Buying A House: C or D?

still haven't bought, somehow am just not impressed by houses anymore after having looked at a lot

whoa absolutely gorgeous house! good luck through the process! i know what you mean about being tired of looking especially in a tight market (not that we looked much in Boston when we lived there)

― marcos, Saturday, April 29, 2017 2:08 AM (five days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hey thanks! inspection was today and went really well.

anyone here ever remodel a kitchen?

it is expensive and takes awhile to get materials. the most annoying part is not having a kitchen sink. are you planning to do it yourself?

Ideally you can get that done before moving in. Otherwise, it'll take longer than is comfortable and you'll be spending a ton of money on takeout.

We redid the kitchen, bathroom, and living in our first house when we had 2.5 months to redo things before our lease was up. We'd never really done anything before and it kind of sucked and we spent every free hour there working on it. Put in commercial vinyl tile floor, base cabinets, sink, tile backsplash, and laminate countertops and it turned out alright but I always knew all the spots where I fucked up.

Friends are having a full kitchen remodel done starting next Monday, so three kids and two adults are going to only have a mini fridge, microwave and hot plate in the basement for six weeks. I have no idea how that's going to go.

i haven't done a kitchen remodel, but my sister & brother-in-law just finished one and it took months longer than they anticipated, they ended up firing the first contractor and hiring another one to finish it

we close on tuesday. right now i'm calling a bunch of people bc there is some things we want to do before we move in, the biggest projects being exterior painting and finishing the 3rd floor. i'm hoping we can get the attic finished before we move in late july

You guys I want to buy a house. I have no earthly way of doing so, but there's this house I really want very close to where I grew up but in an emerging downtown area that's recovering from post-industrial blight, with terrible schools which is probably what's keeping the price insanely reasonable.

It's been on the market for a year and price has been dropping steadily, from $275k to $229k in a year. How low do you think it has to fall to get my boyfriend agree to move across the country with me and use his savings as the down payment?

I'm afraid to share the link because what if someone else discovers it AND BUYS IT? No, no, that won't do.

It's an 1870s Eastlake Victorian, 5br/3bath, within walking distance of a sports arena, a library branch, an art museum, and a historic performing arts center. Already updated. Central air. Jesus wept.

uhhh is that carpet i see in the bathrooms? easy to change but why in god's name do people do that?

Yeah I have no idea also the wallpaper but hey PRISTINE GOLDEN OAK EVERYTHING.

Two generations of my family worked in a building only a few blocks from there. We drove past this exact block every time we went to the special library. I'm obsessed.

buy it!

I'm going to need to take some steps before I move 1000 miles with no job and no savings. Hopefully the house will stay on the market for another few years or so while I figure it out. o_O

thx to upthread responders about kitchen work btw. we are not doing it ourselves and not going to be able to do it before move-in, in large part because i'm going to want to be pretty particular if i have the chance to pick my own cabinetry and optimize storage in a pretty modest space. planning to buy a new dishwasher and range in short order tho, stoked 4 induction.

I kind of lust after those half induction/half gas ranges

wow, haven't even seen those. i've cooked with gas my entire life but it's not available at our new house and i'll be damned if i'm going to electric now.

Of the many terrible ideas of the late 60s and the 70s, bathroom carpet is the absolute worst.

After using a cheap induction hotplate at a duplex that had a shitty coil stove, I'd actually go for induction over gas regardless. Being in a hot climate, the difference in the amount of heat released into the kitchen cannot be overstated.

Every house I grew up in was all electric everything, so when I moved out and lived in places that had gas, I discovered that gas turns white appliances yellow whether you like it or not. (Great for cooking, though... but yellowed white appliances can blow me)

io that house is super neat, but the upkeep costs on it must be a bear, and in a town with not a lot of career prospects, it's probably a bigger risk than I'd feel comfortable taking on. That porch is sweeeeeeet, though.

what white appliances go on the stove? Or is it just being in the kitchen with a gas stove?

