Holy Man Cave!!

Sorry, this is going to be a long post, bear with me, k?

We had one more house to see on our tour before we called it quits for the day.  This was the only home that was listed slightly above our budget at $150K.  We figured we would be able to negotiate down in today’s market if we decided we were interested in this house after seeing it.

The house is very pretty and is in a quiet neighborhood.  But it was in the city limits, which meant the USDA wouldn’t qualify for this property but it would with the FHA loan.  So it was still a possibility.

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After arriving at the house, we quickly noticed how close it was to the neighbor’s homes.  In fact, I’m pretty sure I could see the plumber’s crack from the guy next door fixing a lawn mower or weed eater or whatever motorized thing he was working on.  Gross!

Monica was given the wrong code to the key lock box and while she was getting in touch with the seller’s agent Jason and I hung out on the porch.  But, what does that mean?  We had time to really look at it.  I noticed that there was a piece of the soffit missing from the rafters that hung out over the frame of the porch.  And there was a little bit of a water line/mold issue already present.  Not good. BTW: The soffit is the underside of the roof overhang or porch ceiling that covers the rafter bottoms. This horizontal surface usually has vents to allow air into the attic. The term soffit is typically used to refer to the flat horizontal area between the edge of the roof and the exterior veneer of the home. (Source: http://marauder.millersville.edu/~cjsander/soffit.html) 

thanks for the info

The lower level of the home was quite nice.  The living room was at the front of the house which had access to the stairs to upstairs.  It had a proper fireplace and a mantle.  I could definitely see some Christmas decorations adorning it.

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Next we went to the kitchen/dining room area.  It was very pretty!!  There was a nice overhead cupboard area over the sink but space between that and the high island bar.  So the openness was what I was looking for.  The dining space had a nice chandelier, and looked out towards the 2 car garage.  Not exactly an ideal view, but it let in a lot of light and you would always be able to tell when someone was coming home or coming for a visit.

sorry this picture doesn't fully show how awesome this kitchen was

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The master bedroom was at the end of the hallway and was very big!  It included a walk-in closet (yay!) and a proper master bathroom.  There was a funny bench/closet thing in the bathroom though.  Kind of like that started a remodel and either ran out of money or didn’t know what else to do with the space or got lazy or just really wanted a bench to hang out in the bathroom on, I’m not sure.  Either way, it seemed awkward, but everyone has different taste I guess.

There was a small bedroom on the main floor too.  My only beef with this is the ease of access to it from the front porch.  Being in crime scene, I think about these things and call me paranoid, I don’t care, but the thought of having children sleep/play in this room and people being able to crawl through the window very easily, freaks me out.  Also, it would be waaaayyyy to easy for teenagers to sneak out without us knowing.  I know, I know, putting that cart way before the horse, but these are the things that run through my head, don’t judge.

We made our way upstairs and this is when things took a turn.  There were quite a few specks of paint on the floor/carpet and the handrail.  Not a huge deal, but the only way to solve that problem is replace carpet or repaint and for a house that appeared this nice downstairs it looked all of a sudden very amateur.

There was a great room to the right with an awwwmazing hardwood floor!!  It was gorgeous, very intricate and Jason was in man cave heaven with the floor alone.  The walls were also cedar planks, it had a bay window and already had speakers mounted and wired in the room.  There was a big closet right in front of the stair way that also was in front of the room to the left of the stairs.

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This room was also very big and nice.  Almost the exact same size as the man cave room. It had vinyl/laminate flooring and also had very bright windows with good views, one towards the river so all you saw were woods.  But after looking out the window, we actually looked at the window.  Uh oh…the window frames were sagging in the middle.  Now, I’m not a window installer, I’ve never done and seriously doubt I’ll take it up in the foreseeable future, but Holmes on Homes and HGTV marathons have taught me that nothing wooden and mounted in the wall, like a window, should be sagging.  What window installer would ever be satisfied with their work and leave a window frame sagging?  

And now that my watchful eye had been honed, I also noticed that the baseboards weren’t flush with the floor.  WTH-E-Dbl hockey sticks?  Who would do that?  Okay, maybe if you were going to install carpet, but where was the carpet?  And why would you cover a hardwood floor with carpet?  Jason and I got very suspicious all of a sudden and went back to man cave.  Just to get there we had to walk through the door again and darn-it if there weren’t paint specks all over it too!  And it was an unpainted wooden door.  So the only way to get that off would be to scrap it and potentially scratch the wood or use a chemical on it and potentially stain the door.  Wow, this is looking like really shotty work all of a sudden.

So back in the man cave.  Those cedar planks on the wall? Yea, they don’t go all the way to the corner in one area and about 2 feet of installation is visible.  How do you not finish a wall all the way around?  Oh and because the ceilings are vaulted in these two rooms and clearly someone didn’t know what they were doing, they didn’t cut the planks to fit at those angles and just left space at the crease showing the drywall beneath.  Well I don’t know about u, but I’m also not a cedar plank wall installer and wouldn’t have the foggiest idea on how to finish those man cave walls.

And now that we’re examining everything with very critical eyes…that beautiful hardwood floor?  Yea, it doesn’t go all the way to the wall.  Probably because the room isn’t square and to do that intricate design they had to start in the middle and work out.  Well shucks, when you reach a wall and that long piece of hardwood doesn’t fit, why cut it and try to make it look good?  They just left the sub-floor visible!! 

So, clearly this house was not finished off by professionals or if they were, it was by very crappy contractors and I want their names so that I’ll know to never use them.  I walked back downstairs and couldn’t help but think why is this house so expensive if it’s not even finished? On the way back down the stairs Jason asked if I wanted to see the back yard and the garage.  Well my answer was easy…NO!  I didn’t even want to bother with what had to be another series of disasters that we would have to repair after completely wiping out our entire home buying budget.  No thank you….let’s move on.

I don't even want to see what the inside of this thing looks like!!

So that concluded our Rowan County house tour for the day.  We left with only one real possibility in the running and a little discouraged that there just wasn’t much left to see.

We said our goodbyes to Monica and let her know that our first day getting to know her was lovely and that we looked forward to working with her in the future.

That night, Jason and I scouted out other potential listings on the websites and just weren’t impressed with what was available.  There were very few listings in the county that were in our price range and in the area that we were really looking for.  Hmph…

Stay tuned

Love as always,

Meredith