Dream House, Scream House
ignore all the mistakes and non punctuation and blah blah blah JUST READ IT.
so i havent blogged in forever but I'M STRESSIN' so here goes.
Section 1: The Great Apartment Hunt
Recently, I've been looking for new apartments to move into because I've lived in my current apartment for four years now and I have outgrown the space. Its a 1 bed, 1 bath with a small kitchen, a sizeable living room and a washer and dryer. It's pretty quiet with plenty of parking. Theres lots of things i like about it but theres also an equal or possibly greater number of things i dislike about it. This place has served us well for the past few years but its time to find a new one. We feel the need to have a little extra space instead of "just enough".
Ideally, we would like to have two bedrooms and at least 1 and a half baths. We would like to have carpet instead of wood floors. Im told its usually the opposite, but i dont understand how you could want to go from carpet to wood floors. carpet is soft to walk on and not cold to the touch when you get out of bed in the morning and easy to vaccuum. wood floors are so hard to keep clean! the smallest amount of dust or dirt and your floor is no longer clean because theres no friction to stop it from being everywhere. it frustrates me lol. especially having a cat who sheds ten pounds of hair in a day and is just generally messy because he's a cat. and i dont really desire to spend my time sweeping and moving furniture to sweep every day. like im not crazy right? thats not realistic to sweep your floor every single day but like... i hate having dust and dirt and what have you piling up under the furniture or in other low traffic areas cause it makes me feel like my house isnt truly clean. im definitely NOT sweeping ever corner of my house every single day but my point is thats the only way i would actually be able to keep my wood floors clean. at least with carpet stuff sort of gets trapped in the fibers and you can vaccuum it up and leave it a few days or so and not feel like youre getting little bits of dirt or whatever on your feet every time you take a step.
sorry, i went off on a tangent there, but my point is we want a place with some carpet. i went online and searched for nearby apartments meeting my requirements and found a couple of places to add to the list. theres one place literally across the street from us for a good price (no carpet sadly) but the parking situation isnt that great. Theres another place kind of across town thats a townhouse with stairs (LOVE stairs) and two bedrooms and carpet and a much bigger kitchen than we have now. theres also a pool and a fenced private backyard and lots of windows for natural light (we have one window currently so thats very exciting lol). I love the two bedroom with the stairs, it's my number one choice. We wanted to set up a viewing but we called the place and the guy said that there werent any available units because he had just rented the last one so we figured there wasnt a point in going to see one if there wasnt anything available yet. so thats on the agenda eventually. We had talked about apartment hunting before but could never find anything either in our price range or that we truly could see ourselves living in. This time we were seriously considering moving as a real possibility and not just a "someday" dream. So, naturally, i started mentally moving in to every beautiful place i found. Not a good idea by the way, dont recommend. because you will get disappointed when you dont actually move in lol.
Section two: Victorian Dreams
I had stopped my search for a new apartment because the management at the apartment i liked said we could call back in a month or so and see if anything had opened up and i was satisfied with that. i figured we would continue our pursuit then.
I was sitting in the living half watching tv, half letting my mind wander, and i started thinking about renting houses instead of apartments. i wondered if there were any victorian houses around for rent. I have no scale of what it costs to rent a house because ive only ever rented this apartment. And whether i found something affordable or not, i still enjoy looking at pictures of all the luxurious mansions i could have if i had half a million dollars to burn. or like a thousand dollars a month to burn.
So i looked up victorian houses for rent. I didnt find much around here. The only homes available existed in far away states, and/or werent in the best shape, or were just simply too expensive. I gave up seriously looking for a place to buy/rent and just decided to look at what would be available if i had a decent amount of money. i happened upon a website that lists old houses. Old as in, "historical" looking and not "grandma's house that they bought in the fifties", you know. like victorians and colonials, etc. i was browsing the site (which isnt particularly user friendly if you want to search by region and price, its more effective just scrolling through page after page of listings) and most of the properties are listed in the hundred thousand and up range. I searched my state and after browsing a few pages of the beautiful homes, i happened upon one listed very nearby to my hometown. Like a thirty minute drive. absolutely doable. close to home, but far enough away that we dont feel like we will be smothered by in-laws. also its way cheaper to buy in smaller cities like the one the home was listed in than in my hometown. perfect.
