For now

For now, it looks like all is well with the house purchase. Our inspection revealed nothing too terrible. Basically, it was what you would expect with a 15 year old house. The roof is reaching the end of its life (in a few years, not tomorrow) and the wood floors have shown some signs of wear.

Our Realtor’s wife, being a vet tech, has connections and will also be working on re-homing the resident cats. Somehow, the story will turn out well for them. I am relieved.

Now that I am home, I have a long list of pre-moving things to do. There are 2 items at the top of the list:

1. Wesley needs to see the vet. I am not sure what’s wrong with him, but he spent the entire time we were gone behaving standoffishly toward his 2 favorite people, his pet sitters (aunties Carisa and Linnea). He wouldn’t let them pet him, but he acted lonely. When we got home, someone had pooped outside the box, and I’m guessing it was him. Also, he’s been howling at me, but he isn’t interested in getting petted. This is not my cat – something is wrong.
2. The car needs a pre-move checkup. I have known for awhile that there is a chance that the car won’t make the drive across the country. It has fewer than 40,000 miles on it, but it’s had a few premature issues. One of these issues was regarding a part that GM should have recalled, but didn’t. They did a repair that didn’t work, but the shop had guaranteed the work. The wouldn’t honor the warranty when I came back a few days later, however, saying that I had a different problem. It went the same way as the time before – where did they get the idea that it wasn’t the same? They charged me for the same problem for the second time in a week (or maybe 2). After they “fixed” the car again, as I drove off the lot, the “check engine” light came on again. We turned right around and dared them to say it was a different problem. They called headquarters, who knew exactly what the problem was because they had several complaints about it from other customers. Because the shop (the dealer, I might add), wouldn’t rectify the mistake, we called headquarters for reconciliation. We told them they should have recalled the part, and that they should at least refund us for the second repair. They told us that they chose not to recall the part (I already knew that). The repair cost me $1,000 twice. The solution they offered? “How about we give you $500 of your next GM purchase.” How about we never buy from GM again? And tell all our friends. I’m still bitter.

As for the last week, besides buying a house, I accomplished only a few things. I made 2 of the dishcloths for my contest winners – and I didn’t yet start the Malabrigo gloves (I assure you, overcoming startitis is a huge accomplishment). I have to finish those, make the scarf for my aunt, and finish the kilt socks (which did get a few more rows on the trip, but not many). My goal is to finish all of my current WIPs that I have planned to give to other people before I move. Ambitious, no?

In which it all goes as planned

On Thursday, Michael and I placed a bid on a house. We consulted with Michael’s mom and our Realtor on the bidding strategy – our weak point, their strong point. In the end, we chose to bid what the comps implied the house was worth. It was a clean bid. We didn’t ask for the sellers to pay closing, we had a 20% down payment on a standard mortgage, and the only request we made was that the sellers buy us a warranty. An hour and a half after we submitted the bid, our agent called us with the news – they accepted! Holy cow, I can’t believe it was that easy! Michael and I are under contract for our first house. If the inspection tomorrow morning goes well, we’ll be closing at the beginning of next month. The best part is, the interest on the mortgage, without paying any points (for those who don’t know what this means, a point is a percentage of the house’s selling price. You can pay a point to buy down your mortgage interest by a fraction of a point) is 4.72%. This is ridiculously low.

Which house did we buy? <- Here’s a photographic hint.

It was the last house we added to the short list on Wednesday. This is the place where the fluffy cat and the bengal showed us around. As a matter of fact, the sellers seriously offered us the cats with the house. They are moving in with someone who is deathly allergic, so they cannot keep them. I thought, and might have asked jokingly, “Do the cats came with the house?”. I couldn’t believe that it actually came up. I seriously thought it over, but I think I just can’t. Buttercup is cat reactive, and moving her into another cat’s house after an 18 hour drive across the county would kill her. Plus, having 5 cats would take away from my fostering time. It’s so sad, because I’ve always wanted a fluffy cat and a bengal (but not from a breeder; rather, a rescue). Those 2 are so well tempered as well (which I can’t say for my Serra). This decision (which is not set in stone yet, but will have to be soon) gives me anxiety. What will they do with the cats? Will they abandon them? Will they give them to friends? Will they drop them off at a kill shelter? Will they take the cats with them and keep them confined to one room?

