3/15 House Hunting: House 1

House 1: $385,000 4 bed / 2 bath / 2,080 square feet / 4,000 square foot lot / garage

The Good:

Based on the pictures, the price, and location, this was the house I was most interested in seeing today. It had a nice large kitchen with eat in space, and good sized, fully fenced back yard. The fireplace was lovely, and the two main floor bedrooms were pretty comparable, with a bathroom in between, making them good for the girls.

The basement had been nicely finished with a family/entertainment room that was nice, and would allow perhaps for a child play area that wasn’t the main floor.

The Bad:

The pictures made the place look brighter, maybe even cleaner than it was. I can’t really say, it just seemed dingier in person. It was a gray, rainy day, and maybe that had an effect.

The flow of the main floor wasn’t that great. While the kitchen was nice and big, it was still very much cut off from the main public spaces of the house.

The basement master meant that the girls would be on the main floor, but their likely play space would be right outside my bedroom. And while the finished entertainment room was nice, I am not certain it was actually big enough for good use of the Kinnect.

The hallways and stairways were very narrow, with a lot of having to step off to the side to let other people pass.

Finally, the neighborhood was not great. I would not have wanted the girls playing outside in this neighborhood.

The Verdict:

As excited as I was to see this house, pretty much from the moment I pulled up (having driven through a sketchy area to get there), I knew it was not for us. The house is a good deal, and it was probably the busiest of the open houses we went to today, but that also really made me notice the tightness of the corridors.

I was really saddened by the seeming disconnect between the house I saw in the pictures and the house I saw in person. This is not the house for us.