The Great House Hunt, Day #3

Poor Sean. Poor, poor Sean. His whole schedule is kind of screwed up right now. For the past two days, his body has been on Ohio time, waking up at normal Ohio time, which translates to 6-6:30 here. Then he gets dragged around all day without a real chance for a nap--he got in a few catnaps today--without a real eating schedule, either. He was sooo tired tonight. We don't have anywhere to rush off to in the morning, I don't think, so I'm kind of hoping that he'll sleep in a bit and rest up. On the other hand, he may wear himself out so much that he may actually sleep on the plane Tuesday.


After we were finished for the day, we met up with our friends Marci and Roger. Roger was in ROTC with Nate and me, and then we were in the same ward in Enon. Marci and I were in the primary presidency together. Our kids used to play together while we had our presidency meetings. Roger's been teaching at the Academy for about two years now, I think. We went to their house and had dinner and just basically gabbed for hours. It was so fun to catch up. I'm glad we'll be living near them again. Sean had a great time being able to get down and actually touch something. They also have a daughter who is two months older, and they played really well together. Sean has never played with anyone his own age before. They shared tortilla chips (while dinner was being fixed), toys and hugs. It was so cute. Neither one of them had great balance, so they'd try to hug and fall over. It was about 9:30 before we got back to our room and got Sean in bed. Yeah. We just made his tiredness worse. Oh well.

Last night we sat down and narrowed the thirty-something homes we'd seen down to six. Today we saw just a couple new ones, then toured those six again. We narrowed those down to just two: one we call the artsy home, and the other is the foreclosure home. Then on the spur of the moment, as we were driving past a new development, we decided to look at a new house that our realtor, Terri, thought was in our price range. So, those are our choices.


Choice #1: The artsy-fartsy home, so named because the owner has a photo studio set up in the basement, tasteful works of art all over the whole place, and just because of the general ambience of the home. You walk in and there's this great entry. To the right is a big arch into an office. Straight ahead and slightly to the right is a step up into a fabulous kitchen with tons of cupboard space, an island and even a little nook for a mini desk with built in cubby-holes and stuff, perfect for a laptop setup, paying bills, and storing all those little paper the kids bring home from school. Straight ahead and slightly to the left of the entry are a few stairs down to the living room. There are two stories of open space and huge windows, a gas fireplace, and some built-in cabinets. From the living room, there are three arched doorways into the family room, and a small hallway that leads to the laundry room, a powder room (half bathroom) and the garage. The garage is a three-car garage, but from the road it looks like a two-car. One side is extra deep, called a tandem garage. The current owner has just turned it into a workshop.

Back in the entry, to the left is a stairway down to the unfinished basement, and a nice stairway up to the second floor. At the top of the stairs is an open catwalk. You can look from it down to the living room on one side, or the entry on the other. Following the catwalk to the right is the master bedroom with a HUGE walk-in closet and the master bathroom. Following the catwalk to the left are two smallish bedrooms and a bathroom.

There is a sliding glass doorway in the living room that leads to the backyard. It's kind of small, but does have a really nice deck.

The basement is unfinished, but has the rough plumbing for another bathroom, and there is room for a bedroom and family room, or two large bedrooms. It also has an access door to this weird crawlspace area, located under the living room. The door stood about three feet off the ground, and is about two feet square. The crawlspace is maybe four feet tall, and about the size of the whole living room, maybe the living room and family room together. It's insulated, but the ground is just dirt. The current owner has put this thick plastic down, and put lots of storage in there. It looks kind of handy, but it's weird.

Asking price for the artsy-fartsy home: $240,000. Built in 1994.

Negatives: The house is almost intimidating. I was picturing my furniture and wall-hangings in that house, and thinking that it just didn't fit. I could easily see me wanting to buy new furniture and "art" to make the house look nice. But then, I also felt like it was almost a bit too ostentatious. And although we could afford this house, it's more than we'd wanted to spend.

Front view (with Terri--she ended up in a lot of these pictures).

Office off the entry.

The kitchen. (Duh!)

Anther view of the kitchen. The skinny white door is the pantry. To the right of it is the laptop/paper collecting nook, but you can't see it very well.

One of the reasons we call this the artsy home. This little niche is right at the top of the stairs, at the left end of the catwalk. If you stood looking at it, and took two steps sideways, you'd see down into the living room.

View from the kitchen across the living room into the family room.

Another view of the living room, showing the double storey windows.

The gas fireplace and built-ins in the living room. The fireplace turns on with just a flip of a lightswitch-looking switch.

Stairs up to the second storey.

View of the living room from the catwalk.

Crawlspace access.

Back deck. It has some nice benches built into it, but the rest of the yard is pretty small.

