We bought our house in the fall of 2005. It’s approximately 1400 sq. ft. with 3 bedroom and 2 water closets that share a shower room. It was a for sale by owner listing listed on the the MLS with one horrible picture of the exterior and no interior shots. We decided to drive by the place to check out the area and see what it looked like in person. My initial impression was NOT favorable. The house was a neutral tone with nothing distinctive about it and the landscaping consisted of a large number of overgrown rhododendrons.
I immediately took it off the short list, which was extremely short given we were at the bottom of the price scale for single family homes.
The following weekend we decided to tour a few homes with our real estate agent. The first place we looked at was depressing. It had a dead front lawn with a huge concrete slab for a backyard and the house itself looked like it had a number of small room additions over the years with no thought to flow or layout. The highlight was the master bedroom, located in the center of the house, with NO WINDOWS! Our agent commented that it looked like it was a mobile home at one time. Next!
The second home we looked at was a lot better, but still not up to our expectations. The current owner obviously put a lot of sweat equity in the home, but didn’t have good design sense or follow through. There was trim that was left unfinished, bad color choices in the bedrooms and a mosaic tile work in the bathroom that was all shades of hideous! It would have been a lot of work to rip out all the previous work just to get to a state where we could start renovating, but the lot was big and the house was a decent size. Unfortunately there was one more negative that killed it for me, The living room felt like a cave with poor lighting and a low ceiling.
At this point I was extremely discouraged, but Andrea suggested we take a look at the house we drove by the previous weekend. I reluctantly agreed. That reluctance was completely unfounded. Once we got through the front door I knew it was the place for us. The entryway lead to an open living/dining area with vaulted ceilings. The bedrooms were a good size, and the lot was huge with tons of old growth trees. There were some odd things about the place I noticed. The kitchen was extremely small and the ceiling heights in the kitchen, bathrooms, hallway, and bedrooms were all different heights. But the layout was good and the place looked relatively untouched since it was built. Some would say it was dated, but after seeing what else was on the market in our price range, we viewed it as a clean slate.
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