It looks like somebody finally decided to take our money. For a while there I was really starting to feel like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman as she’s sitting in the hotel managers office pulling out wads of crinkled bills, “I tried, but no one will help me. I have all this money, but NO ONE WILL HELP ME.” sob sob sob.
We put an offer down on our seventh house. 7th. In this alleged buyers market. In this housing market that is on the verge of collapse. 7 houses before somebody decided to cooperate. We kept asking our realtor if we needed to change our expectations, if we were the ones being unreasonable and he kept telling us no. We just needed patience. Yeah yeah yeah, and patience will bring me a kid, too. I’ve heard that one before.
I went to the hairdresser the other day, the appointment where I was sorely disappointed and was practically molested by a dog, and the one good thing that came from that is discovering a new neighborhood we hadn’t been looking in before. It’s closer to Bear’s work, it’s centrally located to all the surrounding communities, it’s closer to all the stuff we’d actually have to get to on a daily basis like grocery stores and junk, and the homes sell for cheaper.
We went back out with Mike our heroic realtor and looked at about 20 homes, and this one stood head and shoulders above the pack. For one thing, there is no carpet in the entire house. None. There is tile in the kitchen and in the bathrooms, the ground floor is all high quality laminate, and the whole upstairs, including the stairs themselves, are actual hardwood. It’s a little smaller than we’d been hoping for – 1699sf, but the layout is so smart that it doesn’t seem small. There’s an office right inside the front door that will become my studio, three bedrooms upstairs so we can have the guest room and future nursery, and an open floorplan that I can decorate in all my art deco, midcentury modern taste.
Of course, every single surface in that house will need to be painted. There are weird murals in every room, one room has two walls painted neon green and the other two painted electric blue, the ceiling in the master is painted to look like a sky, the entryway is covered in painted grecian columns, vines, and of course, monkeys, and in the master bath all the cabinetry is painted out in some weird faux-patina finish. I think we’ll definately be investing in one of those paint sprayer guns.
The kitchen is also going to require some work. There’s a wallpaper border up featuring griffins parading around the room, the cabinets are boring, and the countertops are covered in standard issue white tile. I think replacing the countertops are going to be one of the first things we do to the house. How are you supposed to bake on a tiny tile countertop? I’m thinking concrete is the way to go.
I am getting ahead of myself here, we technically can’t get excited about the house for another week and a half. There is the potential for a couple of snags with the loan that we have to get nailed down before we can start repacking our boxes and buying paint. But when has common sense ever stopped me from getting my hopes up?
I was describing the house to a friend so I pulled up the MLS listing again to get all the details right, and I realized that our hopefully future house will be on Courage St. Considering what the last couple years have required of us, I’m a little terrified to think what we’ll be called upon to do living on Courage st.
Maybe only people who already have tons of courage are allowed to move onto Courage St.
Congrats! I can't wait to see pictures. It sounds like it's perfectly placed.