Wednesday, March 28, 2012

10.5 acres of what?

The next place went to on our home tour was the double wide with the 10.5 acres.   


Due to the debacle that we discovered that Thursday, we pretty much knew this house was out of the running prior to even seeing it.

I’m not going to show you pictures on this one, you can find them all here.

Darn you, USDA loan!  That program just seems so appealing to us first time home buyers, it really was a pretty big blow to learn about all its restrictions.

But anyways, we drove down the long gravel driveway again, following Monica the whole time.  There were definitely some major pros to this house.  It was very big!!  There was plenty of space and a lot of run to grow as a family someday.  

But I think knowing that we couldn’t get it, even if we did want it, put a bad taste in my mouth.  I rationalized the disappointment by finding things that were wrong with the house all over the place.  

  • It was so large, it would take forever to clean
  • The backyard doesn’t have a porch
  • There isn’t a big yard for the dogs/future baby Walkers to play in
  • That garden tub
  • Those strips, yuck!!

While the overall appeal was the amount of land that came with this property, I wouldn’t say it was very suitable land for raising children, so while Jason may have been heartbroken, I was ready to move on.

Love as always,
Meredith

Option 2: yellow with blue

The next house on our map was on Providence Church Rd.  

Again, this is the one that Jason and I had eyed a few months ago and we were very interested in seeing the inside of it.  It is located very close to Dan Nicolas Park and is much closer to the lake than our current rental and was within 10 minutes of the Holy Land hunting land.  It also adds only 3 or 4 minutes to my drive for work, so the location is pristine!  
 
It is yellow with very baby blue trim.  Every inch of trim/downspout/garage door/eave was covered with baby blue paint.  I wonder if they are really big TarHeels fans?


When we arrived, the sellers were there trying to clean and keep the house well maintained in an attempt to actually sell it.  I expect people to keep the grass mowed but they were busting out the big guns and using some good ‘ol ammonia.  These are my kind of people.  Screw the cheap store bought name brand products, get that mess out with the good chemicals.  Love it!  

Oh sorry, I got sidetracked.

There was a garage attached that we entered through, so having a space to keep my car or the jeep protected was a plus.  Especially the jeep, since it has a soft top that I’m constantly worried will rip with hail or a tree or whatever.  A garage would also be nice for muddy shoes and extra smelly clothes that really should be hosed off before coming inside.

The main house offered a living room that was connected to the dining room, which I like.  

living room

 The dining room was off of the galley style kitchen that is actually very large.   

dining room.  notice how it's attached to the living room?

It doesn’t have a refrigerator and the kitchen needs some updating, but unlike the Long Ferry Rd home, it is actually move in ready and I can definitely live with it for a while.  Well maybe not that wall paper, but the old cupboards and laminate counter top, they’re ok.


The dining room has gas logs too which are nice.

A bathroom was off of the hallway and while it needs some updates too, it’s more convenient and a little bit more of a private bathroom than the current guest bathroom at the rental.

The first bedroom was a little bit small but we could use it as an office or maybe….a craft room!!  Yipee!!!

The two remaining bedrooms were big and the master had its own bathroom, which is nice.  It had a full size shower, which our current “master bathroom” doesn’t offer.  It doesn’t have a walk in though.  Won waa… maybe we could add onto to the master someday if we decided this was the home for us.



But the real gem of this house?  The back yard!!  Oh man, did this place have a yard.  It sits on 3 acres of all flat land is perfect for two pups that have been cooped up for a while.  I’m sure a certain white one will be more than shocked that he will be allowed outside without a leash on.  


The front yard was also very lovely and large!!  Downside: the house looks out on a recycling site.  It is a little bit of an eyesore, but it doesn’t smell because it’s not a full boxsite, just recycling.  It’s also fenced in and the fence has a green cover attached.  But still…it is a recycling site right across from the house.  I bet a good hedgerow or a couple of magnolias would hide that really quick.  Hmmm… options

Jason liked this place too and it was definitely a place that would stay in our “possibilities” file.

Sorry for the lack of pictures to this place, the website just didn't offer many.