Choice #2: The foreclosure home. Built in 2005. This was the first home we saw on the second day, so it seemed especially good to me after the yucky ones we saw. You walk right in to the living room--there isn't really much of an entry--which has a hardwood floor, and double storey windows. If you keep going straight, you'll pass the stairs to the second storey on the right and walk right into the kitchen table area. The rest of the kitchen is on the left, and the family room is on the right. Keep going, and you'll get to the sliding glass door leading out to the huge deck in the backyard. The kitchen is really nice. I'm guessing that the last owners had a lot of extras put in, because it has a gas stove, matching stainless steel fridge, stove, dishwasher and microwave, and really nice countertops. I forgot what it's called--it looks like granite, but it's something else.

The family room is a bit ugly at present. For some reason I can't understand, the previous owners decided to paint the wall around the fireplace this aquamarine blue. That definitely has to go. Also, the house wasn't winterized after the last people left, and a pipe burst. The pipe has been fixed, but in order to do so, there are lots of big holes cut in the sheetrock. Actually, there are holes all up the wall, in the ceiling, in the laundry room and in the master bathroom upstairs. I've been told that will all be fixed. The carpet is stained too, but that's supposedly going to be shampooed. If we really had to, we could replace it.

Like I said, the deck outside is huge. The yard is also pretty big, compared to many of the yards here, and it's been nicely landscaped. The back fence backs up to a large road, but there are trees all along it, which will help block out any noise of traffic, etc. To the right of the deck is a big firepit. There stone benches on two sides, which look like they're still under construction, but all the brick for the job is there. We'd just need to get some cement and finish bricking it up. The pit itself looks usuable now, though, and what fun we could have building fires and roasting hot dogs and toasting marshmallows during the summer.

Okay, so I mentioned the stairs up to the second storey. There are three bedrooms and a "loft". The loft is a room that is open to the living room--there is a bannister you can look over down into the living room. It has a wall of built-in shelving and could potentially be turned into a fourth bedroom. We'll probably use it as a play area, with maybe the little TV or something. The master bedroom is a decent size--not small and not huge--but it does have a nice walk-in closet, and a really nice bathroom with a jacuzzi tub (another extra I'm guessing the first owners opted for). The other two bedrooms are smaller, but not too tiny.

The basement is unfinished, and is about the same size as the basement in the artsy home, but it feels more usuable. We would want to get it finished sooner than later, for a couple of reasons. It would add to the value of the home, and if we're going to do it, I want to do it sooner so I can enjoy it. Also, Nate will probably be setting up some fishtanks down there, and he'll need a sink. I also want somewhere to set up my sewing machine, and that would probably be in the basement.

One of the biggest perks of this house for us is the location. The artsy house is pretty close to the Academy (about 10 minutes, I think), but this one is even closer. It would only be five minutes. Most of the rest of the homes we looked at were 20-25 minutes away, which adds up. Nate really likes that the commute would be short. Besides that, this are is really growing. There are several new subdivisions being built, and lots of new commercial buildings coming in. Plus, it's only 5-10 minutes from a super Walmart. What more could you ask for?

Asking price: $229,900, down from $250,000. The orginal owners paid $258,500 for it, I'm guessing mostly because of the extra options I saw in the kitchen and master bath. There is a house about four houses down from this one with the exact same floor plan, just in reverse, that is for sale for $250,000. The asking price is still more that we'd wanted to spend, but it's less than the other house, and Terri thinks she might be able to get the bank to come down a little more. That would be a great deal for us.

Negatives: Hmmm...we'd have to finish the basement, which we'd have to hire someone to do, 'cuz I'm not doing it, and Nate can't. We may just have someone do the framing and wiring, and then I could do some sheetrocking and finishing and painting, and then have the carpet done, but I don't know. But the same could be said for the artsy house. There is a potential for other problems like the burst pipe, but the house comes with a two-year warranty, so we wouldn't have to pay much if something went wrong, it would just be a pain. Um, what else. I can't think of anything. Oh yeah, there are practically no blinds or other window treatments anywhere in the house. The past owners took everything.

Front view. I like the little porch.

Front door and living room.

Ugly family room. I'm standing where the kitchen table would be, and there is a half wall separating the two spaces.

View from family room into the kitchen. Kind of a blurry picture, but you can see there is lots of counterspace and cupboards.

The firepit. Perfect reason for all the Larson pyros to come visit.

View from the deck into the rest of the yard. It looks a bit ugly, but I'm guessing it will get a lot better as the spring progresses. It's a lot nicer than many of the yards around here.

View from the yard back towards the house of the big deck. The deck has lights all around it, as does the yard, which I think is controlled by a timer by the back door.

View from the loft into the living room...well, the top of the living room, anyway.

The shelving in the loft.

The master bath, complete with jacuzzi tub and holes in the wall. At least they didn't break the tile (it's up against the wall under the window), so it can be put back when the hole is repaired.

