And the search continues...

Husband and I did more house hunting last night - and there were some doozies. It's so interesting and almost voyeuristic to go into someone's home and open their closets, creep into their basements, and judge their abode and style of living. It seems, even though the housing market has taken a downturn and buyers are a precious commodity, some people put very little effort into giving their house any kind of customer appeal. For example, I was particularly interested in a white home in the Hedgewood Subdivision. It had everything we wanted: 3-bedrooms, 2-bathrooms, a basement, closer to work. While the pictures did indicate the house would need some new carpeting, kitchen flooring, and possibly a cover-up on some wood paneling, the house looked roomy, sophisticated, and comfortable.

Then we saw it in person.

Husband has noted a trend with the houses we've seen thus far - if the garage door is jacked up in any significant way, he doesn't end up liking the house itself. This garage door, up close, had chipped paint and a wonky basketball net attached that was not identifiable to me from the photograph. The carpeting and wood paneling was much worse than I'd envisioned (orange/brown fuzz - was the house's flooring growing mold? - with barn siding for walls). The exceedingly rustic "family room" was actually a converted porch - they even left the sliding glass door as a divider between this room and the kitchen! The rest of the house was more of the same, and when we stepped outside, we were greeted with a half-cocked baby swing with an extraordinarily large dog bone sitting in it. No, not a baby in the baby swing, a slobbery dog bone in the baby swing.

It was actually quite disturbing. And they wanted over $130,000. But was the dog bone baby swing included?!

We saw two houses that we would actually dare to live in, but one was a bit out of our price range (I will be keeping my eye on it!) and the other had a very dangerous driveway leading onto 9th Street, forcing the homeowner to back out into traffic. *Sighs*

So if you happen across a listing for a 3-bedroom, 2-bath house with a basement and cable access, let us know; we remain, essentially, homeless.