Appraising the Situation

Hey gang.

Well, it's been about a week since the Houghs bought themselves a house, and in that short amount of time Kris has already started to throw herself at an ungodly amount of paperwork and phone calls with various agents working with us (lenders, agents, realtors, etc.) while Yours Truly continues to pack up for the Last Move of the Houghs.

After work this evening, while Mom watched the girls, Kris and I met an inspector over at our soon-to-be home in order to check out the house in a little more detail.  While he poked around and checked things off his To Check Off list, we focused in on details, nooks and crannies, double-checking to see if anything came up amiss.

Fortunately, nothing did.  The inspector was meticulous, and wrote down the smallest of grievances that most folks would have overlooked in a heartbeat (ex. "some of the basement ceiling tiles had cracks in them and could eventually be replaced," "a kitchen cupboard is kinda sticking - a screw needs to be adjusted," etc.)  The only main areas of concern were the gas fireplace, the chimney, and the water heater.

As it turns out, the gas fireplace was fine - it just had to have the pilot light relit because the inspector accidentally shut it off and didn't know how to turn it back on.  The sellers eventually did this, and now the fire place is apparently fine.  Check.

The water heater apparently was missing a sticker that identified when it had last been serviced.  It was clarified by the sellers that the sticker was, in fact, on the water heater and the unit had been serviced a couple months ago and was basically in perfect shape.  Check.

There was a small hairline crack on a couple bricks in the chimney, and would need a sealer applied to it eventually in order to stop future cracking, but it was nothing serious.  The sellers - who are elderly - weren't willing to hire someone to go up a ladder and apply a sealant, when odds were the future buyers - us - could buy a sealant at Home Depot, scale a ladder, and apply it ourselves for free.  Check.

So, all in all, we got, really, really lucky with this purchase.  Our inspector couldn't believe the shape the house was in, and repeated several times that this elderly couple must have just upgraded the hell out of this house on a regular basis to keep it in the shape it's currently in.  Something Kris and I are obviously pretty cool with.

Anyway, here's some pics of our latest walk through of our next home. . .

We totally missed it before, but apparently our house has a sprinkler system built in.  Which is a definite bonus.

We're thinking of putting the piano against this wall in the living room (even has an outlet for a piano lamp), but the flow from the hallway is a concern.

Detail of countertops

Switches in the Study (light for the garage, for the Study, and for the ceiling fan.)  I'm thinking about replacing the switch covers with something badass, but not sure what, yet.

Weird staggering of counter space in the kitchen

From the Dining Room, looking into the Living Room.  I definitely want to put these lights on a Dimmer as soon as possible, if only to rid ourselves of the police interrogation lighting.

(I think they're taking their massive spoon collection with them. . .)

Detail of Study built-in cabinets.  I took this because I'm planning on purchasing and wiring in some under-cabinet lighting to accentuate my African swords.

The now-functional gas fireplace.

Future home of my old world globe bar. . . and maybe someday a desk of some kind.

Basement dividing wall, separating the side room from the main area of the basement (no idea why that carved piece of wood has been affixed to the corner to the right, there.)

Future beer fridge in the basement Storage Room

The future Whatever Room in the basement.  As the only unfinished room in the house (aside from the obvious Storage/Water Heater Room), it was limited in its potential as a workshop.  I'm going to go to war with this room.

I measured this cubby of junk, under the cabinet, and it perfectly fits my wood-faced mini-fridge.  A beer fridge in every room would be very awesome, methinks.

Kris checks out the 'door' to the third bathroom in the basement.

Just barely too small for shelving vinyl, we'll probably use it to house photo albums, video game guides, songbooks, board games, and other crap like that that needs shelf space, but isn't quite worthy of the Study upstairs. . .

Juuust too short for vinyl.

Kris wants to renovate this closet in the basement into a built-in office.

Lighting in the Storage Room

Tupperware pull-out thingies in the kitchen.  Nearly every lower-level cabinets have these, which Kris is on the fence with.

Sea foam walls down the hallway as well.  That'll have to go.

We didn't notice this the first time we were there, but the front door has stained glass in it.  I'm not sure if that's vines or leaves or what.  Something plant-ish.  This door also has encased blinds that are installed between the layers of glass (identical to the sliding doors in the Study), which are super nice.

The Living Room. There's no overhead fixtures, so we'll have to spring for a few lamps down the road. . .