Love as always,
Meredith

Long Ferry Rd Foreclosure

Saturday (March 10) we had our appointment to meet with Monica for the first time.  We agreed to meet her at the Long Ferry Rd house first and continue our House Hunting adventure from there with the 4 houses on our list.

We arrived a few minutes ahead of her and had some time to walk around outside first.  The exterior was nice enough.  No issues.  There was a little bit of a funk kinda smell escaping from beneath the porch.   Odd…moving on.  

cute entry right?  That bird house is actually really charming.  But we really shouldn't base a house hunt on the bird house, huh?

The back yard was a good size and was already fenced in on the west side so we wouldn’t have to re-fence that.  We did notice a space where a pool used to belong.  



Kind of hate that it was no longer there, but pools can be a big responsibility and the lake is close and Grandpa has a pool at the ready that I don’t have to care for (much).

Someone in the family is a pretty big fan of a pool though!

When Monica arrived we formally introduced ourselves and went straight inside. 

Yuck!!  What the? Whoever lived here last was definitely a smoker that wasn’t kind to their guests by smoking only outside.  That place was ripe!  And the only way to fix it would be to rip up carpet possibly steam and repaint some walls and I have no idea how to get smoke out of a ceiling.  Major con!

what is that smell?


The house was also fairly small with only 1200 square feet.  It also only had 1 very outdated bathroom in the hallway.  Jason hated the bathroom!!  A cool shade of pink and a shell sink aren't exactly his style ifyouknowwhati’msayin’

What did I dislike the most about this house?  The kitchen!  And the kitchen is supposed to be the most inviting space in a home, at least that’s how I want my kitchen to feel.  This thing was stuck on the south side of the living room and a floor to ceiling mini-wall right in the middle of the entire room.  And what’s worse, that wall was wired/plumbed for the fridge and the range hood was on it too!  It would not be easy to update, that’s for sure.  And if you have ever been to my ‘rents house, then you know that the kitchen, dining room and living room are all one big great room with open space and where you can enjoy everyone’s company all the time.   

see how it separates the living room from the kitchen?

and where is my cabinet space?  ok, sellers, you updated the cabinets, but a lack of quantity isn't always improved with quality

that wall to the right there?  the end of this mini-wall.  See what I mean, it's MINI!


That’s what I love and I would feel so secluded being stuck in this awful design of a kitchen every time I was trying to prepare a meal for family or guests.  No thank you.  When I started to express my disdain and what all would need to be done to make this kitchen useable Jason saw dollar bills flying out of our bank account and quickly escorted me out of the house.

The really great part about the foreclosure?  You’re going to laugh.  It was the shed.  It was huge and already had shelving everywhere.  Very useable for putting away hunting gear if you ask me.

 You want to know where we really got to know Monica and share all of our thoughts and feelings thus far at?  Yea, on the porch to the shed!!  Not the porch for the house, the shed.  Nope, we can do without a nice shed and just like the bird house, we really shouldn't buy a home just for it's out building.

Moving on......

Love as always,
Meredith

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Just when you think you have something awesome


So most of the day Thursday, all I could do was think about the house that sat on the 10.5 acres.  Jason was so excited about it and it made me excited in return.   

I knew that I would get over the stigma of living in a mobile home and besides, I was probably the one putting that stigma on it for the most part anyways.

The house just seemed like such a good deal and it was huge.   Almost 2000 square feet and since that’s the kind of space we currently live in, there wouldn’t be a need to bother with downsizing much or at all.  

I don’t know if a lot of you are aware, but I have a slight addiction to furniture.  In fact, it’s borderline hoarding of the furniture.

image via Pinterest

Grams calls one day and says “my sister-in-law just moved and has a sleeper sofa, do you want it?” 

Me: YES!  We only have one guest bed right now and I think sleeper sofas are more comfortable than futons, so we’ll take it.

A different day
My aunt calls me: “We’re going to get rid of either our full couch or love seat, would you like either?”

Me: YES!  We may need a love seat soon and yours is at the perfect level of comfy due to wearing it in.  

A different day again
Jason’s dad: We have some dent and scratch dressers from the factory, do you want them?

Me: YES!  We need matching dressers for our bedroom.

