Apparently some of my stress about the house was worrying about it being too much to repair.

Now that we have everyone coming in (except a roofer–have not got a roofer yet), I feel much better. If the house has significant issues, we will know and can make decisions from that. If the house doesn’t have significant issues, we will know and rejoice.

I quite like the house. I wish some of the space was divided a little bit differently, but I do think we can work with what we have.

The laundry room is huge. We plan on putting a regular refrigerator out there after we get a fridge-only refrigerator for the kitchen. I think that will be plenty for our frozen goods. I don’t know where we will plug it in, but hopefully there is somewhere.

Also in the laundry room I think we should put the high table. It would be a good table for folding clothes and it can be stretched out when you need more room and retracted when you don’t. I quite like that idea.

I said I wanted the yellow bathroomed bedroom at the front for my office–and that probably is the best choice for my office because it is farther away from the master. It is a little smaller than the other bedroom, but it is a good place. I like its closet better–though that definitely needs work.

What will I put in the office? Grampa Ben’s dresser. My chaise lounge. A couple of bookshelves. (We are trying to figure out where to put those and that seems reasonable.)

I don’t know. The bathroom in that room is better for getting dressed, which I am going to be doing way more than our guests. Maybe I will have to purchase a bigger armoire for my clothes. That closet definitely doesn’t have much space.

Even though it isn’t really necessary, I kind of like the three-way mirror dresser. Mom bought it for me from Debra (my friend from KW for a year or so) because it reminded me of the one we got when we lived in Kerrville that was stolen when we lived in Tyler. But honestly I don’t need it and it doesn’t hold much. I guess I could give it away… Do I need to? I am not sure. I won’t really know until we’ve moved in and I’ll have to make the decision before then.

The china cabinet that was my Grama Helen’s will go away. I am a bit sad about that because it is my only Duncan Phyfe piece, but I am also okay with it. It won’t fit in the house and the white IKEA cabinets will show the blue glass off much better and match the kitchen well enough that they won’t look wrong.

I am starting to think that the armoire might be useful in the new house, though I also think that it wouldn’t really hold a lot of clothes. I will have to consider that more carefully perhaps.

There is an interesting/odd/funky corner where I think I might put the small cabinet my mother purchased and had in her dining room. I like it and it holds part of my collections. Of course, it would also be a good place to put bookshelves and a small chair.

Ron said I can put blue glass in the inset in the den. I am not sure how that will look, but I am certainly interested in giving it a try.

The red couch is going to have to go in the front living area, because I think it would clash with the brick on the den floor. Does that mean we will put the brown couch in the living room? Or will we buy “appropriate” mid-century modern furniture? I enjoy looking, but I’m not sure how good I would feel about buying online… It would be cool to have a royal blue couch though. I would quite like that.

The front room could be a media room–and then the back could just be Ron’s office, if he wanted. I wonder what the acoustics are like in the house? It would be good to know that, but I am not sure how I would find out before we try it out.

I think the big coffee table will probably go in the den.

What will go in the guest room? Ah, the small three mirrored dresser, a bed. That might work quite well. The room is pretty big. I could probably even put my grandfather closet in there. It seems to be about the right height for that house.

You know, we aren’t going to move this furniture over. I can see hiring movers to move the furniture, but that also means we are going to have to get boxes (again) and pack up my glass. That means something besides just boxes or it will break.

Oh well. Has to be done unless I want to give it all up. NOT.

I was thinking that the pool table would fit in the living room–but that would make that room way too crowded for the media room, I think. Maybe not. 24×14? Is that what it is? I don’t know. Ron has the measurements. Anyway it would be the first thing you see when you came in the house and I don’t think that is a good idea.

The man cave is going to be hot in summer and cold in winter–much like the room we have now. I’m not sure that is a good thing. I guess you can’t have everything, though. Seems like you should be able to.

Too bad there isn’t a bathroom in the back. We could make that the guest room.

What if we put the pool table in the man cave and the media room in the living room? That is where they have their television. Of course, their tv isn’t as massive as ours, nor on as huge a piece of furniture.

You know what, I don’t think our dining room table will fit in the dining room if it is extended for more people. Going to have to check that out. Dining room is 12x 14’6″. Guess I gotta get up and measure the table. Okay, not the table. It is 8×4. The extension is 2 feet long. So, with the extension, the table is 10×4. That means that when it is extended it will stick into the kitchen. Not sure how I feel about that. Guess we’ll put it together and find out.

At one point I was thinking about putting bookshelves in the dining room to cover up that weird window into the garage. Don’t think I really want to do that, though. The dining room just isn’t big enough.

