Thursday, August 20, 2009

House Hunt

We are officially looking to buy a house. We enter into this search humbly, yet with boldness in hopes of finding a great home for less than $100,000. 'Is this possible?', you ask. 'Hope so,' we answer. We certainly hope so.*
*We also are not officially pre-approved for a loan so we also hope this story won't be followed with another post saying we are looking for a house for under $50,000 because, while it be a nice challenge, it isn't one we want to take on.

Today was the first day out combing the town with our fabulous realtor. Drew had to work, but I got to visit 10 houses this morning. We were locked out of one of the houses so we really only saw nine.

How did day one go? Well, most were decent options, but I ended the day with a clear favorite, another I also liked a lot, and one that was so awful it made me feel physically ill. Oh, and I brought my camera.

First the good. I didn't take many photos, but it was a three bedroom house with an eat-in kitchen, nice fenced yard perfect for a dog to roam and vegetables to be planted, and had good floors. It is on a quiet street not too far from friends, our church, and close enough to Drew's work. It is also just under $100k. Score!
I won't say the address or post a photo for privacy reasons and let's be honest, I don't want anyone else to know about this house because I want it.

Hard to see, but left photo shows a built in cabinet in the house's mud room which could hold things like china & crystal or linens or big manly tools. The photo on the right shows the laundry room behind the door from the previous picture. The laundry hook-ups are on the right with shelving above and on the left are shelves perfect Drew's jar collection.. yeah, it's for holding nails and things. Next to Drew's jar space is a big peg board where Drew could keep his many screwdrivers and hammers.

Now onto the ugly. After looking at it my realtor and I agreed it needed to be gutted from the bottom up. It is in our reject pile. It looked nice on the outside with a good yard and cute brick planters on the front of the house. But when you began to walk around inside it was like a train wreck; horrible, yet hard to look away.

I froze for a minute when I entered into the living room, which was by far the best looking part of the house. It was full of so many things to look at that my eyes were confused. I wasn't sure if I was in someones grandmother's home for tea time or if I was at an estate sale and told to look at everything including the two fancy doll houses in the living room. There was also classical music coming from a back bedroom which made me feel like a voyeur disturbing someones morning. Alas, the mystery owner was not around leaving some questions unanswered.


The kitchen was where the bad things started. It was very dated and the green laminate floor was coming up and a few roaches were easily spotted.

The kitchen led out to a screened-in porch with a view of the above ground pool filled with green slime. It and the decking around it looked expensive to destroy. There was a laundry room too. My notes just say, NI (needs improvement) and noted that there was water damage and mold on the ceiling.
I ventured to look at the shed in the back but was greeted by a large brown dog who did not seem happy to see me in his yard. Not knowing what was in the shed or wanting to see the dog's teeth I retreated back inside.


In the wood-paneled, wood-floored den I again found lots of things for the eye. The dated furniture was cool and there were lots of books. Some of the books were a bit odd. Two titles stick out to me, one was titled Idol Worship, the other had a scantily-clad male on the cover and was titled Hung. The other books showed people like Marilyn Monroe and others and made me curious about the grandmother I pictured occupying the home.

On to the bedrooms. One was rather stately and grandmotherly with a poster bed. The other room had a computer and clutter and posters of women on the walls. I didn't photograph this room, but if memory serves me it was again women like Marilyn Monroe and not the bikini-wearing leaning on a Porsche type.

Finally, the one bathroom was awful. A second shower curtain was used to cover the walls around the shower/tub. This was hiding missing tiles, mold and more mold. I must be allergic to mold because I got a sudden headache just being in that room. Other rooms of the home had distinctive smells, which probably didn't help.


Our realtor ranked this as perhaps the worst homes he had ever seen. I agree. The price tag for this wreck? $90,000. This one was not a foreclosure and in my opinion it isn't really worth demolishing. It had some cool features like sliding doors separating some rooms, but it will hopefully be the worst home I visit in our search. Even part of the door fell off on our way out!


K

Monday, August 10, 2009

Summertime

Hello we are the Longs and it has been over 6 months since our last post. We are still attempting to continue this blog so maybe we'll do a little better at updating it in the second half of 2009.

