Impressions

We met with our realtor yesterday, spent about an hour reviewing papers and properties with her at a restaurant, and then spent about six and one-half, possibly seven hours driving around and looking at properties.  We were absolutely exhausted by the time we got home!  The weather could not have been better had we chosen it: blue skies, sunny and in the low seventies.  A lovely day, indeed.

Two homes, including the colonial farmhouse on 5 acres with the in-law suite we were excited to see in Hume, went under contract in the past week.  Damn.  We anticipated that the Hume house might go more quickly since the price recently dropped substantially, but we would have liked to have seen the inside.  Oh well.

As pertaining to the properties we actually did see, summary is as follows:

• House #1, Warrenton: Small-ish but cute.  Hardwood (laminate?) floors, crown molding, recently painted.  Kitchen would be better for a single professional than for two of us cooking together.   Good-sized backyard.  Planking exterior makes for an attractive home.  Very loud and constant traffic noise from a busy road two lots down makes it thoroughly undesirable.
• House #2, Warrenton: One of the most interesting candidates so far.  New on the market and at the very high end of our price range.  Quiet residential neighborhood; it's a subdivision but doesn't feel like one, really.  Little girls riding their bikes waved as we drove by - very cute.  Cape Cod exterior that we both like, with beautifully maintained front yard and a large, flat back yard.  Previous owners already have a large garden started.  Kitchen is nice; appliances not the newest but very serviceable, and the kitchen opens onto a nice deck overlooking the backyard.  Dining room has big bay window.  Weird little closet immediately inside the front door that does strange things to the space; N was telling me how he would move it.  Small, oddly-shaped living room with bland gray carpet.  Stairs and upstairs done in the same boring grey carpet that seems to suck some personality out of the place.  Three reasonably-sized bedrooms.  Master is doable with a small master bath.  The house is nice, but its personality (from my point of view) seems almost exclusively confined to the exterior and the grounds (which is are admittedly very nice).  With painted walls and our stuff in it I might feel differently.  The realtor feels the price is excellent, but as I mentioned, it's at the very highest price point of what we can afford. 
• House #3, Warrenton: Opened the car door.  Listened to the roaring traffic.  Closed the car door and moved on.
• House #4, Marshall: Nice location.  That's it.  House is on a heavily wooded lot.  The home itself needs so much structural repair that you would be better off tearing it down and starting over.  No, really.  The roof is caving in and we think someone might be squatting in it.  Also, dead mice.  Eww.  The bank that owns this place needs a reality check on the price they're asking.
• House #5, Hume: Early 20th century farmhouse on 3 acres.  Beautiful mountain views that could be made better if you took down some pine trees.  Weird little enclosed porch in the front that looks like it used to be the exterior porch.  Now the house looks like it needs a porch again.  Vinyl siding in colors that are ok, not great.  Hardwood floors everywhere except the enclosed porch and a little porch off the back.  Very large kitchen, much of it recently remodeled.  Does not have everything we would want in the kitchen (dishwasher), but lots of space to add it, plus add an island or make it an eat-in-kitchen.  Weird little first-floor bathroom between rooms in an odd way that is hard to explain.  Neat old staircase upstairs to four large bedrooms.  Upstairs bathroom is smaller than the one in my first apartment in Boston.  Decent closet space.  3 acres with multiple outbuildings on it; one barn that could be salvageable and two sheds that probably need to go.  I ran around this house ooh-ing and aah-ing for a good ten minutes, looking at N and saying "I want it!"  Then reality set in.  Walls are hardwood paneling.  All of them, except the kitchen.  That's a lot of painting.  Electrical and plumbing would need to be completely redone immediately for safety's sake (it's a 1909 farmhouse, what did I think was going to happen?).  Needs a bathroom remodel and soon.  We would want to offer about $50K less than they're asking for on this house, and then we would still have to go back to the bank for a loan to fix it up.  So sadly, although this may be someone's dream project, it's really not ours at this point in our lives.
• House #6, Marshall: Near to some sort of transformer, so from the front yard you can hear high-power lines.  You can't hear them from inside or from the gigantic backyard that already has a huge garden it it.  The backyard is great; the house is small and feels tight, plus it has has taken a cosmetic beating from the large family currently living there.  N joked that the separate garage seems larger than the house - the sad thing is that I think he's right.
• House #7, The Plains: The 1970's are alive and well in this home.  Fake wood paneling everywhere and ugly green carpet laid over a pretty hardwood floor.   N pointed out that the nicest part of the home is the hardwood staircase downstairs to the basement.  Said basement is gigantic, with 70's flower-printed chairs and rugs.  Made me want to go buy bell bottoms.  This is not a deal-breaker, but the loud traffic noise is.  Enough said.
• House #8, Delaplane: The house that hurts. 5 minutes from I-66 but quiet as can be.  Giant wooded lot but still has plenty of room for gardening or hypothetical future children to play.  Pretty colored siding.  Hardwood floors.  A sizeable kitchen that flows into a large living room with stone fireplace.  Pretty colors, crown molding, wainscoting. Three bedrooms, all of reasonable size.  Large master bath that could use a redo but is perfectly serviceable.  A gigantic deck off the back of the house with....wait for it...a gazebo!  A second floor that would make a good computer room/exercise room.  Needs a good cleaning and a little bit of cosmetic, not-really-structural stuff.  A giant partially finished basement that could dramatically expand available space.  This house has character in spades but is structurally sound.  We really, really liked it.  A lot.  Short sale?  That's ok!  Then.....then we found out that there is no high-speed internet available at that location.  OUCH.  For our lifestyle?  Complete deal-breaker.  One we had not anticipated; the no-longer-on-the-market farmhouse in Hume has broadband, for crying out loud!  This one stings.
• House #9, Front Royal: Up a mountain in a subdivision that requires a keycode to get in.  Seriously, guys?  What are you worried about?  Moving on...Exterior is pretty nice.  Large living room with very high ceilings and built-in bookcases.  Ugly little kitchen with fluorescent lighting that has done bad things to the color of the cabinets.  Large master bedroom/bath off the dining room, which is...odd?  Three identical small bedrooms upstairs, all connecting to a hallway that overlooks the giant living room.  Said living space tries to be grandiose but it doesn't fit with the rest of the house.  The white carpet and walls have not aged well.  All of this could possibly be forgiven, but the lot the house sits on is steep.  Really steep.  As in-N's car would not make it up the driveway if there's snow and ice-steep.  The backyard is also mostly steep hill, with only a little flat strip.  Meh.