If anyone wants a pair of absolutely lovely cats, please let me know and maybe we can work something out. I think that my plan will be to offer to help the sellers re-home their cats, but I will have to tell them that with a heavy heart.

Other than dealing with the poor resident cats, all we have left to do is the inspection. That will be tomorrow morning, bright and early.

I want to thank Michael’s mother and her fiancée, Mike, for the pictures in today’s post. Check out the shots of the scenery. I am beginning to believe I could like it here…

The Home Stretch

I’m very sorry, but I can’t put the details of our house hunt up today.  With the sheer amount of activity and the fact that I haven’t been sleeping well, I’m just too exhausted to update right now. I have every intention of updating this post with today’s activities when I wake up in the morning, so please check back with me in about 10 or 12 hours.

Update:

On the day I wrote the original post, we only saw one more house that we wanted to put on the list. The more exciting thing was that there were cats in 2 of the houses!

This is Pookie:

And these are the residents of the house we put on the list: this one might be a Bengal.

This house is not in the neighborhood we wanted to be in, the commute is a little longer than we wanted, and the master bathroom, like many others we’ve seen, is open to the master bedroom. Also, the neighbors are closer than I would like. Otherwise, there are a lot of pros for this one. The floorplan is very open and there is a lot of natural light. The house seems well-suited to cats, given that there are 2 there already. The kitchen is nice and large, and the master bathroom has a large tub and separate shower. The master closet is pretty big as well. Have a look:

We bid on Thursday after Michael’s mom sees the houses. Wish us luck!

How not to sell a house

Poor Michael had food poisoning last night. We aren’t sure where it came from – I had no such trouble. It started becoming a problem at about 1:00am and didn’t let up until late morning. Since Michael was unable to function, I had to start looking at houses alone today.

Unfortunately, and maybe predictably, I didn’t find anything that was as good as the houses on our short list from yesterday. The houses were certainly OK (although one smelled of dog or maybe old people – I’m certain it was in the carpet which covered every square inch of flooring in that house), but nothing was stellar.

I was feeling a little disappointed about where it was all going when Michael called. He was feeling well enough to meet us and see the rest of the houses on the list (there were 10 total today, and I saw 3 on my own). We swung by the hotel and picked Michael up, and I caught him up on what I learned that day. The second house from yesterday, Michael’s favorite, got a bid. We won’t be ready to bid on anything until Thursday, so he said, “Well, I guess it wasn’t meant to be.” I think that is the best attitude to have at this point.

The next house… wow. The sellers told us there were some dogs in the house, but they were friendly. Fair enough, I like dogs. We went inside and noticed that the only readily accessible (to us) room was the living room right off the front door. The dogs – I think there were 3 in total – were behind a baby gate. After concluding that the dogs were indeed OK, we proceeded to examine the house. I looked to the right, to the area where the dogs were barred off from, and there was a dog turd in the middle of the carpet. Looking to where the dogs actually were, I noticed several more turds under the dining room table. Seriously? You’re trying to sell a house and you leave dog crap everywhere? My best guess is that the current residents are renters trying to keep the owner from selling. I mean, one of the turds had to have been there when the people left the house. So gross. We didn’t look any farther than the entry – we just left.

The houses that followed really didn’t make much of an impression, especially after the dog turd house. We were starting to believe that maybe a third day of looking was pointless. The last house on our list was the furthest away from where Michael will be working, and on paper, Michael thought it looked too feminine.

When we pulled up to the house, I noticed that the owners seemed to be focused on detail. This is the facade:

Notice the lattice above the garage. There is also a really nice faux finish on the front door. It seemed like a nice touch.

The view from this place is really nice. Here is what I saw while standing in the driveway:

Not bad.

