To Market, To Market

To buy a new house!  But first to list this one within the next couple of months!

Yep, we really, really, really want to move closer to where Anthony works for a good many reasons and so we’re taking the leap this summer and shooting for it.  Cue the tears though because we’ve brought home all four of our babies to this house. 

We both cried in the kitchen the second we got home with the twins, thinking we were in over our heads.  Lots of first steps walked these floors.  The walls heard four first words.  I know, you get it.    That’s why it’s been fairly quiet on the project front around here – we’ve been working our tails off in our five minutes of daily free time getting the house ready for the market doing things like planting grass!!  Now you know why time is not on our side and why seeding wasn’t really an option.  This is also why we shelled out the $$$ for sod – we knew we’d be getting money back after the sale (assuming it sells of course but, based on recent sales in our neighborhood, we’ve got high hopes).  Otherwise we probably would’ve thought more seriously about saving by going with seed.  We’ve also been doing things like cleaning and recaulking in the showers and around sinks, touching up painted cabinets, taking down all of the personal pictures, attempting (and failing…that’s a post for another day) to paint the kitchen’s popcorn ceiling, touching up every inch of trim paint, touching up wall paint (because kids…you might know how it goes), deep, deep, deep cleaning, and purging.  Aka, alllll the boring stuff that nobody wants to read about.  The great thing *sarcasm* is that we’re only about a quarter of the way through our to-do list.  :D  There are a few things worthy of a blog post but most of them will get done flying under the blog radar.  So, to fill in those big gaps of blog, I thought it’d be fun to let you come along with us as we house hunt!  We’re waiting to do our major, serious house hunting until our house is listed but we’ve taken a peek at a couple of houses just to get a feel for the market and because it never hurts to start early since, when houses don’t sell, prices decrease.  It’s good to know what’s out there so you can keep an eye out for falling prices and now which houses you like because you’ve already been in them.  :)

I’ll start with this little cottage:

We found this while very, very casually browsing the market a couple of months ago and it peaked our interest because it was under 100k.  Under 100k and on one and half acres in an awesome location, central to just about everything.  Hellllooooo back yard:
Yeah, I know.  Amazing, right?  The inside was everything we wanted it to be – old, ugly, and dated.  Hardwood floors.  Lots of light from big ‘ole windows.  A good-sized kitchen.  Three bedrooms, one bath.  1700 or so square feet.  However, there were some big issues.  The kitchen floor was soft signaling possible termite damage and wasn’t something we could renovate down the road.  It needed to be done prior to moving in or shortly thereafter which sounded to us like a big nuisance with having kids around.  There was also a big bonus room off the kitchen that was awesome, but didn’t have central air.  The siding, we think, might’ve been asbestos siding which isn’t necessarily bad…unless it’s broken.  The fact alone didn’t sit well with either of us though.  Also, the rooms were pretty small and there wasn’t a master suite (something we’ve been spoiled with in this house and would like to be spoiled with again) or a garage or carport (#1 on my list of must-haves) but we thought that, with the price being what it was, we could add on.  I stupidly deleted all the photos I took of the inside so I don’t have any proof of it’s need for love but I did manage to save a few of the outside.  And, using my handy dandy (read:  subpar) photo editing skills, here’s what I came up with to boost curb appeal:
I loved the shape of the house as-is and by just moving the front door (placed on an awkward side wall) to where those front windows were, upsizing to double doors, going a dark greige or gray with the shutters (I’m on a gray and white house kick), adding grass (which I “stole” from our current back yard…hehe), adding some plants (though I think I’d grab some taller ones for in front of the brick on each side of the window), and replacing the vertical siding above the brick with horizontal.  I don’t know if the lanterns or the plants/pots on either side of the front door are necessarily what we’d choose, but you get the picture.  I didn’t have enough time to figure out how to add a virtual brick walkway extending out from the front door and curving around to the left, where the driveway is, but that would definitely be on the checklist too.

I’m also loving metal roofs these days.  There’s another potential house we’re interested in that has one and I’m smitten.  However, it’s green.  Like forest green.  At first it was a huge turn off but then I did some research and read that you can actually paint metal roofs, hence the newfound smitten kitten here.  But don’t tell anyone you can paint them though because I don’t want someone to realize it and swipe the house from under us, mmk?  K. 

Anyway, I tried a metal roof on this casa for size and…(say it in your best Olaf voice), I love it even MORE! 

But alas, we met with a contractor about everything that we’d want to do to make this house work for us and, even with us doing all of the finishing work ourselves along with much of the kitchen and bathrooms, painting, tile, cabinet installation, etc…, the amount we’d have to spend might put us in over the value.  It is INSANE how much it costs to add on!  It was like $40,000 to add a two-car garage alone not to mention actual living space with finished walls!  Also, not to mention removing the existing siding and residing, running a/c ducts, replacing the a/c and heat, possible electrical upgrades, and a bunch more.  We didn’t want to spend all this money to find out that when we go to sell someday, we’re going to lose a bunch because we overspent so, we said adios to cottage here.  :(

So, that’s that.  I’ll have more where that came from and maybe I’ll even toss up an Instastory here and there.  You’ll just have to stay tuned.

Anywho…

I’m off to bed.  I spent every free minute today scraping the kitchen’s popcorn ceilings down to the drywall and got my arm workout for the month in.  I’ll spare you the (frustrating) details but you know I’ll have a post about that coming your way in the coming weeks.  It’ll be nice and eventful and will include a fun (but so not fun) surprise ending.  I mean, I don’t even know what the ending is yet but I can tell you that, after today, it’s not what I thought it would be this far in. 

Har har har…the suspense…