Thursday, July 23, 2009

Extreme Home Freakout

As you readers know, Katelin is in Chicago this week partying it up with everyone at Blogher. She has asked me, Rachel from Mom in Real Life, to write a guest post for her. I was COMPLETELY lost on what to write since I already had to come up with a 20sb blog swap post, a guest post for Free and Flawed, and a top secret post for Friday.
Seriously, my brain was fried.
On top of this Dan and I qualified for a home loan!!!

I know not all of you know me that well, but please feel free to do a happy dance for us right now.

I'll wait.

Thanks.

Anyways, my every waking moment was spent looking at houses, dreaming of remodeled kitchens, learning about property taxes. Blogging was far from my little brain.
Tuesday morning I woke up to a tired Dan, sitting at his laptop (since 4am!) scrolling through MLS #'s. He grunted something along the lines of;
"I find houses. Look. Now."
I looked over the ones he found and many of them had similar problems;

1) PEOPLE! I'm sure the thought of having a bar in your basement sounds "cool" or "totally awesome" but 99% of the bars I saw suuuuuccckkkkkked. To keep these in my future house would require me to be constantly drinking the same number of beers (12) that you had when you built these retched things!
2) I didn't realize so many people had pools. I tried those temporary pools last summer. All I managed to do was grow myself an army of Lagoon creatures.
3) Hi, house owner? 1970 called. They want their wood paneling back.

But one house stuck out. It was old and it had character. I mentioned it to Dan and he said that he had been thinking about the same house. As the day progressed we built the pedestal for this house higher and higher. By the time we went to see it we had pictures of Pottery Barn photo shoots dancing in our heads.

Once I stepped in I knew it was all wrong. The house had been abandoned giving it a Zombie movie feel. Drinking glasses still sat out. A baby bouncer was in the other room. A litter box (still with cat shit) sat by the back door.
I won't get into all the structural problems *shudder* but Dan did discover one MAJOR things.
"Um Rachel. There's no showers."
"No shower heads?"
"Nope, no showers at ALL. Just tubs...."
At this point I grabbed Diana and sprinted out of the house.

As I sat in my car, trying to scrub the smell of the house off of me, all I could think was;

"Oh man, this is going to make such a good blog post."

14 comments:

Mandy said...

For a long time one of my childhood friend's house didnt have any showers. Whenever I spent the weekend it basically sucked. I agree, how do you live without a shower in your house in this day and age?

Lara said...

Congratulations on the home loan approval! I bet you're over the moon.

Lol, my word verification on this post is "happe" - pretty apt I think :)

Anonymous said...

My parents were contemplating by a house to turn into a rental property and they also stumbled upon some very odd foreclosure houses that also had kid's toys laying around, food in the fridge. Kind of sad that our world is coming to that BUT congrats on the home loan!

Rachel said...

Mandy- I am a HUGE bath girl, but I like them as a choice, not a requirement!

Lara- See, even Blogger is happy for me!

Nory- Be VERY careful about buying homes to use as rentals. You would think people would have the decency to respect your property...but they don't. We are renting a house right now and the people before us left the house in a disgusting state AND there is a lean on the house from the city since the city had to come out and mow the grass because it got so bad! Amazing.

The Dutchess of Kickball said...

The one thing I learned while house hunting was that there is no such thing as a perfect AND affordable house. No matter, there is going to be a ton of work to be done to make a house an acceptable living space. The house I bought had so much wood paneling in it that had to be painted over it took me months. The living room CEILING was wood paneling. Just imagine that nightmare for a moment.

rachel said...

um hi. realtor here. it's good times. i showed a house once with no closets. NO CLOSETS. think about that for a second.

none in the bedrooms, none in the hallway, none in the bathroom... it was very odd.

best advice? look past all of that stuff and just look for a large enough place that you don't have to spend too much money on expanding and everything cosmetic can be fixed with a can of paint, some spackle and new floors. trust me.

good luck girl! if you ever want any advice, let me know!! xo

Ms. Salti said...

I'm house-hunting right now and I've never had so much stress in my life! Good luck!

Rachel said...

Dutchess- I have no problem updating a kitchen or bathroom, but gutting a place? Not going to work for me, especially with a 4 year old.

rachel- No closets is weird, but I still would pick that over no showers. You can at least buy armoires.

Ms. Salti- let us get drunk on wine together

Phil said...

Sounds to me like you discovered Gay Rule for House-Hunting #2! Of course Gay Rule for House-Hunting #1 is: If it doesn't have walk-in closets, you don't want to live there.

Jen said...

Congrats on qualifying for a loan. This post cracked me up. I'm sorry to laugh at your house-hunting dilemmas, but the way you wrote about it was funny. I hope you find your dream home in no time!!

Anonymous said...

my brother's gf's house has no showers. when I discovered this? all I could say was- gross. how can you not have a shower in a house!?!?!

or CLOSETS!?!?! (Rachel G) Talk about getting creative while trying to sell a house like that!

Rachel said...

Phil- Please email me the "Gay Rule for House-Hunting" list NOW!

Jen- Trust me, someone has to laugh about this

amy- Exactly, in this day & age how can you not have the basics?

Kendra said...

I don't understand how people can't update their decor. When you walk into a home you want to imagine your stuff there, not your grandmothers!

Ashley said...

OMG!

1) HI! I found you via Rachel @ mominreallife.

2) My husband and I have been doing the house hunting thing and WHOA! We did the same thing - building up these houses that were DUMPS. That smelled like cat pee. That had no SHOWERS! We came across one house that had just one bathtub, and a creeeeeepy shower in the darkest, dankest corner of the scary basement. We left immediately after!