Kris and the inspector

Seriously.  This bush is getting a frickin' haircut when we move in.

Two months from now, this place is going to look a hell of a lot different.  No more sea foam walls, no more doilies, no more owls.  . . . well, maybe a doily or two.  We'll see.

- Brian

Seven Hours

Few days in Hough Family lore have been as monumental as today was, fan base.  Of that fact, I can assure you.  Our wedding, the birth of the kids, the first time I beat Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on the Nintendo 64, when we moved to Florida. . . and then back up to Michigan, a decade later.

Today?  Yeah, that ranks right up there, for shizzle.

Allow me to start back at, oh. . . noon.

We met our realtor, Rick, at a property a few blocks away.  It was a 3 bedroom/2 1/2 bath ranch a few blocks away, nestled away in the Chestnut Hill school district, sharing curb-space with much larger, $300,000 properties.  Their weren't many pictures available online, but those that were posted were intriguing, so Kris and I requested to view it.  We had driven by it a few days earlier on a 'snow day' (technically a 'slush day,' but the girls and I had the day off) when we had driven by about five or six different houses throughout the Midland area, and the 'curb appeal' was promising.

After walking in, the first thing that struck Kris and I both was how clean and up-kept everything was.  As we've done with several properties over the last four months or so of our current house-quest, Kris and I split off to tackle the viewing of different parts of the house:  I focused on floor plan layout, taking pictures with my phone of various views of all the rooms, Kris honed in the nitty-gritty of the status of certain things (appliances, windows, etc.)  We had our system down at this point in the game.

Front patio

It didn't take us long to realize that this house, unlike all of the other houses we had viewed so far, was just about perfect.  We both had that gut-punch reaction within minutes of walking through the place, before we had even seen the entire property. . .

Foyer

The Living Room (feat. sea-foam green walls. . . blegh)

Granted, you had to look past the old-person decorating scheme.

The Dining Room, coming in from the Living Room

The Dining Room, again, this time from the Kitchen

The Kitchen, from the Dining Room

The only drawback worth noting in this kitchen was the fact that there wasn't a microwave over the stove. . . which, honestly, is a pretty easy - and inexpensive - fix.

Solid view of the backyard

Nice flooring throughout, too

Kris and I both were impressed with what we had seen so far throughout the house, but what really 'sealed the deal' for Yours Truly was when I walked through the kitchen and entered this room:

Behold:  The Study

Since I was a boy, I've always wanted a classy Study.  Somewhere to hang a few swords, display a library, have a bar off to the corner, a desk, and a horde of records.  This room, when I first laid eyes on it, convinced me that this house was the one we had been looking for.  I was sold.

The kitchen is through the doorway to the left, while the basement descends through the door at the right.

The door on the adjacent, tan wall leads out to the garage.  A spacious room more than capable of housing records, books, swords and all other things Brian.

The upstairs floor plan was just about perfect, so we ventured downstairs into the basement, which was hard to get a feeling for based on the online posting's pictures. . .

Again, everything was clean, dry, and freshly painted.

While neither of us are big fans of the choice in color, the basement was huge.  Always a plus.

A generous office space, off the main basement area.

Other angle of the office space.  Through the door there, behind Abby, you have the storage area, which, although unfinished, was dry and clean. . .

. . . with plenty of custom-built storage spanning the entire wall.

. . . and a brand new refrigerator, perfect for storing additional freezer items and, more likely than not, a horde of craft beer.

Coming out of the Storage Room, back into the office area.  On the other side, you have the Workshop.

This room is bigger than it looks, and it'd be a shame to waste it on a mere Workshop (there's another workshop area in the garage - I'll get to that in a sec.)

Kris doesn't care about this area of the basement at all, so she agreed that this room I could turn into whatever I wanted (provided that we ended up placing an offer on the house, which, by this point in the scheme of things, we were already serious considering.)  My head immediately began envisioning a room of total '80s glory:  retro video game systems and electronics, lava lamps, wood paneling, throwback posters and artwork, more swords, knick knacks, and other pieces of awesome that wouldn't otherwise work in the upstairs Study.  Tons of potential.

Kris, too, was sold on the place, and so we had Rick (shown here) start looking into it for us.

This closet space Kris figured she could turn into a mini-office, with a built-in desk cubby for her iMac and filing system.

Looking back towards the stairway, leading back up to the future Study.  Through the door on the right, there, you have a laundry room. . . and a half-bath.

