House Hunting Duds

In My Humble Opinion
181

[quote=MacLir;14653196

Adding the room had impacted the kitchen window. When they converted the former outside wall, part of the window was left as a pass-through, but only a small part, so there was essentially no outside light into the kitchen. Combine this with very dark stained wood cabinets, and the result was that you half-expected to meet Dracula at the sink. :eek:

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We rented a house in Jewett City with a vampire laden bathroom.

The lot the house was on was 2 level, an upper small lawn with a 15 foot cliff drop to the rest of the yard, so effectively the house was built with the back wall 5 feet in front of a cliff. Imagine now a long narrow bathroom - the kind that is effectively 5 feet wide and 12-15 feet long. All the appliances and so forth were along the right wall as one went in. First was a fairly standard old school vanitywith single sink, mirrored medicine cabinet, and light bar with those big round light bulbs. Imagine the vanity in a dark walnut, to match the fabulous 70s type cheap pressed pine veneer wall paneling. A short wall, the width of the tub was the standard used without. Then the tub, also along the right hand wall. When we rented the place, it had a dark forest green shower curtain. We replaced it with a transparent plastic one as there was no light fixture in the section of the bathroom where the tub was. There was a ceiling heater/vent thingy though. Then another short segment of wall, then the final little cubical with a toilet, an american standard in a sad beige that matched neither tub nor sink. And the window. The cliff face came close to the house here, so it was like being in a well with no Lassie. Because of how the house was laid out, the toilet was effectively tucked well away from anywhere there was a living person - you literally could not hear someone yelling for you from the living room or the front bedroom, and people in the kitchen were muffled so you could pretty much tell they were yelling for you and that was it. A long thin dark walnut cave with brown walls and matching black walnut flooring.

On the plus side, the cat loved it, we left the window propped open for him most of the year, that spot of the yard was effectively blocked off from the world and we had the dogs in the yard.

182

Our agents before just let us log into the MLS ourselves and search. Might be worth finding out how you can do that.

183

We had a great agent when we found this house, she found exactly what we said we wanted. The problem of course being we were mistaken and no where near ready to downsize to the extent that we did. She’s still around and if we stay in this side of the city we’ll absolutely use her again.

It’s publicly available in Canada but the realtor version allows for some additional search criteria. I am NOT looking yet though. We have a lease agreement keeping us in our current home until June 2013 and I don’t want to fall in love with something and give away the crazy rent we negotiated as a part of the sale.

MUST NOT LOOK!

184

Or “cozy” - so small, you have to go outside to change your mind.
“Fixer upper” - you’d better, since it’s about to fall apart.

We took advantage of that - we replaced old, crappy stuff with new stuff - whatever we could find on sale (we did the work as good as we could, though). Our house sold in days. We are aware of that, though, so we wanted a place that wasn’t “renovated” - like you say, we’d have to re-do it, not knowing how badly it was done in the first place.

Moolitherial, you actually should be looking - your search will go a lot better once you seriously start looking if you know all about the real estate market in your area.

185

Ours did the same; it was awesome.

We’ve gone through three house hunting cycles in the six years we’ve been married. We seen at least one house with a Boo Radley room (padlocked door, bars on window, smelled of urine).

Sorry About the View House. Nice big picture window in the family room to show off . . . the rusty tin roof and decrepit RV (on blocks in the driveway) the neighbors have.

Would You Like Some Yard With Your ____. In one case the yard was 90% in-ground pool. Similar to someone earlier, I live in a place that will have below-freezing temperatures in the winter and a pool is much extra work. We also saw a house where they just paved the back yard and made it a basketball court. At least you don’t have to mow.

186

Jeeze, I’m glad we didn’t see that when we were house-hunting - I’m not sure how I would have stopped my husband from buying it. :smiley:

187

There’s also the “Handyman Special” which no should buy unless you’re best friends with Bob Vila.

And the ever-popular, “Tastefully decorated throughout!” which means flocked wallpaper in every room. Except the ones that have gold-veined mirrors permanently cemented on the walls.

188

“The second most popular type of hill in Florida*” house: A 3-bedroom house on a half acre of land for only $100,000 (in the middle of the housing boom), what’s not to love? Well, it had a septic system. A rather large septic system. Whose storage tank was half buried in the dead center of the back yard, rendering it only slightly more useful than the strip of grass near the average McMansion.

Plus it was about 3 miles past my range, but I would have considered it if not for the “hill”.

*Edged out by highway overpasses and bridges due to their height.

189

A few years ago, I was thinking of buying a house in Easton PA.

Virtually everything I was shown featured paneling that made the places look like a BPOE recreation hall - circa 1969.

Like these:

I don’t know if it was that everyone decided to renovate at the same time or what; the man I was dating surmised it was easier to slap up & install than to properly install and smooth out drywall.

I also did a lot of research beforehand, and after having my suspicions confirmed, I refused to be shown anything that wouldn’t feature a picture of either the kitchen or the bathroom on the listing website. I learned that meant a disaster.

