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8:27 p.m. - 2005-05-02
One beautiful painted lady after another....that's Elgin (but beware the crack house on the corner)

I'm Soooooo Excited

Well...Mike and I went to our first Open Houses. It was also Mike's first foray into Elgin. We went with the intention of attending one open house (for the house I posted the pictures of) and I had a list of 16 I got off the internet to drive by and check out.

I carefully mapped our route so that Mike's first glimpse of Elgin was the nice parts and sort of steered him away from driving though crack house infested neighborhoods.

I was fully prepared for him to express his displeasure at the slightest thing...but....surprise, surprise...he kept smiling. He voiced great pleasure in he fact that the radio reception in Elgin was superb to the radio reception in Elk Grove (he is a short wave radio buff). He was pleasant and enjoyable to be with all day and seemed fully committed to my getting the house "I" want...in Elgin.

One house we rode by happened to have an open house. We went in. The realtor was lovely and gracious and let us look around unencumbered, yet made herself available when we had a question. This house was picture perfect and had a front porch to die for. We walked in and noticed immediately that all the floors made a sharp slant to the south. You could have dropped a marble on the North end and it would have quickly rolled South. This is not a good sign. The stair cases were so narrow and steep that it felt uncomfortable to go from one level to the other. There were no bannisters...coming down was scary....going up with nothing to help hoist my fat ass up...was hard. We walked out...said good by to the nice young realtor lady and sighed as we looked again at the lovely, lovely wrap around porch.

Alas...we are buying a house and not a porch...so we had to pass it up.

Next stop was the beautiful house I posted pictures of.....and....it was perfect....well almost perfect. Ok..it needed some work but nothing major...nothing we wouldn't be willing to do. I got excited as we went from one charming room to the other. This house had everything we needed. It was perfect in almost every way. I noticed that the bathroom would need a re do...but at the price it was being offered...I could handle that.

We went into the back yard. There was no grass in the yard but plenty of it growing in the gutters. Even the weeds were struggling to grow. Now, part of my reasoning for a single family home is that I have to have a GIANT HEIRLOOM VEGGIE GARDEN....not a tiny plain ol veggie garden. Here in the land of too much shade....that would be impossible. Now I don't mind remaking the landscaping and making it my own, but smack dab in the center of the yard was the biggest, tallest, most collosal and UGLY!!! Pine tree, I had ever seen in my life. It must have been 100 feet tall and it stood like an umbrella over the entire house, garage and yard. The trunk must have 2 feet in diameter. Although it would be ashame to chop down such an old tree, it was ugleeeeeeee!!! This is where Mike and I had our first spat.

When I said "we'll need to spend a few hundred to have this ugly tree chopped down",

he said, "The tree stays, it shades the whole house and will make it cooler in the summer."

This is where Mike and I always clash....form vs. function. He doesn't give a damn about how anything looks, as long as he is warm in winter, cool in summer and the TV viewing is perfect and the sound system is at it's optimum performance.

Early in our marriage, I lived with a giant "T" taped to our wall, made out of antennae wire so he could get the best stereo reception. I have since grown much bolder about how my place looks and we frequently argue about it.

The garage doors were old fashioned and opened up like barn doors. They would have to be replaced...still..that's ok. We went in the garage and to our delight found a stairway leading to a second level for tons of storage.

I was almost ready to tell him I'd like to make an offer when we saw the problem.....

I noticed part of the foundation had been patched... and badly.

The patch was starting to crumble. I pointed it out and that is when she told us about the seepage.

This realtor was a pain in the ass. She followed us from room to room talking incessantly, not letting us linger or look at any one thing too long. She talked fast and was unable to look us in the eye. She told fibs like the house was a "Sears, craftsman style bunglow."...well, it might have been cute but I know what to look for in a Sears home....and this was not a Sears home. This woman was completely irritating.

Anyway, back to the seepage. Mike had commented that the basement smelled really musty and being allergic to mold and mildew, this bothered him. Well, it turns out that when it rains, the water runs off of the garage roof, and down the driveway and runs right into the basement, eating away at the foundation.

"Oh, it's an easy fix", she lied, "just put new gutters on the roof of the garage and redirect the water and it will stop coming in."

Something tells me that if the fix were this easy, someone would have done it long ago.

Mike and I realize that in buying an old house, we would have to have some work done to it but.....

Questions starting running through our minds...

How long has water been eating away at that foundation?

Once the work to repair the problem was started, would they find more and more problems as they chopped through our driveway to fix it.

Would this little house end up being a money pit we would be sorry we bought?P>

Now we know why the price was dropped.

As we left, the yackety realtor said, "If you go to another open house and meet another realtor, just tell them that you are already working with someone." She handed me her card. I threw it in the garbage at McDonalds when we went for lunch.

Well, we havn't said no to it yet. We are in fact just beginning to look. It will be 2 months before we will be ready to sell our home and therefore are not in the position to bid right now anyway. However, if the right house should present itself at the right time...who knows. We could accelerate our plans.

We continued to drive by the 16 houses on my list, eliminating them one by one for various reasons.

Next door to a crack house.

Looks like the Munsters live there.

Too narrow of a driveway.

Isn't near as pretty as the picture

Of course the houses we loved the most had some other factor that we had to give up. In the end, there were only 3 houses left on the list.

Today, I hired the sweet young realtor from the first open house. I gave her all my criteria, told her of the 3 homes I was interested in seeing and told her the neighborhoods I was interested in.

Two of the 3 houses were already under contract (and one had a 27 x 15 rec room with a fireplace and beamed ceilings...it was a doll house in what they call Elgins Gold coast...I coulda pretended I was rich....Mike was alreay pricing pool tables in his mind."

So....out of 16 houses...we are down to 1 that is suitable for us and available which doesn't have a river that runs through the bsement in rainy seasons.

We are still keeping that little house in mind but with the beautiful old homes in Elgin, looking will be half the fun and now that the process has started, I don't think I will be in any hurry. I aim to find my dream home and I will find her.

P.S. I also found out today that I qualify for a mortgage enough to buy a truly beautiful home. My credit is the best credit rating you can have and my daughters boyfriend is a miracle worker when it comes to mortgages. The sweetheart is also waiving all of his commission, making this a real deal for me.

P. I. Yarnsmith

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