The Laundry Room

The Half Bath.  Nothing much right now, but hell - it's a bathroom in the basement.  And it's all brand new.

Additional closet-space under the basement stairs.

Back upstairs, we decided to check out the bedrooms (Kris had scoped this out already while I had been fawning over the Study.)  Here's the main bathroom on the ground floor, which would serve as the girls' bathroom.  Again, everything is brand new, freshly-painted, and ready to go.

The smallest of the three bedrooms was already larger than any of the bedrooms in our current rental.  Seeing how our kids are still too young to have their own bedrooms, we envisioned this room - once painted - would be a perfect play room for the girls.

(The sellers were definite baseball fans - they had tons of memorabilia everywhere.)

The second bedroom - already painted a girly lilac-y sort of purple - was perfect for the girls' bedroom. . .

Alayna wasn't thrilled with the current decor.  Go figure.

The Master Bedroom.  A cool grey color, which we probably wouldn't change.

(We'd have to lose our gigantor-headboard, or else block off that window.)

Closet space.  Not a walk-in, but with so many other storage areas spread out throughout the house (the foyer, basement, Study, etc.) - we really didn't need it.

Enough wall space for a TV - which we kinda rely on.

Master Bath.  Not sure what I was thinking with this pic, but there's a walk-in shower, too.

With everything else in the house more or less exactly what we were looking for, Kris and I asked to inspect the backyard and exterior of the house. . .

These bushes need some serious trimming and shaping. . .

The biggest drawback of the house was that the side yards were unfenced.

The profile of the back of the house is flat, which means we could add on a sun room and extensions over the course of the next few years with little difficulty. . .

This definitely came as a shocker:  when we looked at the pictures online, we thought the property line was the garden divider you see with the pine trees, next to the shed.  When we saw it in person, however, we realized the backyard extended all the way back to the white fence by the red house, all the way back there.  It was the size of a small park. 

Alayna crosses the garden. . .

Phallic stepping stones 

Not sure why you'd necessarily want to sit way out here in the backyard like this, but it's nice to know you could do it. . .

The yard is obviously enormous - I'd have to invest in a riding lawnmower - and was fenced in by the neighbors' fences on three sides:  only the side yards were un-fenced, which was great for Watson (not that he wanders off anyway, the coward.)

Those trees smashing up into the gutters there, off to the left, would definitely need to be chopped down substantially. . .

The Garage (featuring a brand new garage door and a fresh paint job.)

Another workshop area.  This one is more than enough to fit my not-at-all handy needs, freeing up the Basement Workshop for any awesomeness I can dream up. . .

(That doorway off to the right leads up into the Study.)

We were done viewing the house after about twenty minutes or so.  While we were driving back home, Rick called us and informed us that there was no other activity on the house, so we decided to put in an offer.  The property was listed higher than it should've been (it's a seller's market around these parts, as I've mentioned before), but Rick suggested we come in to the negotiations $12k less, leaving ample room for bargaining.

A mere couple hours later, Rick called me and told me that the sellers had come back to the table with a counter-offer of $5k less than they had asked - or about $7k more than we had offered.  They attempted sweetening the deal by throwing in their snowblower, riding lawn mower (I'd definitely need one with a backyard that size), as well as a shed full of yard tools and supplies.  While generous, Kris and I wanted to keep the price as low as humanly possible:  we politely declined, and countered again with an offer that was $10k less than their selling price (or $2k more than our initial offer.)  It was as high as we could go, and definitely a gamble.

While we were waiting to hear back from the sellers, Kris happened to be talking to her friend Kim.  Coincidentally, she mentioned that they were planning on selling a relatively new Cub Cadet riding mower for $900 (a steal.)  The timing was so good it was creepy, and Kris told her she was definitely interested in buying it off her if the house offer went through.

At 7pm - a mere seven hours from us setting foot into the house - Rick called me back and told me that the sellers had accepted our offer.  We had bought our new home.

I joked with Kris that we should have had a bottle of champagne on standby for just such an occasion, but unfortunately we didn't have any in the house.  Later that evening, after setting Rick loose to start the paperwork and once the kids had gone to bed, Kris asked me to fetch her a glass of a moscato she had bought earlier in the week from the fridge.  When I went to uncork it, I realized that she had, in fact, accidentally bought a bottle of champagne moscato instead.

We took it as a good omen.

- Brian