Tuesday, January 19, 2010

The growing "list"

(it's so hard to adequately yank all the craziness from a week ago into the right words...and remember what I was thinking back then!  But I think this entry will bring me up to today.  Well, maybe not.)

This past Saturday (one week after receiving my pre-approval letter), my Realtor, Debbee and I headed out to look at "real" houses.  Several coworkers kept pushing the house vs. townhouse angle and although I've always liked the idea of having my own space (including land) I'd pretty much entered this venture thinking "townhouse, townhouse, townhouse, townhouse" like some sort of chant only my brain can interpret.  Of course, sometimes my brain has a tough time interpreting anything (including the colors of those silly 3-color lights hanging above many intersections.  ha!) so maybe it was actually just static.  Or maybe the rumbling of the freight trains...

So here's my train of thought (see, I can't get away from the stupid "train!"): with a townhouse I won't have to spend hours upon hours working in the yard(s) pulling weeds, mowing the grass, planting a flower garden with flowers that are just going to make me sneeze (newly acquired allergies...my denials finally quit working).  In a townhouse, I don't have to buy a snowblower to keep my sidewalks/driveway clean.  What?  A shovel?  Are you kidding!  I used a shovel on New Year's Eve for the first time in four years ago and still have a knot in my back!  With a townhouse I will have at least one non-exterior wall insulating me from the elements, thus keeping my heating/cooling bill lower.  Of course that also means I'll have at least one non-private wall that all the annoying neighbor noises can filter through. And etc, etc.  Not that I am exactly opposed to owning a house and having all the responsibilities of its upkeep falling directly on my wide-for-my-size shoulders, I would just rather not.

The first house Debbee took me to is three doors away from, you guessed it...the train tracks!  Worse, this is the "annoying" train tracks with the slower-moving train with the much more annoying whistle.  Right now I live with the more annoying train south of me and the less annoying train north of me...and I can hear them both!  But the older-than-me house was very cute...a recent Fix and Flip with hardwood floors throughout the main floor except with tile (or was it linoleum?) in the kitchen. It faced WEST, and if you stand on your tippy-toes (or just looked west if you're taller than me) you can see the snow-capped tops of the foothills.  Not sure how much of that (although obviously not snow-capped) would be visible in the middle of summer when the trees are blocking the view.  But the backyard was A W E S O M E.  First there was a huge deck off the kitchen (this is facing east) and then a large backyard with sort of an inset that would make a nice veggie garden or a big flower bed. The basement was pretty cool too...wall-to-wall carpeting with a huge laundry room (could actually have an ironing board set up, probably a sewing room in there as well...too bad I don't sew!), two 'non-conforming' bedrooms and a large open room that would be awesome with a pool table to stack junk on.  Isn't that what pool tables are for??  Even though it's close to the (annoying) train, this house made "the list."

Of the other 3 houses we looked at on Saturday, only one more made "the list" and they both joined my favorite townhouse for further consideration.

So Saturday was an exhausting but quite profitable day.  But now I not only need to decide on which  property to buy, I first have to decide on which type of property to buy!  Ugh.

Sunday wasn't a day of rest for my brain anyway. I mentally compared the floorplan of all three properties and by mid-afternoon I'd decided to nix the 3rd  addition to the list. This left one townhouse and one house, both (you guessed it) in close proximity of a railroad track. 

On Monday morning (yesterday) Debbee sent me listings for 2 more townhouses and 4 more house and I asked for Thursday afternoon off so we could check them out during the day. But I was no longer excited to peruse the information and pictures and map a route home that night so I could do my obligatory drive-by to see if that would eliminate any of them. My mind just kept going back to that silly townhouse overlooking the less-annoying train!  LOL

On my way home last night I made a last-minute detour to drive by the townhouse again.  s o m e o n e   w a s   i n    f r o n t   o f   MY HOUSE   c h e c k i n g   o u t   t h e   i n f o r m a t i o n    b r o c h u r e!!!

I wasn't taking ownership.  I was keeping an open mind.  But that didn't change the panic I felt when I saw that SUV checking out the place I was considering calling my home!

Long story short, well sorta short, the decision to not buy a house-house was reached and this townhouse was callin' my name!

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