Here's a quick overview of how our home search has come so far:
House Number 1 - cute townhouse with nice wood floors & open floor plan, but no appliances, no fence, at least 20 mins (w/o traffic) outside of our desired area (= lots of traffic/long commute), and a little outside of our price range.
House Number 2 - same neighborhood so all of the above except for the wood floors and it was in our price range because it needed ALOT of work.
....skip to
House Number 6: Loved this house, and the asking price was right at our budget...then my realtor calls the listing agent and there are already several competitive offers for the house and we had no more money to bargain with. There also seemed to be a grading issue in the backyard because the ground was really squishy and it hadn't rained in at least a few days.
House Number 7: Cute townhouse, needed a new kitchen and some touch up paint but was really cute AND had a fourth level which was like a loft with 2 slanted windows. I loved the fourth level because I could imagine my own workroom up there. Unfortunately I just couldn't live with the basement. As soon as you walked down the stairs there was a small mudroom-like area to your right with poor drywall and painted a hideous shade of orange (which I know could be painted) but to your left was a dark room with paper thin, cheap wood panelling pasted over the frame work and black light bulbs in the overhead light fixtures. It was completely shut off from the rest of the basement/mudroom so there was no way light could get in. It just left me wondering, what the room had this room been used for? It just made me feel um...icky.
Now, I know you're probably thinking that I'm being a little picking for a first home search, but it wasn't that these little things made me dislike each house, but they just put me off and made me think that maybe this just wasn't the right house. I just had this feeling that I would walk into a house and think..THIS is the house. The right house would come along and everything would just work out. Now I know that's a little optimistic but that's pretty much how it happened.
After awhile the houses started to mesh together in my brain, we found a few that we liked in neighborhoods that we liked, but somehow people kept getting competitive contracts (which pretty much means at asking price or higher, they just can't tell you that) in before us. One night, on a weeknight we found a house that had been on the market for almost 60 days. Their original asking price was originally too high and they needed to sell the house before they foreclosed on it so they lowered it to a couple thousand more than what we could afford. So....we wrote up a contract the next day for what we could afford and we're waiting to hear back. We might be waiting for a a couple months though. Its a short sale so the contract price needs to be approved by the sellers
and the bank and with all the foreclosures on the market, the short sales usually end up at the bottom of the stack.
The house is worth it though. Its a three level townhouse with a rec room, backyard, 3 bedrooms, 2 1/2 baths, brick front, and a great neighborhood with a pool and tennis courts. The carpet is in great shape and it has a great open floor plan.
When we get this house (I'm saying when because I am trying to be positive, anyone read The Secret?) there are a few things I want to change. I'll blog about these in further detail in the future, but for now here is my list:
1.Build the back of the fence.
- Its a townhouse and both neighbors on either side have fences, so we would just need to attach the backside. We'd like to do this as soon as possible because we have a dog (our frenchie, Brice) who is deaf and who we cannot let off a leash. A fenced backyard would make "potty breaks" much easier.
2.Redo the Kitchen
- First I'd like to either refinish or paint the cabinets since replacing them would be pretty expensive. The finish on them now is like and orangy oak and I'm just not a huge fan . If I decide to paint them I'm thinking about painting them white or refininshing them in a dark walnut and then changing out some of the door fronts because I like the look of these glass door fronts from Ikea.
-The kitchen needs new appliances, bad. I believe the ones that are currently in the kitchen are the original appliances from 1993 and I doubt they were top of the line then either. Fortunatly I have some money saved up to replace these.
-New flooring - the kitchen has black and white checkerblock laminate floors. I don't mean to offend anyone if you have this in your kitchen, but it just isn't my taste. If it was a cute vintage looking kitchen it could work, but I'm thinking about doing tile or a walnut floor in there. Side note - I looked into wood flooring and if you install it yourself, it isn't as pricy as I thought it would be.
3. Bathrooms
-All of the bathrooms have pretty ugly laminate floors, one bathroom's floor is peeling up in places and one has ugly wallpaper in it. I'd like to put tile or a faux-tile laminate (my mom has a bathroom with laminate flooring that for the past two years, I thought was real tile) in all the bathrooms, remove the wallpaper and paint a neutral color.
4. Change the light fixtures
-They're all brass. All of them. I'd like to either do a simple brushed nickle or find a few vintage peices, like a vintage chandalier for the dining room.
5. Flooring
-There is so much carpet in this house. Its been really well cared for but for me, a foyer and a dining room just need wood floors. I don't know what it is, but it just feels more like a dining room to me with wood floors. I guess I'm just so tired of carpet too, every apartment I've ever lived in was all carpet flooring. Plus it will break up the sea of cream and bring a little more depth into the house.
6. Build a Deck
-This is the only house in the neighborhood without a deck, unfortunate yes, but atleast there is a pool in the neighborhood for the time being. The deck might be the last thing we get around to doing because of the cost, but atleast we have the option.
This is my top five, er six, for now...and I haven't even moved in yet. I'm sure it will take us quite sometime just to get through this list. Stay tuned to read about my fun finds for the house and the future renovations.
The Hirshhorn Museum is one of my favorite art galleries in DC and sometimes during the warmer months I like to sit in their beautiful flower garden and sketch, write or take pictures. Within this flower garden are some gorgeous handmade birdhouses that sit on top of post made of natural wood with the bark still in tact. I've always wanted a birdhouse like one of these but living in a second story apartment doesn't really make it possible. Now that we're going to buy a house I will finally have a backyard to put a lovely birdhouse in. I did a little browsing on Etsy (because where else would you look for a fabulous handmade item) and here are few of my favorites:
top row: Funky Salvage Wood Birdhouse by oldcrowfarm, Birdhouse Saltbox Fieldstone by DoorCountyWoodworks, Rustic Yellow Shabby Cottage Birdhouse by baconsquarefarm, bottom row: Blessed Birdhouse with Leaning Roof and Drawer Pulls by timesandchimes, The Rustic Silhouette Birdhouse by WilliamDohman, Solo Bird In Flight Birdhouse by JHannah
The Farmhouse Armoire from Pottery Barn is about $1899, but a similar one from IKEA, the MARKOR, is only $319. The Pottery Barn version is a little nicer and a little taller, but for over $1500 less I think I'm going to go with the IKEA version.
But I needed something comfortable and casual and I'm pretty sure its a knock-off of either the Pottery Barn PB Basic (picture), about $1299 - $2799 depending on the fabric you select, or the Crate and Barrel Potomac Sofa, $1599. Did I mention the IKEA EKTORP was $399?
I also found this great Swedish magazine, Skona Hem. Sometimes some of the pages don't translate with Google Translate, but there are planty of inspiring images on thier website. I love this image of this vintage looking dining room. Its kind of a vintage country kitchen meets Marie Antoinette.
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