View of the loft from the living room.

The basement, just in case you couldn't tell.

The garage. It has a bit of storage in it. We're determined to actually use our garage to park cars in, so no stockpiling of crap this time around. In theory.

Choice #3: the new construction. I don't have any pictures of this house, and I don't have as good a feel for it because it is basically a hole in the ground right now. I've seen the floorplans, and toured a mostly finished version of the same floorplan. We have been absolutely assured, though, that it will be done by June, in time for us to get the housing tax credit, which is also right when we will be moving there. I'm honestly not so excited for this house, even though it would be brand new and we could finance through the builder for a lower interest rate than our bank will probably give us, for several reasons. One, they're asking $243,000, the most expensive of all the options. The guy we talked to said he could probably pay our closing costs, though, and would give us about $8000 credit in their home finishing store. I forgot what they actually call it, but that's where you go in and jack up the price of your home adding all the extras like nice appliances, jacuzzi tubs and whatnot. We're going to go tomorrow with our agent to see how far that credit could get us, because I'm not paying anymore than the asking price, at most. When finished, the front lawn/yard will be landscaped, but the back yard will not. No fence, no deck or patio even, and definitely no flora. If that credit could take care of some of that, I might be more willing to consider this one. It's the biggest house of our three options, but it is by far the smallest house in the subdivision. Many of the other homes cost over $300,000, so that's good for resale, and it is in a desireable, growing area, and close to the academy. The basement will be unfinished.

Negatives: It has no living room! I just noticed that when I went to check the floorplan for the number of bedrooms (4), but still, no living room?! I'm getting less and less excited for this one. I really don't want a dirt yard. And I really don't want to spend this much. Maybe I don't even want to waste my time tomorrow looking at their store. Okay, I think I've talked myself out of this one.

If you haven't guessed, my favorite is option two, the foreclosure. Whatever we decide, we will likely write up an offer tomorrow, and have our agent put it in first thing Monday. If we're really lucky we may even get an answer back that day, but likely not. We'll have to work the rest of the process from Ohio through our agent.

I was going to add a second post for today, titled I Miss My Girls. Brenda sent me some really cute pictures, and just looking at them made me miss Bethany and Meagan. It's good that they're not here with us, but I do miss them. Thanks, Brenda, for taking such good care of them for us. It's getting really late, though, so I think I'm going to add that post tomorrow. Tomorrow we're also going to drive around a bunch and get more familiar with the area. We may try to catch some Conference, but I doubt we'll get much of it with Sean in the room with us. Our Easter Sunday plans are still up in the air, but I'm not going to worry about that right now. I need some sleep.

House Hunting in Colorado, Day #2

Today was a looong day. We met our agent at 10:00 this morning, and we pretty much all day with a brief break to pick up some lunch (which we ate in the car), until 5:00pm. Sean did really well, considering. The worst part of it was that he couldn't really get a good nap. He slept for maybe 20 minutes, as opposed to 2-3 hours of naptime in a normal day. Maybe when we get home, he'll sleep a lot to make up for it. I can wish, anyway. At any rate, he was pretty good, until we were nearly done. Then he started fussing a lot, mostly when he was in his seat. He was good when we got out and were looking around. He's developed a fondness for door stops, the kind that stick out from the floor boards and make a cool "doing" noise when you play with them. He had a blast playing with them at house after house. It kind of makes sense, though, when you consider that there's not much to play with in empty houses, and they're right at his level.

Today's hunt was much more profitable than yesterday's. We saw about twenty houses today, and there are four or five that I could really see us making an offer on, a couple of which were really good deals. One had a nice lighted deck with a fire pit in the back. Another had a huge open area, with a catwalk across the top, with the master bedroom on one side and the kids rooms on the other side. We have to sit down now and go through them all and decide which we liked best and which ones we want to see tomorrow. Then I'm going to take a hot bath and go to bed.

House Hunting in Colorado, Day #1

I suppose this is technically day two, but since yesterday was pretty much taken up in traveling, I don't really count it as part of the real house hunting venture.

The flight yesterday was not too bad. We managed to keep Sean occupied for the first hour and a half or so, and then I finally got him to fall asleep. He slept for a while, but woke up really grumpy. I'm not sure if it was because he didn't get enough sleep, or if our descent was bothering his ears. At any rate, he cried for the last 20-30 minutes. One lady a couple of rows ahead glared back at me. I was thinking, "What do you want? Do you think I want him to cry?" It was very annoying. I finally got him to stop crying by sticking one earpiece from some headphones in his ear. He was distracted enough by the History Channel that he stopped crying (the TV was free on that flight because of antenna problems).

