Buying A House: C or D?

and that little house down the street is about as cheap as a single-family house gets in my neighborhood. $500k-$700k seems more typical.

$369k is more typical of a condo around here. if you want to live an hour away from the city then you can get a decent single family for that price, maybe not even though

marcos, are the sexes and ages of your kids conducive to room-sharing at present?

That place seems like it has a large enough lot that you could make do with the space for now, and potentially add on a master BR when the kids are older.

I do know of a few same-sex close-in-age kids who have shared a bedroom. My nephews shared when they were 7 and 9 until they were 12 and 14. Me, I have a 4-year-old boy and an 8-year-old girl who get along reasonably well - but if they aren't good candidates for room-sharing now, they certainly won't be when they're (for example) 12 and 16.

The problem with going further out to the exurbs is that many parents then have to spend 2-4 hours on commuting. It can be a false economy, not only because of child care and transportation costs, but also the psychic wear and tear of never seeing your family in daylight hours.

yea they are both boys, would be a little while until room sharing since F is just 2 months old right now. also we talked about J on the autism thread and we are wondering if having his own space to retreat to when overstimulated might be a good thing for him to have, still early to tell though.

yea the commute is rough, definitely otm about the false economy, there is no way i want to spend 2-3 hours commuting back and forth everyday

also worrying about downsizing to a 2 bdrm -- we're renting a spacious 3 bdrm right now and we'd have to do a lot of purging.

haha sic where are you

Sydney. Owning a home is not likely to happen to me.

test

Anybody have any advice on buying a lawn mower? I've been using a reel mower, but it's on its last legs and just not getting the job done anymore. I'm afraid a gas mower is going to be too much maintenance and too heavy for me to lift up the stairs from my garage, though. Not sure what to buy next.

I buy the cheapest electric (corded) mower at a typical big box hardware store. They do a reasonable job, are maintenance free, and last about 15 years. They lighter than gas mowers, too.

Wish I could. Unfortunately, I don't have any outlets in my backyard. Using anything with a cord (even a weed whacker) is a major, major production.

Quality 410 sq.ft. shack in East Austin, only $450K! You know you want it!
http://www.austinrealestate.com/listing/6649852-1906-e-2nd-st-austin-tx-78702

Evan, how is your leaf situation in the fall/winter? When I bought this house last summer, I just went with a bagless mower because my yard's not huge at all. I wasn't even thinking about how enormous leafy trees surround the perimeter of my entire property, though, and the leaf accumulation became a significant problem (raking and bagging became a full weekend project almost every weekend for a while).

Anyway, I've got a little Murray gas mower I bought at Walmart for less than $150 that's really not very heavy and only needs an oil change about once per mowing season. I'm eyeing bagging mowers now, though, because I've discovered that raking that much is for fools.

How many stairs, and are they outdoors? You could invest in a couple long 2x4"s to use as a ramp up the stairs and get a mower that is self-propelled and it'll roll itself out of there

I was luckily gifted a lawnmower when I became a homeowner and the maintenance has been really minimal. Runs excellently, and I've changed the oil only once and replaced the blade once (could have been sharpened, but I let it go a long time and it was dented to fuck from rocks)

When we first bought a house in 2007 and were buying all that random shit like lawnmowers we had a pretty strict "buy the second cheapest one" principle and it's worked pretty well for the most part. Changed the oil and filter like once or twice, it's been fine, but I'm definitely not into lawns as a hobby.

Our new place came with a mower as the previous owners moved into a condo so now I've got that 8 year old cheapo and a fancier self-propelled bagging mower (cause the previous owner was definitely into the lawn as his main hobby) and I'm trying to figure out which one goes on Craigslist now. In some ways I really prefer the lighter, easy to move cheapo one.

I bought a battery powered mower that would be awesome if I had two or three more batteries, as it is I can do one yard, charge for half an hour, do the other. Which would be fine if I hadn't volunteered to mow my elderly neighbor's yard too.

I really need a weed wacker

This is what I have. The battery takes several hours to charge, but it lasts for quite a while if you're just edging and hitting a few weed patches at a time.

I've screwed up and not taken freebies from friends who were moving a couple times, although the timing was wrong.

I'll probably get a decent gas engine one tbh

god, one that has a reasonable head assembly, too. my parents used to live on an acreage and I was tasked with cleaning out the long-ass fence on the border of their yard when I was in high school and the weed trimmer line kept needing replacement until the point where it got caught and the head blew apart, spitting parts everywhere

of course they had the entire fence torn out and redone a few years later

oh shit if the hedge trimmer thing on this doesn't completely suck I'm in: http://www.homedepot.com/p/Toro-2-Cycle-25-4cc-Attachment-Capable-Straight-Shaft-Gas-String-Trimmer-with-Hedge-Trimmer-Attachment-51978CHT/205847961?N=5yc1vZbxbhZ1i9

My leaf situation is under control. Minimal leaves in the fall, and I don't mind raking too much. I used to have a battery-powered weed whacker/edger that I loved (so fun!) but then the batteries got progressively weaker. Now I have an electric one, but I try to use it less than once a month, because it's such a pain with the cord. Good power though.

