Monday, April 25, 2011

did we just make a decision?!?

so today . . . we made an offer on a house. i feel a little sick.

i don't know whether to be excited that we might get the house or scared that we might get the house. so i seem to have compromised by feeling a little nauseated...

after my first big day of house hunting by myself, i dragged rollie out to dinner and told him every little detail of every house i had seen--even the ones i didn't like! and i showed him the photos i had taken. and then i made him drive by the teeny tiny house, because it happened to be really, really close to rubio's (which you would think would be a selling point.) i'm sure he was exhausted, and he hadn't even looked at any actual houses!

and then last wednesday afternoon, our realtor called and said she had found the PERFECT HOUSE, but it had just come on the market and we needed to see it IMMEDIATELY or it might be gone!! well. the perfect house. ok, then. rollie was available, so we piled into jill's car (jill is our exceptional realtor,) and headed out...

as we drove, i read the listing sheet--out loud, for everyone's benefit! it sounded nearly perfect. we walked in, and i immediately fell in love. it was beautiful! it had been totally remodeled--tile and wood flooring, crown molding, new kitchen cabinets and appliances, new windows, and NEW BATHROOM FIXTURES (i cannot tell you how many icky showers i have looked at!) the closets were small, but it was all one level--there is only so much room in a one story home!

and then we went into the back yard...

a nice back yard is important to us. we have beautiful weather here most of the year, so we want to be able to hang out in our back yard. BUT i don't want to be surrounded by two story homes overlooking our space, and i don't want the house behind me to be right next to my fence! this is not so easy to find. i keep saying to jill, "we need a back yard that is quiet, relaxing, private..." yeah, in l.a. fortunately, in addition to all the other wonderfulness in this house, the back yard was private, because there was no one living behind it. unfortunately, there was a school behind it.

ok, maybe for most people that wouldn't be such a big deal. but we have these two dogs... and they like to bark... sometimes i even think they just pretend they hear something outside so that they can race out the doggie door and bark their little furry heads off! so living right next to a school yard was probably not going to work for us, because there would be kids there. and our dogs would bark at the kids. and the neighbors would call animal control. and then there would be a big neighborhood controversy--people would choose up sides. it might get ugly.

yeah, as beautiful as it was, this was probably not the house for us.

but all was not lost. jill said there was another house with the same floor plan, in a different neighborhood that was also available. we went to look at it, and it wasn't bad--at least there was no school behind it--but after looking at the completely remodeled house, it was just not very appealing to see dated kitchen cabinets and wall to wall carpeting and icky bathrooms...

i was starting to feel like we might never find anything.

and then i talked to a friend of mine who said they had looked at 32 houses before they bought one! ok, so maybe it was unrealistic to expect to find a house so quickly. maybe this was like house hunter's initiation. "don't get discouraged," she said, "keep looking. you will find the house that is right for you. just keep looking." and so, we did.

we arranged to meet jill on saturday to see another batch of houses. this time, rollie was able to come.

seeing houses with rollie was a different experience. it was kind of like when we went house hunting on his ipad. i tended to move quickly, get a feel for the house, and move on. rollie was much, much slower. he looked at details. he asked questions. he talked to the people who were currently living in the houses! let's just say, it took us about an hour longer to see fewer houses than when jill and i went alone.

BUT the first house we took him to see was the first house i had seen on my first day of house hunting. and he loved it! i had been talking about it, because as we looked at other houses, i just kept coming back to that one. it isn't perfect--it only has a two car garage, the laundry facilities are in the two car garage, and there is no pool. (ok, the pool was kind of a long shot anyway, but this is california! i feel as though i should have a pool!!) and so we continued on to look at more houses. but at the end of the day, we both thought maybe the first house we saw was the house we should get. so today we made an offer.and now all we can do is wait. and then wait some more. i can't get excited, because if we don't get the house, i don't want to be disappointed. i'm not even absolutely 100% sure that this is the house we should get, because you never know... there might be a better house out there somewhere. but i am 100% sure that if we don't get this house, i will be disappointed--at least until we find a better house. but what if we don't find a better house? what if we end up paying just as much money for a smaller house? or a house with loud neighbors? or what if we get this house and it has loud neighbors? or dogs that engage in barking contests with our dogs?

WHAT THE HECK ARE WE DOING?!?!?!?!?!

...sigh. it's ok. really it is. i am not stressed. i am not worried. either we will get this house or we won't. it will be fine. really. it will be fine.

but just in case, i have located our tent...

1 comment:

mom said...

I'm sure it will all work out. Sounds like the house by the school was really nice. It's like any decision, we second guess it. I'm second guessing decisions we made years ago so rest assured all will be well...