Almost Wordless Wednesday -

This is from 07/09/2007. What are we interested in?


Jack and Scout
The Greyhounds Who Miss Seeing Deer

What The Heck?

It's snowing! What is up with that? It was 65 on Saturday. Mama woke us up this morning to go outside and we were shocked to see the snow and it's still coming down. Yes, she woke us up. This time change has us very tired. We have no pictures to share with you because it's still dark and well, we are too tired to take pictures.

We may be making an offer on the house soon. We have to learn two more things today which will help with our decision. Daddy is not as concerned about the wall as he was, but something new came up yesterday that we need answers on. Grandma and Grandpa drove by it yesterday and said they liked it. There are more things that we like about it than we don't like. However, we are not sure we are going to be able to reach an agreement on price with the seller. It is definitely overpriced, but he may not be able to come down on price. We will just have to see what happens.

Jack
The Greyhound Who Thinks Snow Is For The Birds

Offer?

Mama said we may be putting in an offer on a house. She and Daddy are going for a second showing of it today. They looked at it yesterday morning and then drove past it again last night. Mama says the outside doesn't have curb appeal at all. It's basically a rectangle. She said it reminds her of the house that she grew up in. Daddy said we can put new siding on it and it will look better, but putting a covered porch on it would be tough. The backyard is already fenced and Mama says it is HUGE! However, the deck has a ton of steps and she said that she knows I would jump the steps and fall, so she will have to walk us around to the backyard until they put steps on another section of the deck that is closer to the ground or they fence the front yard. The kitchen is big and recently remodeled. It only has one bath. They wanted two, but it's been remodeled and looks nice. They said they might enlarge the master bedroom by knocking a wall down from another bedroom.

The inside of the house is pretty nice, but the owners seem to have a problem with finishing projects. Three of the rooms do not have closet doors. There is also trim missing. They painted and took it down and I guess they never put it back up. They also took down outlet covers and haven't put those back up. Why would you list your house before doing those things? The agent said that maybe they ran out of money. Well, outlet covers don't cost much and it's not really safe for kids not having covers on the outlets. The front porch really needs to be painted. We know the people love to paint because they painted the living room orange and the bedrooms are a dark purple, so we are not sure why they didn't paint the porch. Maybe it's good that they didn't. LOL

There is one big concern about the house and Daddy said he will hire an engineer and an inspector to come out. It appears that when the basement was poured 38 years ago that there was a problem and one of the walls isn't square. I guess that's the way you say it. Then, he poured the basement windows crooked. The floors upstairs slant. They used to say that on the show Mad About You. Do you remember that? Mama said I will probably be sliding into the walls if I run too fast in the house. Daddy said the walls are not cracked at all, so it may be okay, but we need to have an engineer check it out before we buy it.

The house is not in a subdivision, so no dues. It's located on a old highway, so there isn't much traffic. It's in the country and we will have chickens living next to us. Mama said the rooster was crowing when they were there. It's close to Grandma and Grandpa, so that's neat, but it's also close to one of Mama's relatives that she wants nothing to do with, so that's not so good. Mama is kind of torn about living there for that reason.

It's a lot to think about and none of us got much sleep last night. Mama's been having migraines for the past week because she's been stressed about finding a house. She told me this morning that she's really having her doubts about this house. She thinks the owners will not accept our offer on it. They've been trying to sell it for over a year, but they take if off the market after a month or two and change agents, so they seem to be impatient. We don't think they are going to like our offer at all and maybe that's a good thing. I guess we will know in a day or two and then we will have to see how the inspections go if we get that far.

Jack
The Greyhound Who Is Confused

Almost Wordless Wednesday - Elephant Rocks State Park

These are pictures taken in 2007 - pre-Scout days. We visited Elephant Rocks State Park with the family. As you can see, there is a lot of climbing that you can do or you can just walk on the trail like us.





Jack
The Greyhound Who Likes Hiking With His Dad

The Hunt Continues

(Scout having sweet dreams in 2007.)

Mama and Daddy stalk the real estate site on the computer. Mama looks at Realtor several times each day to see if any new listings have shown up. She gets emails showing new listings, but those are usually a day after she has already found the new ones. Yesterday, a new listing showed up and Mama got very excited. She said it had everything we wanted and it was in her old hometown which is not far from Grandma & Grandpa. She contacted the agent and he said he would meet Mama and Daddy there. They came home disappointed, again. Mama said the house needs about $70,000 in work. It needs a new roof, gutters, paint on the inside and out as well as new carpet. The kitchen needs to be updated. Those things are not unexpected. The worse part was the basement. It's covered in mildew and Mama said it was hard for her to breathe while in the house. The garage floor also needs to be jacked up because part of it has sunk about 3". Yes, the house needs work. It's a foreclosure. If the bank would clean up the basement and fix that, we would be interested. Mama said the upstairs really wasn't in that bad of shape. They talked to a neighbor who said that they tried to sell the house on the court house steps but no one wanted it.

They are going out today to an open house. It looks to be move-in ready from the pictures on the Internet. It's further away then they would like to be from family, but it's a nice area. It has a fenced yard, so that's a good sign.

Jack
The Greyhound Who Wonders If He Will Ever Have A Yard Again