Inside it was pretty and not nearly as feminine as Michael had worried. I realized at this point that this was the only reason this place was on the three star list – I really liked it, but Michael was turned off by the decor in the advertisements. This is the only house in the running so far that doesn’t have a wood shake roof. The wood roofs are very hard to insure because they are a fire hazard; however, at one time they were considered attractive, so nearly everyone has this type of roof. It is something to work out in negotiations, I guess. The roof on this house is made of concrete tiles, and our agent says this roof will last forever (not literally, but certainly longer than the wood ones).

Concrete Tiles  Wood Shake roof

Not all of my pictures of this place turned out well, but I will show you what I can here. The most disappointing thing about this house has to be the kitchen. The island is placed so poorly that it crowds the already small space. Also, for a house that is nearer the top of our ideal price range, the kitchen isn’t all that well appointed. At that price I expect to see marble or some other fanciness, and maybe stainless steel appliances (or at least matching appliances. This is what was there instead:

It isn’t horrible, just not what I would have expected.

The rest of the house was amazing, though. The master bathroom is very pretty and very bright. It is one of the few houses that actually has a door separating the master bath from the master bedroom. I prefer the door because Michael wakes up earlier than I do, so it would be too noisy and bright if he actually used the master bathroom to get ready in the mornings without a door blocking most of it. The garage is surprisingly clean and large. They put some sort of finish on the floor that really made it nice.

The biggest surprise was the finished basement. This is what you are greeted with when you walk down the stairs:

There are 3 finished rooms in the basement. One is off to the side of the above picture, and two more are around the corner, connected by what I’ve learned is a “Jack and Jill” bathroom. Have you ever lived in a dorm room that shared a bathroom with one other room? Well, it’s like that.

The last little thing that caught my eye was something for the cats.

The owners built a ramp to let their cats up to the cat door in this window that leads to the back yard. Our cats wouldn’t be allowed out (my cats are strictly indoors, and even if they weren’t, there are coyotes here that would eat them), but they would like to use the ramp to get into the window so they could see outside.

So, this house will take the place on our short list of the one that received a bid. I suspect that one of the houses from yesterday is a more likely bet for us, but you never know what will come up. We are going to see 7 more houses tomorrow, then make the trip to Denver that we missed today due to Michael’s unfortunate illness. Michael’s mom will be coming tomorrow night, and I can’t wait to show her what we’ve seen!

Oh. My God.

Our flight into Denver was actually quite nice – we left on time and landed about 20 minutes early. I slept for most of the trip due to the previous night’s insomnia. When we exited the plane, much of the respiratory congestion that I have lived with for the last 4 years (maybe a little longer) started to break up. I think that this place will be good for my asthma.

Since we had a lot of time left in the day, Michael and I explored town a little bit. First, we went to Red Robin for dinner – chain food, nothing fancy. It’s notable because when you live in San Francisco, you tend to focus on mom and pop restaurants. Sure, there are some chain restaurants, but especially since there is a recession, it’s better to keep the little guy in business. It’s just something to get used to here. In any case, I got something to drink that Linnea would love – it was this limeade thing with blueberries floating in it! For some reason the blueberries tasted so good after the flight.

We visited the mall after eating. I found it to be completely acceptable. There were plenty of the same stores I shop at in San Francisco, and a few that you find everywhere. I have been told that the Park Meadows mall is the high-end mall in the area, but it doesn’t really compare to the high-end places in San Francisco.

I had every intention of visiting the hot tub in the hotel that night, but I was just so tired that I collapsed around 9:00pm, which would be 8:00pm San Francisco time. I figured this would be so great, that I would have plenty of energy for the house hunt the next day. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

I woke up a little after midnight. I tossed and turned, and eventually took a swig of my cough medicine (I figured maybe I was still a little congested). Nothing worked. Additionally, it turns out that people are serious when they tell you the place is dry – my lips were sealed shut when I woke up! I already had a crack in the corner of my mouth from the winter weather at home. It was painful to rip my lips apart this morning. Tonight, I will liberally apply Chapstick before falling asleep. I did not fall back asleep until about 6:00 this morning. I had to get up at 8:30 so we could meet some people Michael met in the city-data forums. So much for being well rested.