Yeah, any plastic parts on refrigerators/dishwashers/microwaves/etc that are white turn yellow over time in a gas kitchen, no matter how often you clean them.

whoa i never realized that, just assumed it was a normal aging

have any of you painted a house before? we are painting the exterior, which needs it badly, and the interior, which doesn't as much but we've never been able to choose our own colors before since we've always rented. i'm kind of overwhelmed, i can't even begin to think about how to pick color schemes

also this shit is expensive huh

we're having tile put in entryway today bc rain/flooding rotted the original wood. there's always something.

interior isn't too bad -- biggest tip would be to tape absolutely everything carefully in one go, take a break, and then paint later. that way you don't feel rushed to get it done and taping really does make the painting turn out much better.

with exterior, the more sanding/scraping/priming you do the better it'll hold up. my mom painted our house when I was a kid after meticulously doing all that, and when we drove by years later after we'd moved, it was still holding up

resist the urge - rent unless you want to devote yrou paycheck to annual maintenenace and fighting the forces of time

exterior we are hiring pros for sure. it's pricey but it is a 110 year-old house and i'm not climbing on a ladder to do all that ... that said i do want to change the color scheme but i don't have a clue how to pick something that works and highlights the right architectural details in the right way. that is pretty awesome that your mom painted yours growing up!

interior i know it's not too hard to do myself but i don't know if i have the time, so we're thinking about hiring pros for that too and just get it down before we move in later this summer

we had a ranch, tbf

I have procrastinated further, the couple places I left a message w/to get a quote on roof/siding never got back to me. I must call more places.

I am a big proponent (although I did not) of painting before move-in, although painting is kind of a cool way to get to know the nooks and crannies of your home

in all honesty my family needs more hobbies in that my parents' main pastimes are landscaping their yard and doing shit to their house. maybe that's why I'm so lackadaisical about it, just tired of shit changing when I was a kid. when they have too much free time they start sniffing around my place and offering to do projects, which is ok-ish

haha

we had a contractor come by the other day to give a quote to finish our attic and he was totally sniffing around the rest of the house too

seriously, my mom repainted my whole living room for me when I was on vacation. It has obnoxious popcorn ceiling that's too stuck-on for me to remove, and the previous owner PAINTED THE CEILING BLUE. and the walls. swear I've ranted about this before but it still gets to me

oh yeah if a contractor has some slack time, and they're good, get at that shit

everyone here is apparently busy as fuck and you have to harass them to get them to prioritize your house

I know what you mean about not wanting to paint the high parts of the house - once you get up there and look down you just think "UGH I COULD DIE IF I FALL" and its not worth it - tho I see fearl;ess imbeciles scamper up like roof rabbits

otm

I also need to make sure I get the gutters w/the covers installed, cleaning gutters seems like a recipe for disaster

I've actually never cleaned my gutters and I looked at them the other day and they were utterly free of debris so dont fall for that racket

lucky!

I have some pretty awesome trees, including a huge-ass maple that shades half of my home that's dropping buds and those big old seeds all over right now

trees always seem like a nci idea when planted but when they become massive overloards of the naeighborhood they seem like tehy shoudl have been planted in a a forest

its better for a residential neighborhood to have medium sized tree, not malpe or oak or white pine, tho I do love trees

oh man i love big trees. my yard has a bunch of small trees but neighbors all around have some tall ones and they surround my back yard, they are very nice

this is why new suburbs are horrible, they cut all the good trees out and have these lame-ass twigs stuck in the yard

yea for sure

the first third of my drive to work is on streets where there's almost a complete tree canopy over the road, trees on both side forming a little roof over me

we have some beautiful tall pin oaks everywhere throughout our town but they were all planted around the exact same time 100 years ago, so they are all starting to die now. some are in better shape than others. the city is replacing them as they cut the worst ones down and trying to diversify the canopy but it is a big change to see a giant oak replaced with a little sapling. houses that i thought looked very cool under a tall tree's shade now look bare and exposed

the linden tree that was in the area between my sidewalk and the street was not doing well and when I let the city know, they cut it down. it was for the best, but the front of my house is going to be hotter this summer :(

There are several enormous giganto trees in my neighborhood and around my lot. There used to be even more, but after one on the lot next door fell on my house (three years before I bought it, which is why it got fixed, updated, and put on the market for me to eventually buy). I love in constant fear of one of the ones at the rear of my lot falling this direction (they're definitely tall enough to reach).

Also, I don't know if this is the ordinance everywhere, but I learned that if a tree falls on your lot in Atlanta/Fulton County, it's the responsibility of the party whose lot it FELL ON to get it removed. That seems fucked up, but it may also explain why the lady who lived here just wanted to get the fuck out after having to deal with some shit like that.