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.  

Literacy

Jordan is doing pre-reading exercises online at starfall.com.  Right now he's choosing the correct first letter of words.  For example, they show a picture of a man with "_an" underneath, and four or five different letters off to the side.  Jordan clicks and drags the "m" to the right spot (he has mastered basic laptop skills) and the computer says "Man!"  Dale asked him, "How did you know which one it was?" and Jordan said "Because it's a mman, mm."  Fantastic.

More snow?!?

Why is there all this white stuff on the roads again?  It's a couple of inches of slush, now.  I thought we were done with that?  Yeesh.  They say it will turn to rain overnight.  I hope so.  Any more snow days and all us parents might just go out of our heads.

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.

Rent abatement update

The apartment manager stopped by our unit on Friday to return our partial rent check to us, voided, with a letter stating that rent is due in full.  The explanation offered is that any rent abatement would come from the construction account, not the operations account (where the rent goes).  I said (in person, I hope pleasantly) that of course there's only one account on our side.  The manager referred me to the owner's representative, to whom I have placed a call.  He hasn't gotten back to me yet.  All of this seems very much to be expected.

If you're looking for that last post about the impending major construction, I deleted it, because it turns out it was sent to us in error.  Only the north side of the building is getting such extraordinary treatment.

Rent abatement

We're in negotiation for rent abatement. Here's the letter we're submitting to the management. We think we're being very reasonable.

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.