Scenes from my weekend…
Another weekend, another round of houses that we have gone thru! We had both Saturday and Sunday packed with appointments and open houses. There was some good and of course a lot of bad plus the pesky issue of budget. It seems like we have seen everything in our budget so I raised the budget a bit to see what else was out there. Guys, it wasn’t that exciting. It was actually pretty depressing. The majority of the houses we saw in the higher budget were just eh.
We started out bright and early on Saturday and fit this house first:
At first glance it’s the type of house I love. It’s from the 30’s, it has cute curb appeal, fireplace, wood floors, crown moulding, etc. I was into it except the home owners did something weird and made it a mother daughter so parts of the house are choppy but that’s okay. The main disappointment here was the property. The backyard was the size of a postage stamp, it was super close to the neighboring house on one side. It was also 80k over the high of our budget. It’s been on the market for a long time so, we were hoping there was some wiggle room, but the sellers don’t want to budge.
House number 2 was a cape, which I’m not that excited about. I was really hoping to get into a colonial for our next house. I couldn’t remember why I had asked our agent to look at it. We went in and it was a house. It had all of the necessary rooms and a medium size yard and a garage. All good things but it didn’t really do anything to my heart strings.
Then we walked down the block and I remembered why I asked the agent to look at it!
Right down the block is a beach! With beach rights which means you can your kayaks, sailboats, etc down there. Isn’t that just perfection? The boys would love it, Jon would love it, I would love it. We are water people and being this close to it would be amazing. So at the moment the okay house became “the” house. The only problem? It is above our budget and brand new to the market so it’s not like they are desperate to sell. Cue the ugly tears. We are going to keep an eye on it, but they had an open house on Sunday and it might be gone already.
Next house was sad, sad, sad and teeny tiny. Not worth a photo!
4th house of the day was on a beautiful property. Massive yard, gazebo, pond and pool! Inside it was really taken care of but stuck in the 80’s, but that can fixed! Of course there had to an issue. No basement so it had no room for a family room/playroom and only two bedrooms.
We ended our day of house hunting in Northport walking around their adorable Main St and drowning our sorrows in some ice cream cones.
The day ended with a birthday party at a bowling party! The party was for one of Hudson’s classmates, but they were sweet enough to include Asher so, he got to partake in the bowling as well! Of course there always to be a little excitement and someone bumped a bowling ball and squished Ash’s finger in between two balls and it split upon and there was blood everywhere and we thought we might need stitches. Never a dull moment! Eventually the bleeding spotted and he was able to enjoy the rest of the party and get in on the group photo!
Of course this is the best shot I could get it! It was like trying to wrangle cats. We could get some kids in place and then one would disappear, etc.
Sunday was spent hitting multiple open houses. We hit 5 and there was nothing that exciting out there. I got the most excited about a split level house, which I don’t normally love, because I don’t love an open concept. I like having a separate kitchen, living room, dining room. Regardless of my past feelings I was actually into this house and it was an ideal location for Jon’s commute, but it already had multiple offers. Highs and lows people. I go from excitement one second to tears the next. I’m at the point where I just want someone else to pick the house for me and tell me this is where you need to live and I will just have to make it work.
We ended the day having dinner at a friends house which was a great ending to the weekend. The parents got to talk and the kids got to play with minimal meltdowns by the 5 and under crowd. Did you follow along on instagram stories? Head over to instagram @camilapavone and you can get more peeks at the houses we saw, the breakdowns we had and a parenting fail that Jon and I were both dying over.
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My living room is one of the rooms that evolved drastically from when we first moved one. Originally I painted the walls chocolate brown and did accents of white, blue and orange. That lasted maybe 2 years.
Our dining room sat empty for months. Okay maybe it was empty for just a handful of weeks and then we couldn’t take it anymore and put in a folding table and plastic outdoor chairs, but in my mind that was still empty.
On the main floor of our house we have a Florida room. Being that it’s a Florida room it is a considered a 3 season room, because there is no heat in the room. The previous owners used it as an indoor patio with outdoor furniture and it looked like this when we moved in.
I feel your pain on the house hunt. I really want to move into a center hall Colonial next, and I’ve been looking for literally years. There’s maybe three in the town we live in now, all of them over our price range even if they were for sale (they’re not and haven’t been), and even if I expand the search to nearby cities the few I see are either way over budget or in bad neighborhoods/bad school districts.
House #2 is cute, but if you don’t feel it, you don’t feel it. I can’t remember, have you guys decided not to build?
Thanks! We are going on 2 years now looking! I’m exhausted. We like old houses so we really weren’t thinking about doing a new build. I started considering it a couple of weeks ago, but it would be way too expensive. Even land is going for $400k-$500k and then we would need to build so it starts adding up quickly!
Hang in there girl! ????????????
Thanks, love! I feel like such a baby complaining about it, but I’m just so spent and it’s really starting to stress me out.
Rent in your ideal school district. Just take the stress off your shoulders and your sons will still be in a great school. You’ll have plenty of time to find the house in the right neighborhood. And since you’re a designer, you can make whatever house you end up in, look the way you want. There is no need to rush it. Buying is an emotional, exhausting process. Best of luck!