House Hunting

Boyfriend and I have begun looking at houses.  The plan is to buy one sometime soonish.  It's not a very fleshed out plan.  We're not sure whether we want to get a real house now, if we can afford a real house now, or if we want to get a townhouse that we'd be in for a few years before upgrading.  It's all very vague and confusing and exciting.  But the best part (and the only part we've really done so far) is driving around and going to open houses.

Open houses are awesome.  We ended up touring a bunch of houses that we absolutely can't afford.  Houses with price tags of $1 million or more.  And seriously, who needs 8000 square feet of space?  It sure was fun to look at them, though.

The first house we looked at was actually reasonable, and more or less in our price range.  It was move-in ready, but would certainly need work over the years (updating the kitchen, finishing the basement).  That's pretty much fine with us.  As long as the lot and the floor plan are good, and the house isn't actually falling apart or unlivable, we can certainly make those upgrades as we have time and money.  Plus, that's a great way for us to add value to the house.  But the bedroom situation was a little weird.  Five bedrooms upstairs sharing two bathrooms.  One of the bedrooms was actually off the master bathroom, and it was tiny.  It would really only work as a nursery or office .

After that, we just started driving around looking for any open houses.  The second house we came across was huge.  The plot was over two acres, and there was a wooden deck, a stone patio, and a fireplace outside.  Inside it was like a maze.  Seriously, this house just kept going.  I think there were six bedrooms and three offices, plus a workout room.  Two kitchens, and a "coffee bar" in the master suite.  Because it's just too hard to walk to the kitchen for a cup of coffee or nightcap.

Let's talk about master suites.  Apparently, they need to be huge.  Some of the suites we saw were bigger than the apartment we're currently living in.  One was 1400 square feet.  I mean, what do you do, besides sleep in there?  But there's always a massive bedroom, two walk in closets, a ginormous bathroom, and at least one sitting room/office.  Some had two sitting rooms (his and hers, I guess?).  Several also had bar areas, complete with granite counter top and sink.  I guess this is for those people who never want to see their kids.  Because you would basically never have to leave one of those suites.  We joked about renting out the master suite as a separate apartment, but then you get the headache of dealing with a tenant.

All in all we saw about six houses.  Most of them were far out of our price range.  And they also had more space than the two of us would ever fill.  Boyfriend has started teasing me that his mom could move in, both to help us afford one of these houses and to help us furnish it.  I shot that down pretty quick.  Nothing against his mom, I just don't want to live with her.  I want our space, where our is limited to Boyfriend and me.

At any rate, it was fun to look at the mansions.  We got to ooh and aah and figure out which extravagances we actually want to spend money on and which ones are just ridiculous.  So here's the current wish list

• Nice kitchen, with a good amount of counter space and cabinet space (more than we currently have)
• Deck/porch with space for a grill
• Media room  This basically boils down to a room that doesn't have windows or at least doesn't get much sun, where we can stick a TV and some couches
• Two offices.  Boyfriend and I currently share an office, and it can get a bit crowded when we're both doing things on our computers that require sound.  Also the air mattress barely fits in there since I got my own desk.  It would be nice to have more space for guests
• Big closet in the master bedroom
• Bathtub
• Close to metro.  My commute is already an hour long and I don't want it to be much longer

 With this in mind, we went looking again this past weekend.  This time we focused our search on townhouses.  We actually only got to see one, but I fell in love with it.  There's no way we'll get our finances in order quickly enough to put an offer on it, but I have my fingers crossed that we'll at least be able to find something in the same neighborhood.

This neighborhood is walking distance from the metro.  That would cut about 15 minutes off my commute, plus all the headache of sitting in traffic.  The dining room/living room layout was a bit weird, but there was a really nice rec room in the basement.  And it had three bedrooms, which means we would each get an office.  There's even a nook where I could set up a table to do puzzles (which I totally just realized is what the nook is perfect for).  The location means it would completely retain its value.  And all the town houses in the development have basically the same floor plan (let's face it, all town houses are basically going to have the same floor plan).

So now even though we're at the very beginning of our search, I've managed to completely fall in love with one of the first place we saw.  To be fair, though, we still don't know what we can afford (though that town house was certainly in our price range) or even exactly what we want.  I'm sure we'll have a better idea in the weeks and months to come.

In the meantime I feel like an adult and like I'm just playing at being an adult all at the same time.  I mean, I'm looking at houses?  To buy?  This is a huge life thing.  And it's all sorts of awesome.