Sunday, March 14, 2010

Adventures in Manassas and Woodstock cntd.

* The power line house*
One of the original houses we looked at, the power line house was actually one of my favorites. We drive through a fairly nice looking neighborhood towards a cul de sac. The house is a beautiful little colonial with trees shading the front yard and a beautiful front porch. We walk in the house and it was definitely move in ready. The living room was nice sized as was the dining room. All of the rooms were beautifully carpeted and fresh paint was on the walls.
The kitchen was very very pretty and fairly roomy for the area. You walk upstairs to large bedrooms with nice closets and plenty of storage. Then you can go downstairs into the basement where there is a cement floor on one half for a washer/dryer area and a carpeted large room on the other half. A sliding door leads out to the backyard and would be perfect for Katie, our aging dog.
A walk into the backyard shows a nice sized back yard with a shed (perfect sized for Scott's motorcycle) as well as a deck above that can also be accessed from the kitchen. We walk up the deck and look out over the beautiful scenic view from the wooded area and a small section of grass. We look left...and see the power sub station just 20 feet from the house...sigh...moving on...

*The pool house*
Honestly I don't remember much about the pool house. I remember it had very small rooms, smelled of cat pee, and had a pool in the backyard. The pool water was a very dark poop brown color and filled with leaves, trash bags, and a plastic lawn chair.

At this point I can't help but wonder, is this really what house hunting is? Is this what people get excited over? It's not fun its exhausting and somewhat depressing to go into house after ruined house.


The next 5 houses have become a jumbled conglomerate of house in my mind. All of them had very steep stairs, urine and feces in various locations (not always near a toilet...) and bedrooms the sizes of closets. Oh sure, if you knock down a few walls here, put in new carpet, completely sanitize and tear it down and start over I'm sure they would be great, but we're not going to play that game...

*The cape cod addition*

This was actually a pretty nice house and we were considering putting in an offer. We pull up to the house and search for a driveway...there is none..so we park on the street just a few houses down from the house. Parking was an adventure as none of the houses had driveways, so there was only space for 1 car to drive down the road. It was a two way road, I'll let your mind have fun with that one.
We walk up and the yard is fairly well treed and the grassy lawn is well kept for a foreclosure house. The front porch is fairly nice and the paint looks decent. Never mind the truck cap (the hard top you can put over truck beds, I'm not sure of the real name) sitting half on the property, or the car sitting on blocks in the neighbors back yard.
Enter the house to a decently sized living room, dining room, and kitchen. Not perfect but nothing that a coat of paint and some new carpet wouldn't fix. Kitchen was forgettable (I honestly couldn't remember what it looked like) but had all of its appliances.
We go upstairs and the upper part of the house was very nice. It was cape cod style but someone had added a large addition to the upstairs master bedroom. You had a smallish official bedroom that led out to another room about 20' by 10'. Well, we could make do...I guess.
Then we hear loud ethnic music coming through the walls from the neighborhood, a car backfiring, and a dog start barking. Never mind...next?

*The underwear house*
This house was more of the same. small rooms, crappy carpet, small yard. What stands out in this house was that it was currently being lived in. While most sellers would take the time to stage a house and clean up, these tenants obviously did not. The kitchen had plates laying around with several day old pizza, a trash bag leaning against the corner, and a pair of very..um..dirty boxers laying in the doorway to the bedroom. NEXT!!

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