So, we're sort of house shopping. It's not an obsession (yet) and I'm still thinking on whether or not I really want to move, but Mama K is a realtor and it's summer and to her thinking, house shopping is what you do in the summer.
Handily enough, my Mom is looking for a house up here, so I've been able to deflect some of the "you must upgrade!" mantra I hear from my darling MIL. However, a couple of weeks ago we weren't so lucky and visited 4 local area homes, one of which could possibly take any sort of "cat person-a" out of me altogether. I wasn't going to write about this, but I'm bored and apparently some people find it very amusing.
The first house was really wonderful, everything *I* could've asked for in a home, except the location was horrid. Good-bye running-home-for-lunch dates, hello $800/month fuel bill. Otherwise, it was perfect. 2-story living room complete with wall of windows, huge bedrooms, fabulous studio space, 5 acres of nothing but sloping trees, and almost enough garage space. Just. Too. Far.
House #2 was kind of boring after we'd seen #1. It was closer to the Russian's workplace, though, and had lots of nice landscaping (which says to me "work! I'm so much work you'll never have time to sew or develop again!"). The garage there was lacking, and while the floor plan was ok, this house was in a neighborhood, and we really would like some more room between us and other people.
The last house was along the lines of number 2, really close to our house, 5 acres, no trees tho, but kind of boring. Didn't really have enough space for us, and we would again be adding at least a 5 or 6 car garage. Couple that with the fact that this property backs up to farmland that we know will someday be commercial, we marked it off the list.
House #3 was the doozy. I was excited because it was listed as having almost 19 acres, and it had a barn, which would come in handy for my "someday sheep". The owners were on-site and offered to show us around. I noticed right away that there seemed to be a lot of animals, which isn't necessarily a problem, but should have been a warning. 7 horses on the premises, and I grew up with horse-type friends and know what they should (and shouldn't) smell like. This barn fell more into the "shouldn't" smell like category. However, one of the owners was mucking stalls so I marked it up to that and we went on our merry way. Since I was wearing sandals we weren't able to walk the entire property line, but they were able to show us fence lines and the like until we had the gist of it. I think it was at this point that I realized that the majority of the acreage was actually a ravine (well, as close as we come to a ravine here in flatsville) and would not have been usable except for pasture. Not necessarily a huge problem, but I was already not that crazy about the home's architecture and this really dimmed my hopes of building our dream home in the side of a hill.
Right around now, I noticed that there were several cats running around outside, and I said something to the owner about our 2 kitties at home. She says "Well, we actually have 22 cats but only 4 live outside". Seriously. 22 cats. 18 of them inside. I like cats, I really do...but not more than 2 at a time, please. We started inside the house, and were assaulted by the stench of 18 cats with not nearly enough litter boxes. Words can't express just how awful the smell was...this went beyond odor. In fact, it wasn't until the next day that I could even recall that the house was full of junk and food on counters, dirty clothes everywhere, and just general funk. As if that's not bad enough, they have a "sun porch" with a hot tub. This happens to be the room where they're keeping all of the cats while we're looking around. Carl stepped out to that room for all of 5 or 6 seconds and then came back in and said to me (you should picture him as a villain at this point) "hey, stick your nose out there". I KNEW better! I really am smarter than that, but I did it anyway. I opened the door about an inch and stuck my nose out long enough to get one whiff of something that should be used in prisons during riots to make the tenants pass out. I could not get out of that house fast enough. Mama K says she's never seen anything like it in all of her years as a realtor.
So the next time you see a listing that says something about the property being a nice place to build your dream home, don't even go into the house. You can thank me later.
Posted by tomiandc at June 3, 2008 01:53 PM