So, yeah.  That was a long day.  We are trying not to be discouraged as it was only our first day out.  We learned a lot.  The Warrenton house is quite nice but we are reluctant to jump right away at something at the very high end of our price range.  Plus, that house is a good deal and a nice location: I smell a bidding war, one in which we could not afford to compete.  So we'll think it over, and we'll probably keep looking for now.  We will see.

First Meeting

We meet with the realtor later this morning.  Fingers crossed!  The camera batteries are fully charged and I downloaded an app to my phone that takes panoramic photos, the better to help us remember everything.

Finances

Pre-approved for a home loan.  Huzzah!  Thanks to my super-husband for finding time to take care of that while working on a giant paper for school at the same time.

Finding a Realtor

Now that we have somewhere between half a dozen and a baker's dozen homes that we'd like to look at, we need to find a realtor.  I have two recommendations from coworkers, which is helpful when the alternative is picking someone randomly online.  The first woman came recommended by two coworkers, but she hasn't returned N's email or call yet.  She wasn't at the office yesterday - out sick, perhaps?  We'll give her another day, and then we'll move on to the other coworker recommendation: a husband and wife team who helped one of my technicians find a cute place in Warrenton.  We are both hoping to be able to look at some interiors this weekend, but we might be hoping for too much too soon.

N is dividing time between working on his final paper and looking into home loans.  I gathered up all my school loan information for him, which necessitated checking the balances remaining on all of my loans.  Not something I care to be reminded of (I owe National Education how much?!), but I am paying them off as best I can, so there's not much to be done about that.  I am very thankful for the IBR program, though, since it brings my monthly payments down to a manageable level for all of the government loans.  Hooray IBR!  My hope is the fact that I have been steadily paying off school loans for years now without ever missing a payment will speak in our favor when it comes to obtaining a home loan.  See?  I'm reliable!

Besides, if there's a problem I can always use Pippin-cat as collateral.  My willingness to do so may or may not be in direct proportion to how loudly he is bugging me for breakfast at the current moment.


Update:  The realtor called early this morning, and spent about 45 minutes on the phone with my hubby.  This is entertaining in and of itself because N is usually not an early riser, but he just happened to be up working on his last paper ever.  She seems very nice and is knowledgeable about the parts of NoVa that we're looking at.  She also pointed out some things we hadn't thought to consider, such as the fact that some of these homes aren't connected to city water and sewer, so have a well and a septic tank.  Which is fine, but if they're not in proper working order that would be a major (read: expensive) project.  So, something to consider.  She sent us a list of 20 or so properties to look over; about half of them look interesting.  We will be meeting her on Sunday and we're excited!

