September 25, 2003.
Tale of the little blue house


If all goes according to plan, if fate smiles and if the moon aligns properly in its predicted orbit, Tom and I will add a new key to our keyrings on Monday. Here are a few little pictures of the house we're attempting to buy.



Stalkers, this is open season for you.


Do not be impressed, loves, with the charming facade of the house! It is all retouching, I tell you. For our future home is is indeed a modest little house. Verily, it is just one step up from a shack.

Oh, this home-buying process just makes my head hurt. There are so many layers to it. Like an onion. The further you go, the harder you cry.

The first time we saw the house, we liked it. It fit our price range, and we liked the street. We deemed that it was structurally sound, and put down a contract. Easy, right?

The next time we saw it, we took our inspector with us. He stayed for seven hours and tore the whole thing apart right before our eyes. Over the course of one afternoon, our sweet little love-nest full of 1940s charm dissolved into what he termed a "salvageable" house. Not exactly a ringing endorsement, eh?

Of course, this inspector of ours is the sort of person who bristles at the thought of missing shoe molding or a door that sticks. He is morally offended by poorly executed repairs; he's a perfectionist to the highest degree. So it doesn't take much to get him riled up.

But oh, our house, our poor house. He just kept discovering its sad little secrets and pulling them out into the light. He was ruthless. At the end of the disappointing day, we had four pages of his tiny, tiny scribble, detailing every little dysfunction with the house. I was actually a little embarrassed. We found this house acceptable? What were we thinking?


Note to self: Need to paint house and window frames.

I know, I know. It's good to find out these things beforehand, before we sign the contract, right? Yes. The practical side of me knows this. But the impractical side just wants to move into a pretty little house on a nice little street. The impractical side of me wants to pick out paint chips and buy a new chandelier, and call it a day. It does not care what a bleed valve is. It does not want to find out (the hard way, naturally) what happens when the water line running under the kitchen is two inches wide instead of three inches wide. See what I mean?

When I look at the house now, I see only its great brokenness. All the things that are wrong, or could go wrong, or are going wrong right now... That's when the headache usually starts.

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So after we agreed on a price, we gave the seller a list of things that needed to be fixed before we would close on the house. We agreed to overlook a lot of the little problems — we threw the big, expensive stuff at him. Plumbing things, electrical things.

To our delight, he agreed to fix everything on the list within two weeks. Perfect, right? And we stipulated that he had to provide detailed, paid receipts for all of the improvements we requested. Perfect!

We met at the house again last night for a walk-through. Closing is scheduled for Monday, and the seller was supposed to be finished with all of the improvements.

Well, he was not. If our list of things he needed to fix was ten items long, the seller had fixed maybe half of one item, and only in the most careless, sloppy, crappy way possible.



The house does have a couple of arched doorways! Fall in love with the arched doorways, people! They are all we have right now!


What I see now is that the house is like a mangy little dog that the seller has basically kicked to the curb. It is a sorely neglected creature. The seller just wants to dump the house.

And it is hard forcing myself to love this fleabitten little cottage, so brimming with evidence of carelessness.

So the house is still hanging by a string, really. Anything could happen right now. Because now comes the time when the Friendly, Pre-Qualified Home-Buyers take the gloves off. (Our agent said with a charming sneer, "We are going to put the fear of Ben into him!") Since the seller doesn't care about the house enough to fix the list of problems himself, we will give him an estimate of what it will cost us to fix those things.

You might guess that this estimate will be heavily padded on all sides, to accomodate whatever surprises we encounter along the way.

You might further guess that if the seller agrees grant us an allowance to make the improvements ourselves, there may be enough money left over afterwards to buy our Grace a new chandelier in the dining room, and some new lighting for the kitchen, because God knows, no one ever made a good pot of chicken noodle soup in a kitchen with a fluorescent bar light. Ugh.

If the seller doesn't agree, well, I guess we just burn the house down and start all over. What fun!

(I'll keep you posted.)