Tom and I may have found our house.
We've been looking at houses for over a year now, trying to find the right house that we can both afford and see ourselves living in. We have narrowed down the price range, as well as neighborhoods with nearly affordable homes, without moving into any questionable areas. Its the finding something we could see ourselves living in that has been the hard part. At least for me. I've hard a pretty difficult time considering my apartment home. My parents house is still pretty much home for me, since I spent a majority of my life in that house. I've done what I can to the apartment to make it feel as homey as I can, but it hasn't helped much. It still feels like a waiting room to me, a place to crash while trying to find a real house to call my own.
Anyways, Tom and I started taking house hunting a little more seriously right before the holidays and picked it back up again after the new year. About a month ago, new houses started going on the market, giving us some "fresh meat" to take a look at, instead of the same stale stuff we've already looked at and rejected. We found one that we felt had potential...the price was pretty decent for the number of rooms and amount of space in the house, yet there was still quite a bit of work to be done to fix up the house. Since Robert was off of school this week for winter break, we decided to set up an appointment with the realtor to take a look at the house one more time, to see what Robert thought of it.
We also asked the realtor to throw on any more houses new on the market that he thought we might like. He ended up showing us two other houses, in addition to the house we wanted to show Robert. When we went backto take a look at the house we liked from last time, I couldn't figure out what I liked about it. I'm so glad we went back instead of settling on that house like we had originally discussed, because my view of the house has completely changed. The upstairs was the only thing I liked about the house, and I can't figure out how I let everything else slide the first time around. The hallways on the main floor were ridiculously narrow. When you walked in the front door, you entered directly into the dining room. Step to your right, you're in the living room; step to your left, and you're going up the stairs. There was no real separation from the different rooms and the front door. I definitely didn't like that layout....
Walking away from that house had me a little disappointed. The first time we looked at it, we really liked it and were just waiting to get our finances in order so we could make a bid on it. On our way to the last house, I couldn't help but feeling incredibly sad because it was like we were starting all over again trying to find a house. But, I'm glad we kept looking, despite the disappointment from the house we thought we liked....
Because we both fell in love with the house....
It has just about everything we want out of a house. Three bedrooms, one and a half baths, a pretty open basement, and a deep backyard with a garage. The first floor has gorgeous wood floors and everything looks pretty updated, like the bathroom and kitchen. Robert really liked the house as well. Either of the bedrooms that he could pick to be his works out for him...they both have two windows. That was the only feature he requested for a house: that his bedroom have two windows to make it easier to read in there. There are only two things that we don't like about the house: its on a semi-busy road and the exterior is yellow, a bright, bright yellow. The busy road, there's nothing we can do about it. The yellow, provided the siding is still aluminum or steel, we'll be able to paint over it no problem. However, we hear its a bitch trying to paint vinyl siding.
So. We definitely think we found our house. We didn't breeze through this house like we did the other ones, we took our time scoping everything out in the house. When we told our realtor that we were really excited about that one, he tried getting a little more information. Apparently, the sellers are very negotiable which will be awesome for us. Tom and I just have to get our finances in order and we're putting a bid on that house!! We should be ready by the beginning of April (once we get our tax returns back and our third pay check of March) to sit down and fill out all the financing paper work and all that. And then we'll be on our way to having a life of our own in our new house!!!
Keep your fingers crossed for us!!