Friday, April 6, 2012

House hunting and other horrors

 I have been busy.  Busy at work and busy at life.  We are house hunting.  I (mistakenly, it turns out) thought that house hunting would be fun!  Oh the naïveté!  I was wrong.  It's terrible.  It's terrible terrible terrible.


In order to get oneself to spend an enormous amount of money and go into massive debt (which I abhor!), one has to LOVE the house.  But in order to survive the multiple disappointments that competing for houses puts you through (the wringer, my god!  I just want to sit wide-eyed on my couch with a cup of strong tea and a science fiction book after a day of viewing houses), you have to not give a sh*t about the house.  It's a catch 22.  Love the house in order to get yourself to buy it, but simultaneously don't care about the house at all because your heart will be broken if it doesn't work out.   


(This is me, trying to survive the last little part of the Oregon gray (who am I kidding, it will rain until the end of June) by wearing bright Parisian lipstick.  I bought it on my honeymoon, at one of those ubiquitous pharmacies.  It only helps a bit.  You have to either be oblivious to the weather to make it through the winter/spring here unbruised, or made of sturdier stuff than me.  And I was born and raised here!)

  

So the house hunt is turning out to be hard.  We found this fabulous house that had 1.5acres, it was a 1910 farmhouse in good shape, close to town.  And we made an offer, and the seller came back to us and said he didn't realize he couldn't sell it for what is was listed for,  he could only sell it for much more.  WTF.  And then, he takes it off the market entirely, with the intent of selling off part of the land (the horror!) and keeping the cute little farmhouse as a rental property.  Why would you list it in the first place?  And the worst part is, we found the house right off the bat, it was perfect and the land it came on was so interesting.  There was a stream!  And that ruined us (me, really) for other houses for at least a month or more.

(Jealous of this giant blue sapphire I made for someone last December.  So bright!)

I really just want to find a house and be done with it.  It doesn't have to be the house of my dreams, it just has to be bright inside, older, with a reasonably sized yard.  Is that too much to ask?  Maybe I'm being unreasonable?




6 comments:

js said...

Justine,
Love that giant blue sapphire. May I ask what size ct stone? Gorgeous. Is the band tapered? Lovely, lovely, lovely.
(Feel free to answer in an email if you don't want to post this.)

Unknown said...

Your description of house hunting sounds like dating. So glad I don't have to worry about that anymore! Don't worry, you'll find the perfect one. Just make sure it has plenty of closet space. :) Good luck.

Katy said...

oh house hunting. my mister and I were a bit untraditional and got a house before getting married (still waiting :)..) and it really is a crazy process! we went back and forth so many times about whether we should just stick with renting but then we found a 1940s home on 1/4 acre and felt COMFY not CREEPY when visiting. you'll find it! and if it isn't exactly what you were thinking, the fun part is making it what you dream of :)

Justine said...

Ha! Totally like dating. And I second your relief at never having to date again (knock on wood).

@Katy I sort of wish we had bought a house and just skipped the wedding. Weddings are a bit overrated, if you ask me. I would have rather saved the money and remodeled my future bathroom. But the Shop Monkey needed a fancy wedding, so I was glad to give it to him. :-)

alishalouise.com said...

Hiya Justine,

Love that oval stone! Even though the day itself was fun, I'm with you on wishing I'd just bought the house and used all the $$ from the wedding on finishing my studio! 2 years later and I'm still in the middle of construction. I hate debt and will only work on a few thousand at a time. Tis true the first house will never be "perfect", but it is fun making changes and adding your touch. Good luck!

Justine said...

Hey Alisha!

Thanks! I think the worse part about house hunting are the deceptive photos. Such a waste of time! If only they would post an honestly. Just yesterday I went to view a house that had 3 "bedrooms". One was two little cubbies in the attic, bisected by an awkward bathroom. And the other two were in the basement, off of the laundry room-with one be accessed through the other. Terrible.

Shall we do happy hour with Cheyenne soon? I need a whiskey drink of some sort...