room, their bedrooms right there. Oh, it would be great.

But it has negatives. They did not leave enough room between the kitchen island and the carpet in the living room for a dining room table (woops!). The garage is on the side and so you have to do a tight turn from the driveway to enter the garage. In a van or the Jeep, it might not be possible without backing in, backing out, backing in, backing out. The backyard is fenced (yeah!) but a mud pit. 1/3 of an acre of absolute wasteland. I see possibilities! Garry sees money, hard work, and, oh ya, money. They also stripped out all window coverings and the basement is not finished and has water damage from improperly dug window wells. But did I mention the fabulous bonus room???
This is Garry's favorite from yesterday. It also has a great bonus room with two huge closets off of the bonus room with built in shelves. Hello toy storage!!! It has a circular driveway, which you cannot see from the picture, but it is awesome.

It has major negatives. The backyard is narrow, narrow and on the other side of the fence are a ton of horses. That's just going to smell really bad all summer long. The girls loved watching the horses, but I am not sure I want to smell them. It's off of a busy street (114th) -- second lot in. The basement is not finished, the landscaping is completely undone, even the front yard. Just dirt. Everywhere. They also stripped all of the window coverings. But Garry loves the driveway and in the kitchen they have a water spicket thing right over the gorgeous gas stove in case you need to fill a pot and are too lazy to walk to the sink.

We saw two new houses that looked identical. One had a fireplace and the other did not. And they had different railings on the stairs, but besides that they were identical. They were nice, but the loft was open and visible right from the entry. Who wants a toy area they actually have to clean? Backyards were unfenced, landscaping in the back was not done because it is a new construction, and the basement is not finished, and the window coverings have to be out in.

The neighbor on the other side of the fence put concrete in his entire back yard -- it's just a mass of concrete. I asked the listing agent why they did that. She said that he probably set it up for large parties/gatherings. It'd be easy to barbeque and have seats for everyone, etc., etc. I thought she was CRAZY for telling me that -- who wants to live behind the party house??

I know we will never find the "perfect" house, but do the negatives have to be so, well, NEGATIVE?