House Hunters' Anonymous

So, we're in the throes (and I'm about ready to throw something) of house hunting.  This go 'round is proving to be a little trickier than the previous two. We found this house and the one before it pretty quickly.  Those online realty web sites are very handy and they do make it so much easier than relying on an agent as your primary source of information.  On the other hand, it gets to the point where the availability of information leads to information overload in a hurry!  Throw in pictures Mr. Snark has taken on visits to the various houses and then my actual physical visits....I've begun to feel like I don't know where one house begins and the other one ends! 

Here are some highlights and insights:

...Our last two homes were vacant when we purchased them.  One was a new construction.  The other was a recent renovation.  We came in and put down our bags.  It ruined me.

...We've seen modern color palates.  We've seen more neutral color schemes.  We've seen houses painted in such a way that it makes you wonder if the current home owner was off his/her meds when choosing the paint!  I'm not afraid of color and I don't pretend to know a great deal about interior design, but it makes sense to me that the colors should work and play well with others.  And some just won't...like mac and cheese yellow, with lime sherbet green and burgundy.  I saw it...it exists...and it's worse in person!

...Have you ever heard a house struggling to breathe?  That's what happens when a house is over decorated.  Every corner, nearly every inch of wall space...which is either covered in wallpaper that was NEVER pretty (I'm sorry...but it wasn't) or some fancy painting technique that will require MAJOR hours of work to neutralize.  I acknowledge that we are entitled to decorate our homes to our liking but when it comes time to put them on the market, it gets a bit dicey.

...About wallpaper:  we've seen houses that look like they served as convention sites for bad wallpaper.  And I do mean BAD!  Room after room after room.  I've stripped enough of it that my solution is to hire someone else to do it!

...If you're building a house, put some thought into the design/layout the bathrooms.  Your investment of brain cells and Benjamins will return to you when you sell the house.  Don't put the toilet right behind the door so that the door bangs into the toilet...or perhaps the knees of whomever is sitting on the toilet.  Don't put a window behind the toilet that allows you to moon the neighbors every time you have need to have a sit-to. 

...Well spent brain cells and Benjamins will also be appreciated in the kitchen.  Make it usable and functional.  Treat it like an afterthought and you'll be doing a lot of after thinking...wishing you had been more thoughtful before!

...I'm not a pet person.  I like cats (much to Mr. Snark's and Y1's collective chagrin) and I like dogs.  However, if I can walk into your marketed house and smell the evidence of your pet's waste elimination activities...or even see them, it's not a good thing. 

Hi, my name is Michelle and I have issues with house hunting!

Comments

  1. I get it. Totally. Imagine buying a house where the master bedroom has Hot Pink deep pile carpeting and the rest of the house has Neon LimeGreen Tweed-y shag. One of the people who'd been living there had looong black hair which seemed to require the use of thousands of bobby pins, which kept falling out. And they didn't own a vacuum cleaner. The main bathroom was wallpapered with metallic silver with red flocked fleur di lis design on it, and it had apparently been put up with Gorilla Glue. That experience alone was enough to make me refuse to buy any house that had wallpaper I couldn't live with for the rest of my life in it. Oh, I also kept saying, the whole time we lived there, that the living room should have had a window on this long stretch of wall. Shortly before we moved out, I happened to squeeze down that side of the house (it was barely passable between the house and the fence, and it was really creepy so I'd never bothered before) and LOOKY THERE! There was a window, plain as day. They'd just boarded it over on the inside and painted so it looked as if it wasn't there.

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