UT

190

Actually, you do not want to be buddies with Bob Vilas, his techniques tend to be not quite up to code. Our house, when we bought it 20 years ago looked great [another quibble we have is with the home inspector we hired, we still think he was being paid off by the previous owner, a contractor/home flipper in area] however certain issues cropped up. The newly installed septic tank is literally the smallest one our plumber has ever seen. Unlike a real tank, it needs to be pumped out every 6 months, no matter how much Oscar we dump into the toilet, restrict flushing nontoilet paper substances, going for the low water amount toilets, every desert watersaving thing my desert rat hubby can think of. The not entirely decorative beams in our house are twisting and checking, one is rather thorougly split - the engineer we brought in told ius it is just barely managing to hold on. When we reroof next summer we are planning on replacing the 2 beams in the cathedral ceilinged living/kitchen end of the house are being replaced with composite beams with cosmetic veneering. The electrical outlets [and here is why we think our inspector was brbed] have the usual 3 prong outlets, with no ground wire having been run. The only outlet in the entire house that is properly grounded is the GFI outlet in the bathroom by the sink. The bathroom fan is vented into the crawlspace attic area above the bedrooms/bath. There is no effective insulation in the roof of the house. Bare shingles all winter, baby. There is no ash clean out nor any chimney liner for the woodstove, which we fixed when we bought the place. The woodstove that he plunked down in the living room had a crack across the top so that any combustion gasses would gently seep into the house. We replaced that stove with a newer cheap one we bought off the want ads until I bought a kick ass bakers woodstove from Lehman’s catalog. [that stove is moving with us, I think I will ask for it to be buried with me. I love that stove.]

I have seen a lot of properties of the vintage with wood paneling. I have the serious belief that it was actually an attempt to emulate the lovely wood paneling of craftsman and adirondak houses. It utterly fails, mind you. I absolutely lurves me a proper craftsman.

191

It could be as simple as cheap, ugly wood panelling was the bathroom strip lights of its day.

192

Yes. Sorry. I should have spelled it out.

193

The Parade Route House: When we were looking for a lake cabin, we saw one place that was on the most beautiful lake we saw, with an island in site just out the window. The big deal breaker, not mentioned in the description, was that it was directly adjacent to the public boat ramp. There was a huge line of pickup trucks and trailers right in front of the house! Not such a comfy sight with little ones. Also, I knew I would burst an aneurysm waiting in a line of traffic TO GET TO MY OWN CABIN!

In a similar vein, there is a street in my city which has earned the official name of Christmas Lane. Almost everyone there (and on adjacent streets) goes all out on Christmas decorations. In the week or two before Christmas, there is a perpetual parade of cars with people from all around the area taking in the sight. We enjoy an occasional visit, but I get a bit twitchy as my (imaginary) aneurysm wants to blow in sympathy for the poor schmucks who had to do a big job of Christmas decorating just to keep up with the Jones’, only to end up waiting in a line of traffic TO GET TO THEIR OWN HOUSES!

194

Back when I was fresh out of college, a roommate and I went looking for a house. The idea was that if we found a good place, whichever one of us liked it better would buy it, and the other would kick in half the mortgage and related costs as rent. So we found an agent, gave her a rundown on our requirements and budget, and turned her loose.

A few days later, she takes us to see a place. The listing was appealing–nice size, decent neighborhood, reasonable price. It seemed to tick all the boxes on our list of requirements.

Then we arrived at the Pepto Palace.

Before that day, I didn’t even know they made pink brick. Not red, not “rust” or whatever. Pink. Almost-but-not-quite hot pink. Roomie and I were horrified, but we were also young and new to this house-shopping business, so we didn’t immediately call off the tour. (There may also have been some morbid curiosity at work, at least on my part.)

Mistaking our stunned silence for something positive, our agent cheerfully ushered us through the front door into the living room, which was…pink. But not the relatively wholesome pink of the brick. Oh no. The carpet was a pale pink, resembling nothing so much as the pelt of an enormous, obnoxiously dyed poodle. The walls and ceiling(!) were a darker pink, mottled with shadings of purple that brought to mind the inside of an upset stomach.

We finally managed to halt the proceedings in a bathroom, which actually contained the first non-pink thing we’d seen in the whole house. No, not the tub or toilet–those were the chalky pink of pure Pepto. The light switch plate was not pink. It was, however, covered with faux gold-leaf paint and adorned with frolicking cherubim. We gave up on getting our agent to listen to us, turned on our heels, and walked out (hurrying a bit through the living room, lest it sense the escape of its prey and spray gastric juices at us).

We never got a straight answer as to why she showed us that house. In our more charitable moments, we speculated that she was so desperate to unload it that she showed it to everyone, or that she was traumatized by it and crying out for help. Our best guess, though, was that she thought we were a gay couple, and thus magically endowed with superhuman resistance to pink.

(We never did buy a house. We rented one until roomie got married and moved out.)

195

hahhaaa, WHERE do you find pink bathroom fixtures? Egads! I mean, you could paint the walls and redo the carpets, but a pink bathtub?? I suppose there’s no accounting for taste… :stuck_out_tongue:

Your story reminds me of this kooky lady in the neighborhood I grew up in. Who painted the outside of her beautiful, natural brick house… salmon. Fucking day-glo salmon fucking bricks. We didn’t have a HOA or anything that would have prevented her from doing it, it was just an old lower-middle class neighborhood. Every time we passed it, my parents (and friend’s parents) commented on how they could sense their property values plummeting. heh.

*Who *wants a salmon house?

196

Links to suppliers of said pink items contained in the site :smiley:

UT

197

A family of grizzlies perhaps? Especially if it’s right on the river.

198

I might have put in an offer with a caveat that they either clear the trash, or a generous price discount as a “trash removal” fee.

The house I grew up in had dark wood panelling in the den. The same room with the yellow shag carpet. It didn’t look bad to me. shrug The paneling was neat and well done. I know my mom would have liked to have done something to brighten the room, but they never did. Even after replacing the carpet.

199

To our minds the trash wasn’t the real problem, it was the concrete and steel fixtures - ut would have taken a gang of guys with jackhammers significant time to remove! :eek:

200

A house on a quite well-to-do street painted their lovely white brick house black. Pitch black. With gold accents.