The house is a steal. its 5 bedrooms 2 baths for under 40 thousand. and its absolutely beautiful. it needs a little work done but it was built in 1910 so thats to be expected. still, its doable and its my dream to live in a big old victorian house. Just think of the halloweens and christmases you could have there! lol. I told my boyfriend about the listing by jokingly bringing up buying a house simply because its cheap and huge. and he seemed impressed by it. plus with a mortgage it would be even more affordable. ITS JUST PERFECT OKAY. the only problem was, it was listed as "contingent or pending sale". Which means, someone was already in the process of buying my dream house. I felt pretty sad about it. I mean, its only slightly realistic to be able to afford it being that im 24 with little money and no credit so my parents would have to get the mortgage (but i would pay it, i just cant acquire it).
I did, however, point out that "it's not over 'til it's over." I told my boyfriend that they could still be taking offers even though someone has already made one. until the sale is final, nothing is set in stone. we could make an offer and try to get the house. he thought it wasnt realistic. he said someone was already buying the house and it would probably go through and we would be wasting our time. he said it would take months to get approved for a loan (which isnt always true) and we wouldnt have the money in time to even make an offer. He also suspected something MUST be wrong with it if it's listed for such a cheap price. (tbh i think its because the home is a foreclosure so the bank just wants to sell it off and the surrounding community and the state of the house all contribute to the lowness of the price.) I said his parents or mine would be willing to get the mortgage for us and we would pay for it plus rent but he didnt seem to think my argument had any substance. He crushed my dreams of our amazing new life as homeowners.
i pestered him about it for a few days after because that house had made a home in my heart. I told you, try and keep yourself from falling in love with a property because it will crush you when you dont get it. (that makes me sound like a brat lol. but come on! this place is worth it!)
Section three: Dreams Do Come True (Maybe)
Today (or yesterday at this point i guess) i decided to look at the listing again after about a week of trying to let go. I had it bookmarked as "dream house". I was still hopeful the sale would fall through. really i just wanted to look at the pictures again because the house is really beautiful. The page loaded and i thought my eyes had decieved me; the house was again listed for sale. I cannot even describe to you the amount of excitement i felt when i saw that green bar at the top with its centered white letters reading "For Sale". i did a little dance. i kept it in mind and went back to watching tv. My boyfriend woke up a few hours later and i sprinted into the bedroom to tell him the exciting news.
"the house is up for sale again! i told you we shouldnt give up!"
to which he responded "what house"
-_-
"the house! the one- the big one i showed you? the five bedrooms? big pretty house? under 40,000?"
"oh. OH. really? send me a link to the house"
let me back up.
while i was waiting for bf to wake up all these images were exploding in my head about buying the house and moving in and living in it and fixing it up. I jokingly texted my dad, "would you buy me a house if it was cheap just checking." typically thats not a thing you just ask for but i thought i might as well give it a shot. a few anxious hours later came his response: "only one?" he said, matching my joking tone. "yeah just one." i replied. at this point the conversation couldve gone in either direction. to my surprise he didnt give me a "no" or whatever response i was expecting. "which one?" he said, seeming to consider it. I knew he would NEVER expect a gorgeous five bedroom victorian. i sent him the link. "WOW," he said, "that's nice, and cheap." i agreed, emphasizing how cheap it was and he expressed his concern about the price, wondering what else could be wrong with it. At this point though, i felt like i had a chance. He could possibly be on board. I continued with another half joking text about how the price would be even less with a mortgage and how we would pay for it we just couldnt get the mortgage, plus rent (youve already heard this, you know, you get it). and then a follow up text of "is this working"
he agreed that it did sound like a steal and he might look into it. which is a promising response from my father.
so now we catch up with the previous paragraph: boyfriend sent the link to his mother who said she and his father had discussed buying that house before because his dad works in insurance and has worked on that house for insurance claims before. so he knew what kind of shape it was in. Imagine that, how lucky? Doesn't it all feel like a little bit of destiny to you? because it does to me. I am meant to live in this house. (god, there i go again being too attached!)
