fancy house: easily the nicest house we have seen -- nice upgrades, nice layout, etc. easily the FANCIEST kitchen -- thermador, bosch and viking all up in here. they did have a drawer dishwasher, which is a pita. problem: taxes are $$$,$$$,$$$.$$/year. this house is now basically unaffordable.
house of meh: i really hate it when people do the stupid upgrades. this one had redone the kitchen -- but instead of extending the cabinets all the way to the ceiling, they were dropped about an inch down. why? they have crown molding.
why didn't they just rip off the crown molding and stick it on the top of the cabinets? and now that the cabinets are dropped down -- you can't see the stupid crown molding anyway! people are idiots.
this might seriously be a dealbreaker because if these people were dumb about that, what else were they dumb about? i didn't check the basement to see how much water they left in there.
ooh la la: these people. oy, these people.
so the house was built in the 1990s. there are hardwood floors -- that had been scuffed grey and were starting to separate. WTF -- really, WTF -- did they do in there? realtor very kindly suggested that maybe they had dogs? they would have had to have all the dogs -- as in, all the dogs in the entire county -- to have done that kind of damage to the floors. my parents have rooms with floors from the 1950s in a house that had six dogs through its lifetime, and their floors don't look like that.
and the kitchen. oy, the kitchen.
okay -- do you know of a cafe or store that has a french theme? like a striped shirt, beret and bicycle stereotypical french theme? that was this kitchen: black and gold striped wallpaper, black counters, a water-pump shaped faucet in the sink, knobs that were all curlicues and whirls, etc. i just looked at it and saw me and a scorer and fifty hours i will never get back.
all the walls had a stupid paint treatment topped off by a die-cut swag wallpaper border, there were two faux pillars adorning the entryway of two rooms (making the entryway supersmall), and a chair rail that was clearly diy because they just tacked it at two points and it bowed out in the middle.
i love it, dh will hate it: okay, so this house was nothing special on the inside. the kitchen is fine, the family room might be a hair too small. however, it's all hardwood and parquet and the carpeting is nicely kept up.
OMG THE MASTER BEDROOM.
okay, so this bad boy takes up half the upstairs. as in, when i read the dimensions to the realtor, she gave me a look like "wtf are you talking about? did you read that right?" it's 36x20, which is bigger than our entire 2br, 2 ba apt right now. nice little bathroom but -- TWO MASSIVE CUSTOM CLOSETS WITH CUSTOM INTERIORS.
the homeowner was actually still there, which normally i do not like, but this dude was awesome and i kind of wished he came with the house. he told us about what used to be where, so i could kind of envision moving furniture around. pmeg, you would like that he is old and going into a home so he needs to sell his house.
the master bedroom was a gift to his wife. they each got a custom closet -- 36 individual shoe cubbies, four hanging racks, built in drawers. the bedroom itself has an entire king-size bedroom suite -- bedframe, highboy, lowboy, endtables, lingerie chest -- and then room for an area rug and a separate sitting area.
I LOVE IT AND WANT IT. things dh will hate because he is a destroyer of joy: tiny backyard (but it faces a park!), does not think master bedroom the size of rhode island is the best use of space, the family room and downstairs areas are too small.
dh still needs to see it, but for now, that's my number one.