We arrived at the Air Force Academy at about 9:00pm, which to us felt like 11:00pm with the time difference. When we originally made reservations to stay here, we were told that we'd stay in a normal hotel-like room the first couple of nights, and then we could move to a more family-friendly room the rest of the time. There must've been a cancellation or something, though, because when we got here, we were in the family-friendly lodging. It's really nice, more like a one-room apartment than a hotel room. There is a bedroom, bathroom, and a full kitchen/living room, and even a washer/dryer. It's great, because we can put Sean down for a nap and still get work done out in the living room. We also don't have to eat out every meal. There's even a pack-n-play for Sean to sleep in and a high chair for him to eat in. It's perfect. It's also WAY cheaper than we could get a normal hotel room for.

We met our real estate agent this morning at 10:00 and started looking at some of the listings she'd sent us that we liked. I think we saw six houses today. Of the six, there were two that were possibilities, and the rest we pretty much rejected. We only went until about 1:00, because our agent had a closing or something this afternoon, but that's okay because it gave us time to go back to our room and put Sean down for a nap. The poor guy was pretty tired. He'd been up late (at least two hours past bedtime) for two nights in a row, with only a tiny nap on the plane yesterday, so it was good to give him some time to rest.

We ate lunch at a place called Ted's Smokehouse, or something like that, on our realtor's commendation. For $40, we got two bison burgers. They were great burgers, but the price was a little crazy. They also had paper straws instead of plastic straws. It was their contribution towards recyling and a cleaner planet, etc. It was like drinking through a mini paper towel roll.

We have some friends in the area that used to be in our ward in Enon, who have also moved here to teach at the Academy. We had plans to meet up with them and look at some things in their area and have dinner, but Marci's day got really crazy and so we pushed it back to Friday. But then she told us of another guy we knew from ROTC, Scott, who is also here teaching. I called him up, and he had several of his neighbors selling homes, so we went to look at those and ended up having dinner with them. His area seems really nice, and there are a lot of members there. There are two more houses there that we want to look at.

On our way back from Scott's we passed a Coldstone. Nate was tempted to stop, but kept driving. It took another block or two, but then he decided that he really wanted some ice cream, so we turned around and went back. They had a new flavor of ice cream that I kind of liked: oatmeal cookie dough. Sean liked it, too. I kept feeding him bits of it while Nate's ice cream was being finished. He screamed when we went back to the car and put him in his seat and he wasn't getting any more. He must have the ice cream gene. Nate was in a really good mood the rest of the way back to our room. He must've been looking forward to the ice cream.

Tomorrow we have a very full day of looking at houses nonstop. I think I'll turn in early. Hopefully we'll see some good ones.

Oh, poop!

This is really gross, but today I changed a kind of smelly diaper of Sean's, just before he took a nap. I put the garbage can out in the hallway so he didn't have to smell it while he took his nap, and then I rushed off to a doctor's appointment and forgot about the garbage can. After my appointment, I was in the kitchen, cleaning up after Sean's snack, and he comes wandering in with this big brown thing. Yeah, I bet you can guess what it was. I was just glad it wasn't softer, or he'd have smeared it all over. As it was, it was only on his hands. I think.

"But I keep talking..."

So, the other night, Meagan and Bethany were talking up a storm, instead of going to sleep. I finally had enough and decided to split them up. I moved Meagan into our bed until they both fell asleep, and then we shifted her back to her bed. Instead of the discipline this was supposed to be, it was apparently some kind of reward. The next night they were back to talking and making lots of noise, and when I went in to get after them, Meagan pops out of bed, walks right past me and hops into my bed. I asked her what she was doing, and she just said, "But I keep talking," in her oh-so-innocent-little-princess voice. She got really mad when I sent her back to bed. Now every night since then, when I tell them to be quiet, she protests, "But I keep talking!", hoping that I'll relent and let her go back to my bed.

And yet more photos

Nate got up with Sean in the middle of the night the other night. When I got up in the morning, this is what I found. How cute!

Speaking of sleep, the cat's favorite spot to sleep is the back of the couch. There is a permanent slump there now. He looked so cute with his paw around his nose the other day that I had to take a picture.

Bethany's class had Dr. Suess week last week to celebrate his birthday. One of their activities was to make these hats. Bethany called it her Cat in the Hat.

Bethany got some Lincoln logs for Christmas. Up until now, she hasn't really built much on her own, she just wanted me to build houses from the pictures on the box. She finally built one all by herself the other day, and called it her "sticky" house.

Fire! Fire!

Bethany and Meagan are into pretending there are fires in our house lately. I think they got it from a Land Before Time episode they watched where a clearing caught on fire, and everyone put it out by dumping wet leaves and dirt on the flames. It's kind of irritating when they play it, because their version of putting out the fire involves finding every small toy they can find, and dumping it on the 'flames'. It makes a big mess. Here's a typical example:

When I found this pile on my bedroom floor the other day, I thought Meagan had been putting out fires again, but she told me that this was a snowman. Go figure.