the floral decorating gene
We saw 4 houses on Friday and 11 on Sat. We saw nice houses and we saw awful houses... but here are some of the details...
1) We saw a house owned by a Mennonite family. Nice big beautiful yard. Nice location. However, the entire house was like a big doily. Very lacy. Also, it had bizarre closets. Most of you reading this by now probably know of my "thing" about opening closets - I always think there will be a dead body in there. Well, looking at houses brings that thought to the forefront of my mind because EVERY house has a bunch of closed doors. Anyway, the master bedroom had this tall but thin door to storage space and Jon goes, "You probably don't want to open this." I say, "Why, is there a dead body in there?" And he says, "No, but if I had one, that is where I would put it." Needless to say, they will not be getting a bid from us.
2) We saw a house that was owned by a Vietnamese couple. They lived in a perfectly average middle class planned development... and they put cement lions on cement pillars to guard the driveway. Not only that, but they were both male. Come on! Everyone knows you have to have the male and the female to create balance. Anyway, the property was really nice and the house was not bad aside from the BRIGHT blue paint. The problem was the smell. I walked in and my jaw dropped. I dont mean to be culturally insensitive, but I thought people of Indian descent were known for the curry-type smell permeating everything. Nope. Apparently Vietnamese food does the same thing. Or at least it did at their house. I have never experienced that smell before. We left quickly.
3) Another house we went to reeked of smoke. Obviously one or both of the parents and, who knows, maybe even the kids were smokers. That alone made it awful for me. But the house was not terrible, so I decided to venture upstairs just to check it out... and it was dark... and all of the doors were closed. I opened door number one and found a tart burner. But the owner of said tart burner did not put a wax tart in the burner... oh no! She put vanilla OIL in the top of the tart burner. Brilliant! Let's put oil within 3 inches of a lit tea light. The whole room was filled with smoke. Enough so that the 2 seconds it took me to walk in, blow out the candle, and close the door again left me coughing and coated with a vanilla scent. Idiots! We did not bother with the other rooms, though looking back I wish we had. Who knows what other fire hazards they had left around. Good thing all of the fire alarms had no batteries!
4) We went into a split level house that made me think if I was an out of work stoner musician, this would be a good place to get high and play my guitar in the middle of the night and talk about philosophy. In other words, not that it was bad, but it did seem more fitting to commune type living. Oh, and there was a boar's head mounted on the wall.
5) One house we went to was decked out in "country chic". Flowered wallpaper everywhere. In every room, including all of the bedrooms, were giant floral prints. Now, she did a very nice job coordinating it all... but DEAR LORD! There has to be a floral decorating gene, because that kinda stuff gets passed down from generation to generation. And, I really hope it is, because it would make me sad to know people decorate like that on purpose. Truth be told, the house was nice and well kept... but they totally had a water issue. Jon and I walked around the yard and were pretty much squishing all over the place.
6) We got to a house that clearly had not been maintained... things were sort of cruddy and falling apart, even though it probably once was a nice house. The problem was that the people were there. Their realtor did not tell them anyone was coming to see the house... and when were got there, another realtor showed up with a couple about our age. The woman was clearly upset as they were packing up their things. Our realtor (Paul - he is awesome, if you need someone, you must call him) was pretty confident that they were being foreclosed on and the realtor was working with the bank, so did not really know or care that the home owners were still there. The other realtor who showed up actually said that she was told the house was vacant. :(
7) The most interesting house we went to see was one where they had covered over the front of the house to make a "covered porch". The problem is that now the front windows of the house are utterly useless because the roof of the porch slants over them and lets no light in. Brilliant idea. :P They also covered over the garage... so the garage is still there... but you cannot use it now, and they sort of use it for storage. Also, the back porch is reachable from.... the master bedroom. But nowhere else. It was just totally bizarre. The property was really nice but... come on! Whywould you cover up the useable parts of your house?!
So yes, we saw a lot of strange things and a lot of duds. We have 2 on our "A" list right now... and so we keep looking. We will see what happens!
posted by FireWithin at 9:33 AM
0 comments
