Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Tales from the Home Hunt

In case you hadn't noticed, I have been really lazy lately. When you don't leave your house and/or change out of your pajamas, you don't have much to blog about! I figured in the absence of new and interesting things to say, I'd post a story from mine and Mike's short, but entertaining hunt for a home. Mike decided once we moved to Ridgecrest that we should buy a house. I was super against it because, well...I DON'T HAVE A JOB. Mike did his crazy anal Mike research, (he does work in a library after all), and ended up convincing me that we could afford it and that it was fiscally smart to do. So we got a realtor and set out to find the home of our dreams...within a budget. We set out on the sunny flex Friday, (if you don't know what a flex Friday is then you aren't from Ridgecrest and you really don't care), hoping to find something worth the massive amounts of money we are going to dump into it. The first house we pull up to is OKAY. The cul de sac kind of scares me, but I'm a sheltered, white, small town girl so I tend to try to ignore my HOLY SHIT THIS PLACE IS GHETTO instinct. We go inside and it's nice. The floors are wood and the backyard has a pool, but further investigation unveiled some weirdnesses that I personally could not ignore. Weirdness #1 - there was an extra room off of the living room with no door and with a fireplace and bed in it. Weirdness #2 - there were these big box thingies on two walls that apparently acts as the heater. Maybe this is me being naive or just never having lived in an old house, but I do not want my heat being puffed out of two big boxes located randomly throughout the house. Also, we couldn't go in the backyard because there were little yappy dogs guarding the pool. Shouldn't the dogs NOT be locked in WITH the pool? Just a question. So we left that house feeling sort of eh about it. We didn't hate anything, but we definitely didn't love anything either. I started to get worried that I wouldn't get THAT feeling. You know what I mean? That feeling they say you get when you put on the right wedding dress. That "I just know" feeling. I worried the whole drive to the second house and then I walked in. OHhhh that's the feeling I was waiting for.

We'll come back to that later. Fast forward to a couple of houses later. We pull up to a house that looks abandoned. Yet again, maybe I'm naive, but I was shocked with the state of houses in our price range. We're not talking 80 grand cheapo houses. These were people asking legit amounts of money for houses with holes punched in the walls and carpet ripped out of the hallway. It still shocks me that people will just ditch their house or will put it on the market looking like a rock band had a bender inside of it the night before. Anyways, we walk up and this place is pretty crappy looking, but nothing we couldn't easily fix. I walk inside and turn right to enter the kitchen. I immediately get a vibe that this place is icksville and I don't want it, but Mike is methodical and wants to look at ALL of the house so I keep looking. I turn to the right of the kitchen and enter another room. I immediately do a double take because I am standing INSIDE OF ANOTHER KITCHEN. I actually at this point turn around and walk back into the first kitchen to make sure I'm not on crack. Nope, I'm sober. There are TWO kitchens in this house. Fighting the urge to run out the door, I turn to the right again and enter the next room which is not a kitchen hurrah! No, this is a bedroom. A bedroom with Mike standing at the closet looking horrified. Because inside the closet is A BATHROOM. I'm pretty sure that is the fastest Mike, myself, and the realtor moved all day getting the hell out of there.

Needless to say, we did not purchase creepy icksville house. We are currently in the process of purchasing the second house. The ohhhh this feels right house. Once everything is officially over and escrow closes on the 31st, I'll post pictures and details, but until then let me just promise you this...our house does not have two kitchens, or a toilet in a closet.