House Hunting Horrors

Frankly I never want to be forced to go house hunting again. Hubby and I knew what we wanted, a 3/4 bedroom, 2 bath house with at least 3 acres (preferably more). What is so hard to understand about that. Since I was a SAHM, we decided I would go look at houses during the week with the toddlers (my kids are 18 months apart in age) in tow while he was at work and IF I saw anything I liked we would go look at it after he got off work or on the weekend.

First there was the snooty real estate agent that insisted on showing me one bedroom bungalows on small lots. I ditched her after the first week. Then there was the geographically challenged real estate agent. While he did at least show us houses that meet our requirements he couldn't seem to grasp the fact we wanted to live in a certain area. Since some of the houses were actually in the area we wanted to live in and all the houses meet our requirements he lasted a bit longer. Finally I found an older lady who actually listened to what we wanted and only showed us houses that meet our requirements and were located in the area we specified. But some of the houses I looked at were real doozies.

• The psychedelic nightmare - this house had 4 bedrooms, unfortanetly when the real estate agent suggested replacing the worn brown carpet the owners showed an appalling lack of judgement with the replacement carpet. You were greeted with Big Bird Yellow in the living room, preceded to Lime Green in the hallway, Hot Pink in two of the bedrooms, back to Big Bird Yellow for one bedroom and the Lime Green was continued in the Master Bedroom. The real deal breaker was the go cart track it was located next to.
• The add on maze - this house was located in a really nice subdivision where all the houses were on at least 3 acres, this house was on 5 acres and had a pond so I had high hopes for it. It was advertised as having 3 bedrooms and 2 1/2 baths. It was the neighborhood eyesore and was originally a one bedroom 1 1/2 bath house. In order to get to one bedroom you had to walk into the master bedroom and go through the closet. In order to get to the other bedroom you had to walk through the master bedroom into the master bathroom which opened into a utility room then go through a breezeway that was exposed to the elements then through the added on bathroom which had a leaky commode into what they called the third bedroom. Yuck!
• The brown bathroom - This house we actually did consider purchasing (with the understanding that I got to redo the bathrooms even though they were brand new) as we loved the front and back porch. The master bathroom was all dark brown. Dark brown tile on the floors and walls, dark brown tile vanity, dark brown sink, tub and commode. Not a drop of color other then BROWN anywhere. The guest bath was done in black & white so at least there was some contrast.

Then there was the perfect house that we made an offer on, only to lose it because the real estate agent went out of town without turning in the offer and someone else made a deal before the real estate agent got back.

All in all I consider house hunting a unique form of torture and am happy we have a home even though it did require remodeling. Thanks to Katrina we also had to get a new roof for it, which I failed to mention in my remodeling chronicles. So we now have blue shingles on our roof.