Decisions, Decisions

I know it's been awhile since I've last posted. We've had some ups and downs over here, and I've been writing in my own private journal for a few weeks. But now I'm back.

Our house hunt has continued, and not only did we find a house we loved, we happened to find two. We saw Dream House #1 about 3 weeks ago, and immediately tried to forget it. Asking price was a tiny bit higher than our upper-end limit. BUT everything about this house was wonderful (of course). Jav and I floated, not walked, through it. It was built in 1952, but had had all kinds of updates to pretty much everything in the house over the past 5 years. It was on an oversized lot (but with no fence, a must for us with the two doggies). Beautiful landscaping, sprinkler system, huge rooms with wonderful original hardwood flooring and new paint, bathrooms with all new fixtures and tilework. The best thing about the house, though, was a completely renovated kitchen, with new cabinetry, huge island with storage and seating, built-in fridge, glassed-in cabinets for china display, HUGE pantry with rotating shelves, a Jenn-Air, the list goes on and on and on. Me being someone who loves to cook, this was just too good to be true. And it turned out to be too good for us to forget.

We wandered through a few more houses, but with very little enthusiasm. We both started talking about the house again, and how we could possibly cut back here and there to afford it. We had three other houses set up for this past Saturday, and even though I promised to keep an open mind, I really didn't think we'd see anything that would even come close to Dream House #1. Until we saw Dream House #2.

This house was newer. (1971). It had been on the market eight days. Smaller square footage, but in a newer, safer neighborhood. Smaller yard, but sizeable enough for the dogs. Everything in the house had been updated - flooring, paint, lighting, bathrooms, carpeting. And it had the Holy Grail of rooms for Javier - a pet room. Actually it was an 11 x 16 sun room, but with ceramic tile flooring, A/C and heating, and plenty of room for kitty litter boxes, dog crates, scratch posts, food and water dishes, and anything else for the perfect pet playroom. It's minutes away from my favorite place to walk the dogs. One bad thing, though, the kitchen was pretty small. Our realtor, though, said she expected this house to be snatched up faster than you could blink.

So then - the hard part started. My two main issues were huge, private yard vs. smaller, suburbia yard and dream kitchen vs. small I'll Have to Learn To Live With It kitchen. Jav had these two, plus he loved having an extra bedroom for a study. After an entire evening and all day today of cussing and discussing pros and cons out the yazoo, I finally started leaning towards Dream House #2. This was after it was determined that we could use the money we would have spent on fencing at Dream House #1 to knock out a wall and make the kitchen big enough for an island in Dream House #2. I also determined that even though we have to leave our wonderful, wildlife-filled yard for suburbia yard, the wonderful wildlife-filled park is two minutes away by car. We decided to make the third bedroom a study for now. We also realized that monthly utility bills would be quite a bit higher in Dream House #1. We also determined that we might be doing nothing but housework and yardwork on the weekends in Dream House #1. In other words, we made some tough compromises, but came up with solutions to any problems, and we think we've made the best decision for us right now.

We'll make an offer tomorrow night, and hopefully no one will beat us - that would be a little gut-wrenching at this point.

But then, of course, there's always Dream House #1 to fall back on in a pinch.