The parents are on board with helping us buy the house. we told them the plan about how they get the mortgage but we would be paying for it so it wouldnt be like they are just buying us a house for free. Its all working out and i feel like my dreams are coming true and i cant contain my excitement.
heres where it goes wrong. Now his parents are nice people and they do a whole lot for us. but theres only so much i can take of them. like its fine in small doses. we can go stay at their house for a week but by the end of the week we like to go home and be in our own space and have a break from being around them.
The boys mother starts talking about selling the grandparents house AND their own house and buying the victorian, and moving in with us.............. that doesnt sound like the worst thing in the world, but immediately it becomes not my house anymore. it becomes living with your parents. and feeling like your living in your parents house even though they agreed we would have equal shares of it. We are adults now and we need our own space. and you might be thinking "but you have five bedrooms, thats plenty of space!". But consider this: they will always be... there. right there. wanna have sex? well your parents are in the next room. wanna make yourself some breakfast? someone is using the stove and they used all the eggs already. wanna paint that wall a color of your choice? well the person with an equal share to your house had decided they would like it better a different way. im not up for any of that. i want to have my own life and my own space and not have it be dictated and dependent upon two extra people. you could argue "well theyll die eventually and youll have the space to yourself lol" but NOT SOON ENOUGH I WANT IT NOW. You know what i mean i hope. not that i want them to die or anything but like by the time they do we will be thirty or forty years older and thats not the same as having a place to ourselves, now.
four people in two bedrooms, not that bad right? okay. (get prepared for some complicated math) but hear this: his mother was saying she and his dad could have separate rooms because they dont get along all that well. FIRST of all, would you want to have to live with that every single day, a couple that doesnt get along and should probably get a divorce living and arguing in your house all the time, because i sure as fuck dont want to live with that. Second of all, thats two less rooms to have for ourselves in the house. like bf and i only need one bedroom and like a guest bedroom. but if you have two couples in two bedrooms then youll need one of the three remaining bedrooms to be a guest room. so thats three rooms with purposes. but if we have four people taking up three different rooms then thats four rooms with purposes including a guest room and i had PLANS for those rooms okay? i guarantee you the fifth bedroom gets made into an office and the living room gets taken over by THEIR furniture because its nicer and the other like multi-purpose-room-area gets made into a gym or something and suddenly theres no rooms left for us and our furniture and our plans. like i was looking forward to having a music room/office area of my own and doing up the bedrooms as nice guest rooms, and i dont know what else, but i would figure it out. like, let it be MY house and not our collectively-between-four-people house. i dont want to be overshadowed and smothered just to live in my dream house. its not worth it. i wish they would stop piggybacking and hijacking my dream house you know. i hope im not coming off as a selfish brat... but like... they have their own house... GO TO YOUR OWN HOUSE SANDRA.
UGH. i want that house so bad but its so frustrating. BF's argument is "well we wont be able to afford it all on our own! we would need them to live with us and help us. but he doesnt understand i have a PLAN.
Section whatever: The plan
so heres my very short and sweet plan
i was really frustrated when i started writing this out, and i still am, but MUCH less so than when i started. im still anxious and... i dont even know, im nervous and excited, and feeling so many feelings. i really want this house but theres a lot of drawbacks to being able to live in it. i just hope it all works out. EVERYTHING WOULD BE SIMPLER IF I WAS RICH and thats the moral of this story.
i guess thats all i have to say about that for now. Ill update you if theres ever any updates!
TTFN,
Paige 💜
so i havent blogged in forever but I'M STRESSIN' so here goes.
