House Hunting...

I think house hunting is pretty fun. It is cool to see how rooms are laid out, how people have decorated, and imagine what we could do with the space. The same place can be 1500 square feet as one down the street, but their layouts can be entirely different so you HAVE to see them for yourself. Especially with kids- could that room be the nursery? Is that going to be safe with little ones? etc. I like to think about the stuff we have and where it would go in the house, and about the stuff we could get to go there. I'm not a huge fan of going to the mall or furniture stores for stuff...(except maybe IKEA after those AWESOME dressers we have accumulated!) I like to look, bargain, collect, etc. I think finding pieces is so fun and even better to get them for a good price. I think rarely in my life have we gone to the mall and paid full price for something that I felt GREAT about it. Well, other than at the Clinique counter of course. I think it is great to find something I love that isn't found in every home already AND that is a STEAL! Don't get me wrong, I'll go to the mall any day :) That's just not where I would go looking for certain items that I think are fun to look for.

Back to the houses...

So with an offer possibly looming near...we went and looked at two houses this weekend. One was yesterday in an older home area of Pleasanton but REALLY close to work (3 minute commute, depending on when the light turned green). We knew it was a fixer-upper, which is fine with us. But wow. More like a tear-down-and-start-over. It needed new everything. Literally, everything. It was pretty bad...we could work on it, but it wasn't a steal price for how bad it was. It was priced low, but not totally worth fixing everything and remodeling. So that was too bad- but kind of up our alley (something cheap that we could work on for a few years). The problem is we would have spent everything fixing it and nothing on furniture or anything to make it NICE, just DECENT. Money would be spent on refinishing the floors and tearing out carpet...rather than on better floor boards or maybe crown moulding. A new kitchen would have been needed right off...don't think we are going to get into redoing kitchens for several years. I would prefer smaller projects! :)
So then this morning we went to an area near where I grew up and found an awesome house. It is a short-sale, so we would have to work with the bank. And since we don't have an offer on our place AND we still have two weeks until we find out about the Bar...it is going to be a while till we can look at something like that seriously. But it was so nice. It was built in the late 80's which is like brand new around here. We loved the rooms, the layout for the most part, and just how nice it was. Already there are offers in for 75,000 over asking price (since it is bank owned and the area in high demand for this type of house). So that one won't be the one, but WOW did we love it.
Now we will just wait to see what happens with our place...but we are getting itchy to want to look at what is out there. We want a 4 bedroom, but there are lots of 3 bedrooms that have lots of options for a 4th or just a lot of square footage that would work for what we need. So who knows. It will all work out, it is just so fun to look for now!