Almost home?

I said we were not going to fall in love with a new house every weekend, that we were going to dedicate ourselves to a longer-term process, that we were just dating, but we couldn't help it: we found a house, fell in love, put in an offer, and it's been accepted! Now we're waiting on the inspection (scheduled for Thursday). We are very hopeful that this one's going to be clean, and we think we're looking at our new home!

It's a great place. It's got a floor plan like the Ugly House, but the work is all done. It's PRETTY. It's farther north than we had envisioned, on a street with no sidewalks; but it completely won us over. Sensible floor plan, decent size rooms, updated kitchen, windows, really nice fixtures, vinyl siding, good roof, poured concrete foundation (whew!). Awesome yard -- big enough for kid soccer, with a deck and raised beds too. Carport. Big unfinished basement. Walking distance to the boys' preschool; one block from a good elementary school; six blocks to Thornton Creek, the alternative K-8 that my colleagues' kids go to. Completely quiet flat street, wide open feeling, not loomed over by giant dark pacific northwest trees. Walk around the corner for a glorious view of the Olympics. Two blocks from a big grocery store and a Rite Aid; three different bus lines that shoot down to the U. There happened to be an open house while we were there, and wow, the realtor could not have hired more appealing neighbors if she had spent a thousand bucks on movie extras. We clicked immediately with a family with two young boys; they live up the block, said they wake up every day filled with gratitude for having found such a hidden gem of a neighborhood. Lots of kids around, great schools and playgrounds, convenient, and just a great neighborhood feeling. How cool is that?

You can see photos if you go to the Windermere site and search on the address: 3045 NE 86th St, Seattle, 98115. Cross your fingers for us!

Dating

Last weekend we saw the Ugly House again and it was worse than we had recognized; it needed not only paint, but also pretty major remodeling in the kitchen and both bathrooms.  That's a lot of work, and money.  We hope we can do better.  

And we decided we need to get off the househunting rollercoaster.  We had been lurching emotionally from house to house saying, "Is this the one?"  Now, we've decided to think of it more like dating.  You don't go home from every date saying Is This The One? -- you'd make yourself crazy, and it's not that good for the date, either.  Instead we are thinking of the whole thing as much more of a process.  We see how it goes, maybe we take the next step or maybe we just keep looking.  Unlike dating (?), we keep a database, and we are methodically touring six houses every weekend.  Thank goodness for Grandma's babysitting.

Roller coaster

Househunting is such a roller coaster.  The Greenlake house is dead to us:  the inspection revealed that it essentially has no foundation at all, just a few stacked blocks every eight feet, which can move and have clearly done so.  Also a fresh dead rat in the attic, no insulation anywhere, and truly lousy parking.  We've moved on.

In the past two days we've had two other houses seriously catch our eye.  One of them we call the Piano House because an upright piano is included in the deal.  The nice elderly lady who lives in it caught me snooping around the property and was kind enough to invite me in.  I thought it was pretty great, partly because it seemed so solid after the Greenlake business, partly because it is cheap, and partly because of the location, walking distance from the boys' preschool and also elementary and middle schools we like a lot.  But Dale (who came later) was not impressed.  The main living space is pretty darned small, not much bigger than the Haddon house, and on a small arterial; we could squeeze into it, but in the long run it would need a second story to accommodate our family, and did we really want to get into building that?  Yech.

Driving around the neighborhood, depressed about not finding the right house, we found another house, and once again the elderly lady who lives in it let me in.  (I seem to have a way with the house ladies.)  This house is a lot like the Piano House, but with a second story!  Four bedrooms plus a rec room, how about that!  Also, it's on a quiet street, the garage is attached, and the deck overlooks the big flat backyard instead of an arterial.  It's really quite good.  The biggest tradeoff (that we know of) is the kitchen, which is small and isolated and doesn't have much promise for expansion.  The other big thing is that the whole house is super ugly.  Ug, Ly.  Terrible old wallpaper, awful fixtures, that kind of thing.  But you know what?  Paint is cheap.  So we're calling it the Ugly House, and we're still pretty interested.

All of this has helped us realize that we do have quite an affection for the Ravenna/Wedgwood zone.  This affection is increased by the total absence of options in Wallingford.  But even aside from that, there's a great alternative elementary school over on this side, the housing is very family-oriented, and there's good access to the U.  We just hope we can live a little farther up the hill than we used to.

And it's truly exhausting, picturing our family in these places, sifting through these fairly high-stakes emotional and financial decisions, changing our minds.  I have barely cooked anything in days because I have been spending all the time either looking at houses or obsessing about them.  

Offer on Greenlake house

We've put an offer on this Greenlake house!  We're cautiously optimistic.  It's an awesome neighborhood and there is a lot to like about the house.  However, we have some concerns.  We hope those will be addressed on inspection.  This being a public space, we won't say more than that for now... Hoping for the best.

We're liking this place

We're pretty interested in this house! We're going to keep the identifying details offline, because who knows, the sellers might be looking. But we will say that it's walking distance from Greenlake, on the north side.

Here's the front.


And here's a video of the interior. There's one more bedroom downstairs that Dale forgot to go into.

Offer on Haddon

There's an offer on the Haddon house!  It's low, of course, but what else would it be in this market, and it's a reasonable starting point for negotiation.  The buyer is sincere and things are moving forward.  The buyer proposes a Jan. 20 closing, which is fine for us.  Inauguration day... so we won't rent it out for $2000 a night after all, I suppose.  That's okay - given the choice, I'd rather sell it.

We've started househunting.  This is the absolute bottom of the real-estate year (between Thanksgiving and New Year's), but we may as well look, and the bright side is that if we did find something we liked we'd be in a heck of a bargaining position.  We screened about six properties (first online, then onsite from the outside) and of these there are two that remain interesting:  8028 Burke Ave N (north of Greenlake) and 2822 NE 68th St (three blocks from our old house).  Nothing yet in Wallingford.  There might be new properties in January.  The search is on!

Jordan doesn't like househunting.  He's bewildered at the idea of moving again.  When we took him out with us to look at some places, he wanted to just stay in the car.  Next time we'll maybe just spare him until things are more clear.