Section 1: The Great Apartment Hunt
Recently, I've been looking for new apartments to move into because I've lived in my current apartment for four years now and I have outgrown the space. Its a 1 bed, 1 bath with a small kitchen, a sizeable living room and a washer and dryer. It's pretty quiet with plenty of parking. Theres lots of things i like about it but theres also an equal or possibly greater number of things i dislike about it. This place has served us well for the past few years but its time to find a new one. We feel the need to have a little extra space instead of "just enough".
Ideally, we would like to have two bedrooms and at least 1 and a half baths. We would like to have carpet instead of wood floors. Im told its usually the opposite, but i dont understand how you could want to go from carpet to wood floors. carpet is soft to walk on and not cold to the touch when you get out of bed in the morning and easy to vaccuum. wood floors are so hard to keep clean! the smallest amount of dust or dirt and your floor is no longer clean because theres no friction to stop it from being everywhere. it frustrates me lol. especially having a cat who sheds ten pounds of hair in a day and is just generally messy because he's a cat. and i dont really desire to spend my time sweeping and moving furniture to sweep every day. like im not crazy right? thats not realistic to sweep your floor every single day but like... i hate having dust and dirt and what have you piling up under the furniture or in other low traffic areas cause it makes me feel like my house isnt truly clean. im definitely NOT sweeping ever corner of my house every single day but my point is thats the only way i would actually be able to keep my wood floors clean. at least with carpet stuff sort of gets trapped in the fibers and you can vaccuum it up and leave it a few days or so and not feel like youre getting little bits of dirt or whatever on your feet every time you take a step.
sorry, i went off on a tangent there, but my point is we want a place with some carpet. i went online and searched for nearby apartments meeting my requirements and found a couple of places to add to the list. theres one place literally across the street from us for a good price (no carpet sadly) but the parking situation isnt that great. Theres another place kind of across town thats a townhouse with stairs (LOVE stairs) and two bedrooms and carpet and a much bigger kitchen than we have now. theres also a pool and a fenced private backyard and lots of windows for natural light (we have one window currently so thats very exciting lol). I love the two bedroom with the stairs, it's my number one choice. We wanted to set up a viewing but we called the place and the guy said that there werent any available units because he had just rented the last one so we figured there wasnt a point in going to see one if there wasnt anything available yet. so thats on the agenda eventually. We had talked about apartment hunting before but could never find anything either in our price range or that we truly could see ourselves living in. This time we were seriously considering moving as a real possibility and not just a "someday" dream. So, naturally, i started mentally moving in to every beautiful place i found. Not a good idea by the way, dont recommend. because you will get disappointed when you dont actually move in lol.
Section two: Victorian Dreams
I had stopped my search for a new apartment because the management at the apartment i liked said we could call back in a month or so and see if anything had opened up and i was satisfied with that. i figured we would continue our pursuit then.
I was sitting in the living half watching tv, half letting my mind wander, and i started thinking about renting houses instead of apartments. i wondered if there were any victorian houses around for rent. I have no scale of what it costs to rent a house because ive only ever rented this apartment. And whether i found something affordable or not, i still enjoy looking at pictures of all the luxurious mansions i could have if i had half a million dollars to burn. or like a thousand dollars a month to burn.
So i looked up victorian houses for rent. I didnt find much around here. The only homes available existed in far away states, and/or werent in the best shape, or were just simply too expensive. I gave up seriously looking for a place to buy/rent and just decided to look at what would be available if i had a decent amount of money. i happened upon a website that lists old houses. Old as in, "historical" looking and not "grandma's house that they bought in the fifties", you know. like victorians and colonials, etc. i was browsing the site (which isnt particularly user friendly if you want to search by region and price, its more effective just scrolling through page after page of listings) and most of the properties are listed in the hundred thousand and up range. I searched my state and after browsing a few pages of the beautiful homes, i happened upon one listed very nearby to my hometown. Like a thirty minute drive. absolutely doable. close to home, but far enough away that we dont feel like we will be smothered by in-laws. also its way cheaper to buy in smaller cities like the one the home was listed in than in my hometown. perfect.
