5/2 House Hunting: House 3
House 3: $450,000 4 bed / 1.75 bath / 1,900 square feet / 3,720 square foot lot / off street parking
The Good:
The public space on the main floor is EXACTLY what we are looking for. It is one giant open area with an amazing kitchen, great living room and then “extra” space off to the side currently being used as a dining room, but is really big enough to be used for just about anything.
The Bad:
And that was it. The biggest issue for us was that there was no way to add covered parking, and we need at least one covered parking spot and could really use two.
The yard was nice but small and with no fencing, so we would need to start by putting in a fence.
Whoever redid the house, redid it with the purpose (perhaps) of renting out the lower level. Each floor has one secondary bedroom and one master bedroom. This creates a problem when you have 2 kids who each need their own room because there is a built in inequity. Either one child gets a master and one gets a secondary, or they both get a secondary, but that means one child gets a floor all to themselves (at least for bedroom purposes.)
There’s also a small kitchen on the lower level that seems to have no real purpose.
The only laundry space in the entire place was a closet on the lower level (problem if you were renting that out separate from the upper level). It was literally big enough for a stacked washer dryer and nothing else.
The final seal on knowing this was not for us, was the fact that when they redid the house, they did not extend the forced air heat to the basement, so there was electric wall heat. They also did not redo the windows, so electric wall heat with aluminum frame windows on the lower level. That’s a heating bill nightmare right there.
The Verdict:
We spent very little time in this house. It is lovely and that main floor public space is exactly what we want. But knowing we could not achieve any covered parking, and then followed with the aluminum pain windows on the lower level, it was a no, and we just moved on.