Here are some highlights of our summer so far.

We went to Westchester County, New York for a week in June. We drove 10hrs each way, but were thankful for good health while traveling. We even got to stop in and visit Katie's brother & wonderful sister-in-law. We also stayed a night in Deleware with Drew's aunt, uncle, and cousins.
Brother grilling up a feast of veggies & steak. Oh, and his wife just got him the new apron. It says, "Have you hugged a Presbyterian today?"

The New York trip was our big adventure for the summer. I spent my time being poked with needles and hooked up to lots of computers in a lab at NY Medical College. The mad scientist doing the tests was great as were his assistants. It proved to be a useful trip to help learn more about POTS from an expert. No cures or magic pills were given, but useful knowledge that helped narrow in on why I gets dizzy most days.

This represents my e
xperience. Waiting in the car while Drew shopped at an A&P [apparently they still exist in NY]. If you can't tell it's a photo of my leg with four band-aids on it.

Drew spent his time in NY eating pizza and exploring. He found his friend's parents organic farm where he spent time collecting eggs, eating scones & cheese, and picking rhubarb. Drew also managed to find the Readers Digest global headquarters and venture into the city for a day.

Readers Digest HQ, Holbrook farm and store, and NY, NY.


Other travels: Drew went to Iowa for work and got to set-up & tear-down a show for Shawn Johnson, of Olympic gymnastics & Dancing with the Stars fame. While there he happened to meet a young man from the tv show Hannah Montana. Drew was not impressed.

Drew created a garden in our front yard with tomatoes, basil, rosemary, green beans, and okra. He has done a great job taking care of it and has said that we may have grown the best tasting tomatoes ever. This from a man who eats his tomatoes like biting into an apple.

Okra plant getting very tall and hard to see, but there is also basil & rosemary in the left photo. Below it are some of our yummy tomatoes.

Guarding our plants is what I think is the biggest spider I've ever seen. If not the biggest, it is certainly the scariest.


We had a huge 100yr old oak limb fall across the street and into our yard. Before it hit our grass it took a chunk from our neighbors roof, totalled his car, and brought down several power lines. The 3am wake up call was not appreciated by Katie who was home alone with a very concerned little dog. The dog was in fact so concerned he found it necessary to pee out his fear in our back room, which Katie found as she stumbled through in the dark. [missed my photo-op on this big news story. Fortunately 3 local news channels picked up the story.]

We have already eaten at least 5 cartons of ice cream this summer and numerous popsicles, both bought and homemade. The ice cream quantities are a result of finishing off our $50 gift card to Harris Teeter which we exclusively used only for ice cream over the past year and a half. It also is due to HT's frequent ice cream offers for 'buy 2, get 3 free.' On the popsicles, we created watermelon popsicles and a homemade vanilla/caramel pudding pop. All very tasty.
We also baked some tasty things. Thanks to a friend from church we got a recipe for our new favorite cookies, homemade Oreos.

Really, really good cookies! I even got to use my piping bag to squirt the filling onto the cookies. We've already made two batches less than 2 weeks after getting the reci
pe
.

We've made & eaten A LOT of pizza. We have a pizza stone & pizza peel, both of which are used at least once a week thanks to Trader Joes 99cent pizza dough. While eating a piece of pizza last night Drew commented that "yes, I can. I could eat pizza every day." Unfortunately for him, "no he can't". His wife won't let him.

We also ate some Chick-fil-a. It's possible we were dressed as cows at the time.


In dog news, Digory has managed to stay out of the emergency vet for all of 2009. We pray this continues. We also are more wise about keeping chocolate chips on the top shelf of the pantry rather than the bottom near his food bowl.

For entertainment this summer we have attempted to watch every episode of Friends' ten seasons. Thanks to a wonderful friend from church we have 40dvds to make this dream a reality. As of posting, Katie has watched all but season 10 and half of season 2. Due to Drew having a job, he is lagging behind by a few seasons.



I think that about covers the big highlights for us. We still have a little more summer to go so perhaps there will be more interesting things. After all, thanks to Drew's family we now have a big $44 bag of various fireworks sitting in our dining room. Who knows what will happen.

K