We won!

We finally got a bid accepted! We have to get a home inspection, secure a mortgage, and get an appraisal (so the bank will give us the $), then the real work begins at the end of February when we close.

It looks like a lovely place, but it needs a lot of work. On the plus side is it's 1600 square feet, has oak floors, windows, and trim throughout, and a relatively big yard (it's very long). Plus it was 1/3 cheaper than any other house we considered. On the down side, it needs 3 times more work than any other house we considered. My favorite thing is the auditor's site listed the date the house was built as "old."

Before we move in we have to remodel the kitchen and bathroom. Re-model isn't really the right word, because it needs all of the basics except for cabinets - broken bathtub, no stove, no fridge, nasty toilet...

There is a weird stairway up to the attic, which I can only describe as backwards. The bottom of the stairs run into a wall at the end of a short narrow hall, so you can't really get anything up them. We need to move the stairs in order to finish the attic someday. The stairs are next to the bathroom, so we might as well do that immediately so we can expand the bathroom when we fix it up the first time.

After all that is done we need to move in and paint, buy lights, furniture, repair and refinish the floors. That's where we run out of money. Eventually we will finish the 400 square foot attic, expand the 1 car garage, landscape, build a bigger deck, refinish all of the wood inside and probably 100 other things.

I'll post "before" photos soon. You really don't want to see it now as the seller has a bit of work to do before it meets our contract. The ceilings are falling down, walls are getting plastered, there are piles of clothes and furniture in the attic from the previous owner he has to remove (don't ask me how in the world they got furniture in the attic with the weird stairs). There was so much clothing and other stuff in there, the current owner brought in a snow shovel to push it out the door.

House hunting sucks

Well, we lost the bid on house #1. I'm still angry and bitter. 2 other bids came in within an hour of ours. I wish the seller would have bid us against each other, then we might have won. Big bummer.

House #2 is out too. It was pretty cool, but not nearly as great as house #1. The seller wouldn't negotiate and kept moving the sale price around in circles - exclude the stove, but include closing costs, then he gave us the stove but not closing costs. Effectively, he raised his selling price. Screw em, we'll keep looking.

House #3 is a maybe. It doesn't have a lot of frills, but what it does have is ENORMOUS rooms with lots of beautiful wood. It's the perfect starting point. The problem is that it has enormous rooms - 3300 square feet in all. We are finding out the heating costs and then will consider if we want to bid. I think this place is going to be worth a lot when the neighborhood improves.

Onward and upward.

Next week I'll be in SB for the film fest. I also get to recover my dining room chair from my former roommate who "borrowed" it while we were packing up our house. With 4 people packing, no one noticed that we only had 3 chairs. It tooks weeks to convince him that he should relinquish control of the chair (what?!?!) and we were never able to get him to send it to us. Apparently it's our fault that we didn't look in his room for the chair. Go figure. So now I have to get it from the neighbor, pack it up, and bring it back on the plane.

Our house?

Today we put a bid on a house. We love this house, but are doubtful we will be able to get it. It's priced low, but we think that other buyers are going to be able to bid above the asking price, which we can't do. The house is in immaculate condition - we couldn't fix up a cheaper house to be this good for the price. Here are a few of my favorite pictures, along with some stats:

2200 square feet (250 in the attic)
4 small bedrooms, 1.5 baths
3 wood burning fireplace, plus 1 gas/nonworking fireplace
dining room, living room, small parlor, kitchen, wet bar area
Columbus pubic schools (not a good school district)
smallest house on the best street in the neighborhood
slowly but steadily up and coming neighborhood
hardwood floors throughout, but with carpet on the 2nd floor
2.5 car garage



Front of House

Dining Room


























Kitchen






















Wet bar next to kitchen


























Dining Room


















Living Room




















Yellow Bedroom


























Back Patio



























































Attic