The house is a steal. its 5 bedrooms 2 baths for under 40 thousand. and its absolutely beautiful. it needs a little work done but it was built in 1910 so thats to be expected. still, its doable and its my dream to live in a big old victorian house. Just think of the halloweens and christmases you could have there! lol. I told my boyfriend about the listing by jokingly bringing up buying a house simply because its cheap and huge. and he seemed impressed by it. plus with a mortgage it would be even more affordable. ITS JUST PERFECT OKAY. the only problem was, it was listed as "contingent or pending sale". Which means, someone was already in the process of buying my dream house. I felt pretty sad about it. I mean, its only slightly realistic to be able to afford it being that im 24 with little money and no credit so my parents would have to get the mortgage (but i would pay it, i just cant acquire it).
I did, however, point out that "it's not over 'til it's over." I told my boyfriend that they could still be taking offers even though someone has already made one. until the sale is final, nothing is set in stone. we could make an offer and try to get the house. he thought it wasnt realistic. he said someone was already buying the house and it would probably go through and we would be wasting our time. he said it would take months to get approved for a loan (which isnt always true) and we wouldnt have the money in time to even make an offer. He also suspected something MUST be wrong with it if it's listed for such a cheap price. (tbh i think its because the home is a foreclosure so the bank just wants to sell it off and the surrounding community and the state of the house all contribute to the lowness of the price.) I said his parents or mine would be willing to get the mortgage for us and we would pay for it plus rent but he didnt seem to think my argument had any substance. He crushed my dreams of our amazing new life as homeowners.
i pestered him about it for a few days after because that house had made a home in my heart. I told you, try and keep yourself from falling in love with a property because it will crush you when you dont get it. (that makes me sound like a brat lol. but come on! this place is worth it!)
Section three: Dreams Do Come True (Maybe)
Today (or yesterday at this point i guess) i decided to look at the listing again after about a week of trying to let go. I had it bookmarked as "dream house". I was still hopeful the sale would fall through. really i just wanted to look at the pictures again because the house is really beautiful. The page loaded and i thought my eyes had decieved me; the house was again listed for sale. I cannot even describe to you the amount of excitement i felt when i saw that green bar at the top with its centered white letters reading "For Sale". i did a little dance. i kept it in mind and went back to watching tv. My boyfriend woke up a few hours later and i sprinted into the bedroom to tell him the exciting news.
"the house is up for sale again! i told you we shouldnt give up!"
to which he responded "what house"
-_-
"the house! the one- the big one i showed you? the five bedrooms? big pretty house? under 40,000?"
"oh. OH. really? send me a link to the house"
let me back up.
while i was waiting for bf to wake up all these images were exploding in my head about buying the house and moving in and living in it and fixing it up. I jokingly texted my dad, "would you buy me a house if it was cheap just checking." typically thats not a thing you just ask for but i thought i might as well give it a shot. a few anxious hours later came his response: "only one?" he said, matching my joking tone. "yeah just one." i replied. at this point the conversation couldve gone in either direction. to my surprise he didnt give me a "no" or whatever response i was expecting. "which one?" he said, seeming to consider it. I knew he would NEVER expect a gorgeous five bedroom victorian. i sent him the link. "WOW," he said, "that's nice, and cheap." i agreed, emphasizing how cheap it was and he expressed his concern about the price, wondering what else could be wrong with it. At this point though, i felt like i had a chance. He could possibly be on board. I continued with another half joking text about how the price would be even less with a mortgage and how we would pay for it we just couldnt get the mortgage, plus rent (youve already heard this, you know, you get it). and then a follow up text of "is this working"
he agreed that it did sound like a steal and he might look into it. which is a promising response from my father.
so now we catch up with the previous paragraph: boyfriend sent the link to his mother who said she and his father had discussed buying that house before because his dad works in insurance and has worked on that house for insurance claims before. so he knew what kind of shape it was in. Imagine that, how lucky? Doesn't it all feel like a little bit of destiny to you? because it does to me. I am meant to live in this house. (god, there i go again being too attached!)