A New Adventure

So.

A new blog!  One that I will try to actually keep up-to-date, since once it gets going there will actually be interesting things to post and people (ie. family) might actually read it.

We've lived in quite a few places, and we've moved a fair bit.  Williamstown for four years (college counts), moving two to three times every year.  Then Boston for three years for me (two for N), with different apartments each time.  A year in Framingham, followed by three in Worcester.  A short stint in Rhode Island for me, and then we moved down to Northern Virginia.  As someone who spent her entire childhood in one place, that's a lot of moving.  It's a lot of apartments (with the exception of the house we lived in during our time in Worcester, but we did not own it, though we did live there rent-free).  Now we rent a condo.  It's a nice place at a reasonable price for its proximity to D.C.  My 20-minute commute can't be beat.  And yet...

We're tired.  Tired of renting.  Tired of not having more than a teensy balcony on which to grow things, though admittedly we're having a good patio gardening spring so far (I foresee tomatoes and beets in our future).  Tired of having to pay through the nose for a place to rent because we're relatively close to D.C., but not close enough to make going into the city a reasonable trip except on weekends (and sometimes not even then - curse you, beltway!).  Most of all, we're tired of feeling like we're working towards some abstract idea of a theoretical life we might one day have, of living only for the future instead of trying to build a place for ourselves in the here and now.

So.

We talked.  And sat and thought.  And talked some more.  There may have been a bottle or two of wine somewhere in there.  We realized that we like it here in the greater DC/NoVa/Maryland area.  Winters are laughably mild, as we're accustomed to the snows of Massachusetts.  The summer is, well, hot and sticky, but as N often points out, that's what AC is for.  Though I maintain that New England has the loveliest fall colors, it is pretty here in the fall.  If we truly need a fall color fix we can visit Vermont.  Plus, springtime in the Mid-Atlantic is amazing.  Everything is either a lush green or blooming in a palette of colors ranging from white to yellow to purple to every shade of pink you can imagine.  The only thing I really miss from the New England spring are the lilacs of Williamstown.  We drove up there for a wedding last spring and I could smell them the minute we stepped out of the car.  The whole campus smelled like lilacs - I was in heaven.

But I digress.  There will likely be lots of digressing in this blog.  The point is that we like it here.  I have a solid job here, and though I grumble about it a fair bit, I have settled in nicely and there are a lot of very good things about the job.  My in-laws live in D.C., which is really nice.  My parents are across the country, but we are [eternally] optimistic that we can persuade them to relocate someday.  Plus, the California job market and I don't really see eye-to-eye.   So staying in this region suits us, but apartment living doesn't really any longer.

So.

If we're going to stay put, and we want more space, we reasoned, perhaps we should look into buying a home before the market rebounds.  So we did.  Or really, Nick did, and I made helpful and not-so-helpful (my specialty) comments.  He did quite a bit of legwork looking into communities within an hour's drive of my workplace, since that's still considered a reasonable commute by Northern Virginia standards.  Last week we spent a few hours driving through cities and towns along the I-95 corridor, more or less south of where we live now.  It was nice, but crowded, and our price range would not be able to afford us much more than a townhouse with an itty-bitty backyard.  Doable, but not dazzling.  Some pretty lakes, but we could not afford to live near them.  Very suburban and cookie-cutter, which can be quite nice, but is not really what we want.

Then we started looking west.  Past where I work, further out into the countryside.  Nick has found some very interesting potential properties online at reasonable prices.  Places where we could afford to buy a real house with at least a half acre of land, and in some locations up to five acres.  We took a drive last week to some of these places.  Strictly driving by to get a feel for the neighborhoods and home exteriors.  I discovered that the Virginia countryside is gorgeous, and it's also not nearly so unpopulated as I had thought.

We live in a ridiculously materialistic society that tells us more money and more things bring more happiness.  I've been more or less buying into that, I suppose by default, but Nick never really has, and we'd both like to try harder to move away from it.  So how about owning our own land, fixing up a place, and growing some of our own food?  Give me something rewarding to put our hard-earned cash into, instead of paying off someone else's mortgage with our rent checks.  Take a space and really make it ours.

So.

We're looking at some towns.  Contemplating moving to not-quite-the middle of nowhere.  It's scary, but exciting, and overwhelming in a mostly good way.  My hope is that this blog can serve as a chronicle of our house-hunting, and then (if all goes well), of settling into the home itself, of discovering the joys and sorrows of home gardening (and maybe home renovating).  We'll see.

It'll be an adventure, no matter what!