My garage is the only source of power, and it's in a recessed alley at an awkward angle away from the house. So any cord is always falling out of the outlet because of the angle, and because of the tight stairs it has to follow. Big pain.

A cheapo gas mower is starting to sound like a good deal, so long as I can lift it up those stairs easily enough.

ramps!

haha, that sounds super fun! But it would require replacing some steep stairs with a ramp, which probably isn't a good look during our icy winters

http://img.timeinc.net/time/daily/2010/1004/360_ramps_0413.jpg

naw, I meant throwing some pieces of wood over the stairs to facilitate dragging it up and down

I've got a self-propelled gas mower with bag. Use it for grass and leaves. I can't believe I used to rake the entire yard.

I live in a city with one of those leaf vacuums, and I still use the mower over most of them.

Used to have a mower with the words NOT FOR USE IN CALIFORNIA over the engine. Made me feel guilty as hell.

I would feel like such a badass if I was pull-starting something that said NOT FOR USE IN CALIFORNIA on it

My wife's grandfather had a huge yard and was ojibwe so he had a 1970s Lawn Chief riding mower to celebrate his heritage. It had a goddamn cigarette lighter so he didn't have to stop mowing to chain smoke.

ILX's inner Hank Hill comes to the fore.

which thread reveals ILX's inner Bobby Hill?

riding mowers with cigarette lighters! I remember those

lollllll

Not my photo, but this is how I learned to drive a stick originally.

http://jacques_lacasse.tripod.com/CubCadet/Cub-Cadet-147_01b.jpg

Like literally I think our tractor was that exact model. I laughed my head off the first time I saw an electric corded mower.

I do not understand electric corded mowers

but I also have a grandfather who, my parents discovered, had multiple saws in his garage where the cord was cut off a couple feet from the saw. in other words, he probably accidentally cut through the cord while cutting something.

haha, yeah I struggle enough with the much lower vacuum cord stakes. corded mower sounds difficult.

My mower is gas, and my weed eater is battery powered. I bought a leaf blower that's corded, which is not something I'd recommend if you have no outdoor outlets (or probably even if you DO have outdoor outlets).

our mower is gas and we also have an industrial-strength weed whacker with a metal blade (for those times when we haven't mowed and the shit is three feet high)

a quarter of an acre of invasive weeds is no fun to mow

My back yard is about 90% clover ground cover (with a few patches of fescue here and there). I love being able to mow it as low as the mower will go and still have it be green as hell. If I could clover up my front yard, I'd probably do it (but it's a hodgepodge of several kinds of grass already).

In 30 years of mowing I've only cut the cord once. It's not hard to manage once you get used to the process.

Too old for McDonaldland playgrounds, too young for riding mowers with cigarette lighters.

Just right for exploring dank ILX threads.

This house belongs to some friends of a friend who are making a career-related exit of Ann Arbor. I'm curious how much of this house's charm is in the furnishing and details and how much is in the house itself.

http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/705-Madison-Pl_Ann-Arbor_MI_48103_M41457-81517

they've done a great job with furnishings but that is a gorgeous house on its own. i like it more than the columbus one upthread. i went to grad school in ann arbor and would not have guessed that housing is so cheap to buy there.

Yeah I think the house alone is pretty nice, furnishings or not.

My wife went to Michigan and we still know a number of people who live in Ann Arbor, and it's definitely on the list of like 10 places we might consider moving to someday. I'm always shocked at how reasonable housing is when I check out houses there; it seemed so expensive when I had moved there from super brokae-ass Upper Michigan. But compared to where I live now - which is not really that close to Seattle their real estate prices sort of set the norm - it seems super cheap for what you get.

I can imagine that house looks a bit rougher and dated without the furnishings.

The little covered area in back looks new at least. I would do something similar to my house, but the architecture styles would clash and not in a good way.

As firmly anti-Medway as I am, Rochester looks like it has the potential to be nicer than its neighbours.

This property has effectively gone already but I don't know where else you are likely to get well-presented Victorian terraces within 35 minutes of London for a similar price:

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-52477610.html

The way the country is going Medway towns are likely to be the nu-Dalston #tomorrowspredictionstoday #dontknowckittillyoutriedit

There is definitely scope for a "new Brighton" at least. I am not sure where else relatively young people are meant to go.

Apparently Ramsgate is the place where art people have been going for the past couple of years.

sv tracing the john harris grand tour through the ukip marginals