Okay, I told Kathy I’d go home and mull this over and yet I’m having trouble, so I’m going to work it out here.
Things I Love About The House
(In no particular order)
The yard is amazing and yet not so large that I feel like I couldn’t handle it.
The front porch is solid.
The paint job, though a color that makes me cringe, is really, really well done.
It has hardwood floors everywhere.
It has a huge built-in china cabinet.
The laundry room is enormous and we could easily just leave our clothes piled up in there and shut the door and ignore it.
It has a huge garage and a little storage barn.
And a porch swing.
And a patio.
And an enclosed back porch.
And no immediately obvious settling issues.
And a fenced in back yard.
And a wonderful place for a garden.
They will leave the rocker on the front porch.
And the price is great. I’d be paying less in a house payment than I am in rent.
Things I’m Not Thrilled About
The color of the house. I think the problem is just the lime green trim. But it needs outside painting, which I’ve never done before.
The kitchen is not great. We’d need a fridge and a dishwasher and we’d have to think about taking down the wall between the kitchen and the dining room and either moving the wall about a foot into the dining room so that we could install a dishwasher and some extra cabinets OR just taking out the wall all together and reworking that whole space into a giant eat-in kitchen.
There’s only one bathroom. Though the laundry room is huge enough it’d be nothing to carve a powder room out of that space.
It’s north of Briley (though, south of Old Hickory). I didn’t want to be that far north, but sweet Jesus, we’ve looked at pushing 50 houses. We have a good idea of what there is closer in in our price range and it’s not pretty (or, if it’s pretty, the neighborhood’s not. Yesterday, we looked at a house next door to a house covered in gang signs and, when we looked closely at the house we were looking at, there was evidence that that house had also been tagged, but just covered up). Or it’s in Antioch. And, no offense to any of you living in Antioch, but moving to Antioch would, to me, feel like admitting defeat. And it’d mean coming in I-24 to work, which, again, just shoot me now.
The air conditioner is old. It’s probably on its last legs.
The bricks that form a decorative ledge under the windows rub right off on your hands if you touch them. It’s kind of weird and gross.
Things I’d like to know and need to look into today
What are their utility bills like?
What kinds of pipes are under the house? When, if ever, was their plumbing updated?
How old is that roof?
Things that go in the woo-woo catagory
They buried St. Joseph in their yard. That pleases me.
Sitting on the porch, I heard crows.
My Thoughts
I’m not thrilled by the kitchen, but it is definitely something I could live with. I’m a little bummed about not having a fireplace, but whatever. I just don’t want to make an offer without knowing about the plumbing, because, to my way of thinking, everything else, even if it isn’t ideal, I can work with or work around.
Am I just jumping at this house because I’m anxious to get in a house, bummed about what happened to the last one, and in complete depression over the state of the housing stock in my price range and happy that this seems like the best option I have?
In other words, is this just a rebound house? Like a rebound relationship that tends to be fraught with problems you will yourself not to see just to make up for the heartbreak of losing the last one?
But, on the other hand, isn’t wanting a house, knowing that most of the houses in my price range are for shit, and finding one that seems like the best option actually exactly the process of buying a house? Isn’t this how it should go?
Tiny Cat Pants 