Maybe use one of the red curtains from the back room in there. It would pull the red from the living room into the dining room.

My next question is–where are we going to put our art? I quite like the big Tarkay and would put it in the living room with Suzanna. I wonder what Ron thinks of that. The colors are right and they’re huge like the room.

Not as sure what we will put in the den. Do you want to put holes in that grass cloth? If you don’t, what would you hang the pieces with?

I told Ron that my awesome blue office chair would be great in our new house, but I am not sure I want to bring it home and share it. When I’ve looked online in the past, I have not found a similar chair. Of course, I’ve also looked in the cheaper places. Maybe there is a cool chair like it in blue on one of the more expensive sites.

After talking about the house for three weeks, having seen it twice, we decided to go back and look at it again and make an offer. It probably says something about my mixed feelings that all the good things in the house I took for granted (the awesome floors, the cool lights) and I saw all the visible flaws.

I am sitting here right now keeping my mouth shut, but thinking about how it isn’t going to really work for us. The man cave is dark, which I guess is good for movies, but not great for SADS. Why is he taking the man cave for his office? Because there isn’t another one. There aren’t four bedrooms, though the man cave makes the third living room.

It doesn’t have big closets… or it has some big closets and others that are big but not set up for hanging clothes. It’s enough of an issue that Ron says we will need to buy armoires. Why are we buying a house without closet space? That was one of the problems here. Well, it does have closet space, just not in the bedrooms.

The yard is HUGE, which means I will be purchasing a riding lawn mower.

The sprinkler system may technically be installed, but it doesn’t work at all. The pump isn’t even on our property. What the heck is up with that?

Ron wants me to get rid of the pool table, again.

I thought about saying I would take the man cave and he could have a bedroom for his office, but that won’t really work because I need a bathroom and there’s not one back there. I also thought about putting in a bathroom back there and making it the guest room, but he’s planning to use it for a television viewing room. That will definitely keep it away from the master in terms of noise, so I am looking forward to that.

I’m not too thrilled that it feels like it isn’t a solid house. The beams in the structure are wooden. How long does wood last for that? Well, the good news is the piers are concrete. And in 2014 there didn’t seem to be any problem with the wood, so maybe that is fine. I think it is weird that the N4th house had steel and this house, built 30 years later, has wood. But according to what I read, that’s not really a problem.

That’s good.

The house inspection report from 2 years ago shows several areas of deficiency:
electrical, which they did nothing about
ducts and insulation, which they did nothing about
water leakage under the house, which they did nothing about
plumbing/drainage, the draining and the flushing were slow, there was corrosion, AND there were cast iron pipes visible in the crawl space–which I guess means we should have a plumber come out and check–Ron will not be happy about calling a plumber. Although a plumber could also look at the water heater and tell us what needs to be done about that.

He has already called HVAC people, electrical, and foundation. He hasn’t heard back from foundation people or electrical on whether they can come. What are we going to do if they can’t? We really need to know. Our house here was $20k to do foundation. The owners took half of that. Why did we buy a house with $10k in repairs? Because we liked the kitchen. However, $10k ended up being $15K once we moved in, so I really want to know as much about issues as we can.

Does that mean we should just plan on needing an extra $5k once we get in? Maybe. That sucks.

How much is going to be too much repair for this house? If we’re talking tens of thousands of dollars for delayed maintenance, I am not going to be happy, but I don’t think Ron would care. He flat out said we could put $20k into and not be a problem.

The realtor says the house is priced low, but the house isn’t priced low for that area. The two Moore houses and the Whittier house are all in that price range and that square footage.

I am afraid this house, cool and funky though it is, is going to be a sinkhole for money. Yes, we have money. No, that is not how I want to spend it.

The KW house people are looking at getting a new mortgage now. We may get that money soon. That would be awesome. Of course, it would have been more awesome to get it while we were still looking for houses. At this point it would be most awesome to get it before we have to pay for a loan. God, could we get it soon?

Like EC best of the three, in terms of house. Scares me neighborhood (resale and saftety) and yard, though.

Like V best in terms of space. Like the yard. Small kitchen. Most expensive house in its neighborhood, so bad resale.

I would be willing to settle for either of these houses. I think either would work better than the house we have for us, our stuff, and for entertaining.

Because they have issues, and because Stonecrest didn’t have issues, I think it might be possible to find a better house for us. However, Ron is sick of talking about it and I haven’t thought it through in words well enough to satisfy me.

Be done.
Be dissatisfied.
Be frustrated.