After all of this we met our agent to look at, I’m not kidding, 11 houses.  If you are faint of heart or easily overwhelmed, I don’t recommend this volume. Don’t get me wrong, Michael and I absolutely wanted to see as many places as possible before putting in a bid. Looking at houses was exhausting, sure, but way more fun than I would have expected. If I weren’t so tired, I think it would have been even more awesome! It was especially important (given the sheer number of houses we wanted to see) that we had a system for keeping track of the places. Our agent gave us a little bound book of the houses we were to visit today, so Michael made notes in there. It was the better job to give him because he’s good at cutting through my comments to what is most important. It kind of reminds me of the journals he kept as a kid – very dry, mostly “the weather was ___” and “I did this” kind of statements. I might be tempted to write more than necessary, maybe adding emotion and confusing the issues. I took the pictures since I have a clear idea of what was visually notable. Plus, it’s mostly my camera (but I let Michael use it, too!).

Shall we start with the broad strokes?

Our realtor took us all over the city today. I’ve never lived near mountains before, so it was kind of cool to see them as we drove around. Here is a zoomed in view of what I saw from the front window:

There were also interesting things to see in the houses, even from the 7 houses we have eliminated from consideration.

Interesting color choices: And a light socket with personality: (What is it for, anyway?)

The 4 houses we are still considering are very different, yet nice for different reasons. I’ll show them to you in the order we saw them.

The first is a very pretty house, owned by a person who appears to be an architect. The most notable pictures from this place are of the stairs, kitchen, and bathroom. The staircase is curved, and the entryway has an unusual, but really nifty “hub” sort of design. All of the other rooms on the main floor come off of the entryway. The kitchen is pretty, large, and open to the family room. It is the most expensive house on our list.

When we walked into the second house, I was a little speechless. I walked through for quite awhile before I realized I had forgotten to snap pictures. You’ll notice some dark (slate, I think) tiles in one of the rooms – they go throughout the main floor save for one small carpeted area. The only knocks on this place are that the driveway is sloped (more difficult to get out of when it snows) and it seems like there isn’t a lot of natural light. On the bright side, I believe we could easily add some skylights to the living room to brighten it up. This was also the only house where I readily saw where the kittens would go. There is a white bathroom downstairs with easily cleanable tile. It was hard to photograph, but it was sort of long and just the right amount of space for little cats. As a bonus, there is a swing set/jungle gym thing in the back yard that I think my brother’s kids would really like when they come out to visit.

The third house was in the same category price-wise as the second house. You can tell that the people really value their bathrooms in this one – every single bathroom is just gorgeous. The kitchen is updated, but it needs a little more work space to really make it functional for us (maybe a moveable island sort of thing). The master bedroom has a sitting area off to one side, as well as a deck off the other side. The master bathroom is really nicely done as well.

Unfortunately I didn’t photograph more than the facade of the fourth house. It’s on the short list, so I will add photos on the second viewing. The rooms were nice. The master bedroom had the 5-piece bathroom (separate tub and shower, 2 sinks, and the toilet). The kitchen is big and totally usable now, but I can see how I could update it to make it incredible. It backs to an open space that will never be developed, as part of the community plan. The best part? The seller is under contract to buy another house and is desperate to sell. He said he’d be willing (to quote my Realtor) “to take a haircut” on the price. He called before we even got to the place to see if we liked it – our agent had to calm the guy down and explain that we would get there soon. This would be our cheapest option, and I do like a good deal.

I would say that today was a very successful day of house hunting. We will see many more places tomorrow, and then make a trip to downtown Denver. I’ll give you another “best of” list, but be forewarned, the houses that you’ve already seen are the ones we had rated the highest before actually seeing them.

I wonder, which houses do you like best?