February 11, 2006
House Hunting
As mentioned in our year-in-review post, we’re moving. Our target is the direct center between Grove City and Blawnox, which means either Evans City or Zelienople. At first, we were just going to rent for another year to see if we liked living so close to our parents and how Matt felt about the drive. The problem with renting was going to be finding a place that would allow Ratzi to live there, too. Then, Josh told us about a house for sale behind where his parents live. That house was absolutely beautiful, though the location wasn’t the greatest (on a very steep hill), but it turned out to be too much for our budget. The more we talk about it and the more I looked online at different house listings, we decided to continue looking to see if there were any other houses that we could buy that would fit our needs/wants. There are a lot more options for buying a house than renting when a cat is part of the equation.
We’re going to look at two more houses, and I’ve found a third that I want to see, but I haven’t had a chance to mention it to the realtor.
Today’s houses:
**House 1 is in town, within reasonable walking distance of the local church and has a finished attic. It’s advertised as a third floor room, but who would want to spend any real time in an un-air-conditioned third floor room in July or August around here? The back yard appears to be a reasonable size for sending rugrats outside to entertain themselves :) It’s definitely an older home but doesn’t seem like it would need an excessive amount of work – the wall paper appears to be minimal.
**House 2 is a few miles outside of town. It has more land, but is smaller than House 1. The wall paper in this house is, in my opinion, excessive and would take quite a while to get rid of. If I remember this house correctly, it’s also on the corner of a pretty busy road, but the back yard does have a fence.
The other house :
**House 3 is a street over and further down from House 1. It’s the smallest lot of the three. It’s best feature is the beautiful front porch. I <3 front porches. Looks like I see a porch swing, too. I’m curious about what it looks like inside and what the back yard is like.
Posted in
Houses | By Amy at 11:07 am |
Comments(4)
Amy I had a lot of wallpaper in my house when I moved it (I still have some to get rid of). I discovered after reading a few home improvment books you can just paint over wallpaper and it works pretty well. So if you don’t have time and want to do that it is an idea.
Good luck. One feature I really, really, really love is being able to walk to places. It makes a HUGE difference with kids because it is a pain to drive with them but easy to put them in a stroller. My mom suggested this to me and it was one of the best things we did buying a house walking distance to shops and stuff.
oh more unsolicited advice. what I found most important when looking for a house was not to worry too too much about cosmetic features because you can always change them, but things that might be unfixable or cause huge problems in the long run. For example, mold, mildew (can’t fix and is a health hazard), piping, termites, electricity, roof, furnace central air, water leakage, and the condition of the foundation. Because if these things go wrong you end up out tens of thousands to fix them. Also location can’t be fixed either, so things like bad neighbors, barking dogs, noise and so on. You probably know all this and it is annoying when people give advice when not asked but this was all really good advice I got when buying.
You don’t think of these things at once but once living there they can become a huge headache. All these houses look beautiful btw! Prayers that your dream home will be yours soon!
Buying the best house is tough. Personally, when my husband and I bought we made the mistake of thinking we’d actually get the cosmetic and not-so-cosmetic things done ourselves-which never happened. They just added stress. Definitely check out the major questions though- sewer system, electic box updates, all plumbing, mold, termites, etc. We even had the basement checked (on the seller’s dime) for excess amounts of radon gas. Oh–and take special note of what I call the “dog” factor. Pull up to the house, step out, and count how many dog barks per hour. If it’s more than 1-RUN! (Sorry, I have a thing about barking dogs in town…lol) I love the sound of house #1. A nice-sized backyard can be hard to find in a town but oh, so nice. Good luck!!
But house 3 is historical! It says it is 999 years old, making it one of the oldest buildings in the country! I think you should go for that one.