House Hunting

We looked at another house today. It's on a half-acre lot in a neighborhood where I could retire Ace to the back yard. The house has been remodeled, and it does look nice with a big open floor plan down the center, separating the master bedroom from the other three bedrooms, but it just didn't excite either one of us.

We are settling into our own house, and the problems I now have with places that are not substantially larger than ours include:

I don't want to give up having a pantry (we both love this new feature) so any new place is going to need to have a walk-in pantry.

I like the laundry/storage room we've got(the place we saw today has a closet for stacking washer & dryer, but no place for the other stuff you need for laundry.)

I don't want to give up the sparkling refurbished pool with the ducks.

I'm getting attached to the cute little office/guestroom with a DOOR that I'm decorating in a little-horse-crazy-girl motif.

I don't want to have to pack again, and we've still got over 500 boxes at the place in Glendale which took our stuff after the fire. (Thank goodness my sister was here to help me unpack 100 boxes for the kitchen and 6 wardrobe/linen boxes last week. I don't know what I'm going to do about the rest.)

The house we made an offer on in December, which sits in pre-foreclosure hell with a seller and an agent who both appear to be wacko, had the space we needed both inside and out. Five bedrooms, three-and-a-half baths, soaring ceilings in the living room (and room for my dining room table that seats 16), a fire place, a media room which would be good for our 73" tv, an eat-in kitchen, a covered patio, a two-car garage, a view of the valley, and a huge back yard for Dexter. And less than the maximum amount of mortgage for which we've been pre-approved.

Sadly, I don't think it's going to happen. Nothing I've seen since has made me go yaha-at least nothing in my price range. (There's a fabulous place below the Boulevard in Tarzana that takes my breath away, but we'd need another big Lucius Fox check in our hands for that to happen--and we're not expecting one until the next Bat-film.) But, we've got a place for now and as long as interest rates or house prices don't start rising like rockets, we'll probably find something.