The parents are on board with helping us buy the house. we told them the plan about how they get the mortgage but we would be paying for it so it wouldnt be like they are just buying us a house for free. Its all working out and i feel like my dreams are coming true and i cant contain my excitement.
heres where it goes wrong. Now his parents are nice people and they do a whole lot for us. but theres only so much i can take of them. like its fine in small doses. we can go stay at their house for a week but by the end of the week we like to go home and be in our own space and have a break from being around them.
The boys mother starts talking about selling the grandparents house AND their own house and buying the victorian, and moving in with us.............. that doesnt sound like the worst thing in the world, but immediately it becomes not my house anymore. it becomes living with your parents. and feeling like your living in your parents house even though they agreed we would have equal shares of it. We are adults now and we need our own space. and you might be thinking "but you have five bedrooms, thats plenty of space!". But consider this: they will always be... there. right there. wanna have sex? well your parents are in the next room. wanna make yourself some breakfast? someone is using the stove and they used all the eggs already. wanna paint that wall a color of your choice? well the person with an equal share to your house had decided they would like it better a different way. im not up for any of that. i want to have my own life and my own space and not have it be dictated and dependent upon two extra people. you could argue "well theyll die eventually and youll have the space to yourself lol" but NOT SOON ENOUGH I WANT IT NOW. You know what i mean i hope. not that i want them to die or anything but like by the time they do we will be thirty or forty years older and thats not the same as having a place to ourselves, now.
four people in two bedrooms, not that bad right? okay. (get prepared for some complicated math) but hear this: his mother was saying she and his dad could have separate rooms because they dont get along all that well. FIRST of all, would you want to have to live with that every single day, a couple that doesnt get along and should probably get a divorce living and arguing in your house all the time, because i sure as fuck dont want to live with that. Second of all, thats two less rooms to have for ourselves in the house. like bf and i only need one bedroom and like a guest bedroom. but if you have two couples in two bedrooms then youll need one of the three remaining bedrooms to be a guest room. so thats three rooms with purposes. but if we have four people taking up three different rooms then thats four rooms with purposes including a guest room and i had PLANS for those rooms okay? i guarantee you the fifth bedroom gets made into an office and the living room gets taken over by THEIR furniture because its nicer and the other like multi-purpose-room-area gets made into a gym or something and suddenly theres no rooms left for us and our furniture and our plans. like i was looking forward to having a music room/office area of my own and doing up the bedrooms as nice guest rooms, and i dont know what else, but i would figure it out. like, let it be MY house and not our collectively-between-four-people house. i dont want to be overshadowed and smothered just to live in my dream house. its not worth it. i wish they would stop piggybacking and hijacking my dream house you know. i hope im not coming off as a selfish brat... but like... they have their own house... GO TO YOUR OWN HOUSE SANDRA.
UGH. i want that house so bad but its so frustrating. BF's argument is "well we wont be able to afford it all on our own! we would need them to live with us and help us. but he doesnt understand i have a PLAN.
Section whatever: The plan
so heres my very short and sweet plan
- I find a job there so we have additional income and can save the money we dont spend on bills to fix up the house
- they sell the grandmothers house and pay the down payment and keep whatever is left to do with as they please.
- we pay the mortgage payments, power bills, property tax, insurance, etc. plus a little rent to them to pay them back for the downpayment.
- we rent out the little building on the land as an apartment (its already being rented as that so that wouldnt be any additional cost to fix up)
- the parents leave us the fuck alone (but they are welcome to occasionally visit)
- everyones happy
i was really frustrated when i started writing this out, and i still am, but MUCH less so than when i started. im still anxious and... i dont even know, im nervous and excited, and feeling so many feelings. i really want this house but theres a lot of drawbacks to being able to live in it. i just hope it all works out. EVERYTHING WOULD BE SIMPLER IF I WAS RICH and thats the moral of this story.
i guess thats all i have to say about that for now. Ill update you if theres ever any updates!
TTFN,
Paige 💜
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