Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Moving right along

Possibly a little too quickly.

You all know we're looking to move.  We've even figured out where.  But we were thinking about starting the process after the new year -- that's why, among other reasons, we turned away from that large house in the burbs that I talked about before.

And then.  I jumped the gun a bit.

I like looking at real estate ads, the same way I used to troll want ads, even when I was happy in my job.  It's just like going to Ikea, looking at those perfect little rooms and thinking, "Who would I be if I lived here?"  The imagining is always fun.

There were a few interesting houses online, and I visited the listings fairly often.  Then, at a craft show, a friend mentioned that her partner was a realtor covering that area.  Well, it seemed only polite to call and ask to see a few of those houses -- we didn't have to buy them, after all.  It was just like a trip to Ikea, trying them on for size, seeing who we'd be in those spaces.

One of the houses I liked was already empty, its walls painted in colors I could live with, its hardwood floors gleaming with fresh polyurethane, eliciting an almost-inappropriate response in my old house loving heart.  We asked to see that one.

When the realtor texted, setting up the time to meet him, I thought he'd mis-typed the house number.  I'll meet you at 114, he wrote.  I texted back, Don't you mean 115?

No, he said.  We'll see that one too, but the house across the street is also for sale and a better price. 

Oh, okay.

We saw 114, and I realized pretty quickly that I'd looked at the listing and dismissed it because of the godawful pictures, which showed not one good feature and every bad one.  The house had many of the features on my wish list: screened porch, working fireplace, dry basement, replacement windows, three bedrooms, reasonable amounts of storage, a garage, a back yard.  It had a few extras I wasn't anticipating: a built-in cedar closet in the small attic, original built-in kitchen cabinets, aslate roof.  It had a few things I disliked: wallpaper in a few areas, a dingy bathroom, white-painted woodwork everywhere, a leak in the porch roof that damaged part of the living room wall. 

We looked at 115, directly across the street.  The colors were good.  The floors were gorgeous.  The kitchen was similar to 114, but smaller.  The  yard was bigger, but less private.  There wasn't much left to do, and it was $40,000 more.

Guess what we did? 

We're still in the loan/paperwork/agonizing stage, so (much) more later.  And the move still won't be until well after the new year, so maybe I'm not that far off schedule after all.


6 comments:

Sharon L said...

Whooooaaaa! Congratulations on your purchase! Your new home looks like something I'd choose. Love it.

AuntieAllyn said...

Very exciting! Screened porches are a wonderful thing.

Nancy K said...

Congratulations! It looks lovely and I do love that screened porch. My son and DIL just moved to Swarthmore where she has a new job at the college. They are temporarily in Swarthmore housing and looking for a house. They are loving Philadelphia. We had a terrific weekend in Philadelphia this summer and look forward to spending more time there.

Valerie said...

Awesome! Wishing you the best!

Summer Flies said...

ha, ha 114 it is then. $40000 easy to rip of wallpaper.. Congrats. Looking forward to seeing your journey.

Karen said...

Thank you, everyone! I'm really excited about the screened porch, it's one of the things I really wanted. We did the home inspection yesterday and didn't find any hidden horrors, just good explanations of the problems we already knew about.

Nancy, if your son and DIL don't find what they want in Swarthmore, Lansdowne (where we're moving) is just a few miles down the road and has a ton of good housing at much better prices than Swarthmore (but the mindset of the town is much the same).