For those who said bulldoze the house and start over, we don’t have those kinds of funds. The house is sturdy, big and nothing wrong with it except it just isn’t what we like. At our ages, we’re thinking about saving for retirement. We don’t have (nor would we if we could) the luxury of bulldozing a house that’s pretty valuable.
I know we’ll never get a perfect house but we’ll get one closer than this one. Problems that aren’t really problems but thingsI don’t like:
- It has a fairly new big in ground pool. I don’t swim and Vince doesn’t have time to swim so we’d be maintaining a pool for no reasons. We’re too frugal for that. We’d probably fill it in right off the bat, but there is some value to the pool . . just not to us.
- There are only 2 bathrooms in the house – the master bath and one kinda on the main level. The house is three levels and it needs more bathrooms.
- It only has about 6 or 8 windows. We need/want lots of light.
- It has two car garage but only a one car door on one side. The driveway doesn’t even end go to the other side of the garage.
The main deal breaker for me is that the garage is connected to the house but you have to go outside to get inside. You go out a door of the garage, walk across a covered patio and go through a door to the kitchen. Maybe I’m spoiled and maybe some will say “give me a break” but I do not want to have to walk out of the breakfast room, lock the door, walk across the patio, unlock the door to the garage, then close it and lock it, then get into my car. Know how many times I go back and forth to my car . . either carrying groceries or quilts or suitcases? No, I want to walk right out of my house into my garage without having to go through more doors and across a patio. And, I’d be scared doing all that after dark.
Yes, we could close in the pool, we could add more bathrooms, we could add windows, we could pour more driveway and put in another garage. We cannot fix a door leading to the house from the garage. There’s a small formal living room on one side and a whole bank of kitchen cabinets on the other side. Putting a door in either spot just wouldn’t work.
Most anything can be fixed for a price but it just isn’t worth it financially to do it.
What cannot be fixed is that the main highway is turning into an interstate. I thought it was 4 miles but Vince said it’s 1 mile . . the house is 1 mile off the highway and it’s the first house you come to on that exit. I don’t want to be the first house off a rural exit. Call me crazy but I’ve always said I didn’t want to be the first house off any main street — especially an interstate highway.
So, while the grounds are pretty, they’re not the prettiest we’ve seen; the studio is nice . . probably not even as nice as I have now and the first 20″ snowstorm or big ice storm we have, I’d probably be moaning and complaining about the studio being away from the house. The workshop . . not much I can say about that. It’s probably the best Vince can ever hope for but . . he liked everything about the house less than I did so it isn’t my decision keeping him from getting his dream shop.
The perfect house may come along, we may leave here and find it somewhere else eventually or . . we may sit right here in this house til we go to “the home” . . we’ll be happy no matter where we are.
Linda C says
When we were house shopping we’d go through the places talking to each other about how to make the house perfect for us. We had a rule, when we got to the third wall that would need to be moved to make the house “just right” it went off the list, no matter how good the other features were.
Sounds like a third-waller to me. The perfect property is out there, this one sounds lovely just not right for you. I wouldn’t want a pool either, don’t want to pay the uptick for something we’d rarely use.
Annie says
Thanks for explaining about the house. It’s fun reading about the properties you come across. One day-there it will be, the one for you and Vince.
: )
Becky R says
So how about that stove? The one that started this whole thing.
Linda says
The being too close to a main highway would be the deal breaker for me. I’d rather be on a gravel road out in the boonies. The un-needed pool would be second. The garage thing and the bathrooms would be OK, but not that highway. As Becky asked: What about the stove?
trina says
Your description of the garage reminded me of a house we looked at that had an attached garage with the laundry area.
Not bad until you realize that you had to go out the door from the house to enter the door to the garage to do laundry. And it does rain in Virginia.
Trina