Jason: We already have a dresser, where will these 2 go?

Me: In the guest bedroom.  I’ll find space.

Sooo…………as you can see, over the last 16+ months that Jason and I have lived together, I have collected furniture and it’s taking over my house and driving Jason crazy.  But I figured that if someday we moved into a big house, we would need to furnish it.  So why go buy a house and then have to buy furniture on top of that just to make the house look livable?  There was no need to worry if I had an abundance of mis-matched furniture, right? Right!

Well…with this house and it’s 2000+ square feet, I would actually have space to put all that furniture.  Yay!!

Mind you, at this point, I had not actually driven by the house.  My future hubs was able to find a few minutes in his ‘ol so busy day to take a peak at it.  What did he do?  Call me at work and exclaim how much I would totally love it!  

So that Thursday evening, I talked him into letting me drive down the super long, seemingly private driveway and take a gander at this potential future home of ours. 

 As a side note: when I asked said future hubby of mine if we could go look at it, I got an eye roll.  Clearly if he has seen it, that means that I have seen it through his mind and must already know what it looks like and why in the world would I want to see it again? (I got this same eye-roll when I asked to ride by the original foreclosure with the bad roof)

The drive-by was fun.  The house was cute and secluded and Bambi may or may not be stomping around on the grounds, so that was a plus I guess.

That Friday, at work, I was already wasting time looking up various ways to decorate the home so that it didn’t look like a manufactured house from the inside.  I think the outside was fine.  But why, oh why are there plastic strips on the walls inside the house?  Obvious from the pictures posted online.

I found several blogs about decorating a manufactured home like a regular house.  Besides, the blogs advised, it is your HOME, so you should treat it as such. 

I was also showing pictures of it to some of my coworkers.  One of the supervisors told me that he lives in a manufactured home and that you can simply take down the strips and tape/mud/sand like a regular drywall joint (I say that like I’ve done it before huh? Hahah, yea right! HGTV to the rescue)  Also, those funky plastic doors? Yea, they could be replaced too.  Will someone please tell me why they are ever installed in the first place?  Why a plastic door? Just put in a regular heavy door that makes a good ‘ol thud! when you slam it shut.

Anywho, so I was telling him about the main appeal of this house was obviously the land and Jason’s enthusiasm for it.  And this is where it gets interesting…..Supervisor advised me that the USDA loan may or may not be so keen to lend for a home with that much land.  

Skkkkkkiiiiiirrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!! 

image via whatever this is via Pinterest


WTF? What are you talking about?  Turns out the USDA loan sets limits to what you can and can not buy as they don’t want it to be a farming loan or a construction loan.  Now, to me, I don’t think it should matter, if you pay for it and continue to pay for, you should be able to do what ever the h-e-double hockey sticks you want to do with it!  But I guess the loan program was designed for rural development, meaning they want a lot of people buying already made houses in the country, or some type of weird thing that I don’t quite understand.

But just to be on the safe side and because I really didn’t want to believe Supervisor man, I immediately did what any good future wife does, I text messaged that boy of mine and asked what to do.  The best advice we could gather for each other: email C-S lady.

Turns out, Supervisor man was right.  The response from C-S lady was straightforward…no can do.  No sir-ree!  Wasn’t happening.

This was my response:

image via Pinterest

This was Jason’s response:
image via Pinterest


Yea, so darnit! That was two houses in a row that we had already started making future plans for and that had been denied to us.

So our initial thoughts of Wow! Look at how easy this house buying this is weren’t at all justified as we were both pretty disappointed in this latest development.  

But we didn’t cancel the appointment to have Monica show it to us.  Jason and I talked it out and decided we wanted to talk to Monica about this whole thing.  SunTrust said she was knowledgeable about helping out first time home-buyers and maybe she could offer some advice/solutions to the dilemma.   

It’s not like the reply from C-S lady offered any suggestions, even when a response to her reply attempted to prompt further solutions.  Just no! you can’t buy that house.

Okay..thanks C-S lady for the help.

I was ready for our Saturday meeting with Monica to see what else the House Hunting in Rowan County could offer us.

Love as always
Meredith