Buying A House: C or D?

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.

I love old suburbs full of 100-year-old trees, including the ones in my yard. Some of them are dying; all of them need trimming. Every time the tree people come out, it is at least a thousand dollars. Current estimate is $1,500 for the things we should do immediately, and an additional $2,400 for the things we ought to do sooner rather than later.

("We need to call the tree people" sounds way cooler in fantasy novels than it does in homeowning btw.)

Many of our biggest trees are slightly straddling the property line, but my neighbor will not share costs. There is a part of me that wants to wait for something to die then gently nudge it into his den, but that would probably cause more problems than it solves.

Painting, gah, another "a thousand dollars every time you call a professional" thing. Personally I would rather DIY paint outside than inside, because we can't shut down life inside during the drying time. We have no extraneous rooms (four people in 1,000 sq ft), it smells awful for days, and a mischievous preschooler cannot be kept away from wet paint or painting tools.

When was the last time you used new interior paint? It doesn't really have much of an odor anymore.

Low/no-VOC interior paint solves the interior odor issue, but I've never been in a situation where I couldn't leave a room alone at least overnight.

Exterior would always go to pros for me - odds are their spray job will look better than brushed on paint and I don't have to get up and down a ladder a million times (or rent/borrow a rolling scaffold).

When I was working in construction, the number of people in an office who'd mysteriously fall ill when we painted a room on the other side of the office with modern latex paint was hilarious to me. No one is using oil-based paint on an interior anymore.

the previous owner PAINTED THE CEILING BLUE. and the walls.

Previous owners of my home mercifully left the ceiling white, but installed blue high pile carpet to match the sponge-painted walls.

http://i.imgur.com/n4fkCCc.jpg

whoa

they sponge-painted the baseboard heaters

wowee

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9-PN1sftaI

I actually had a door to door painter guy come and tell me how shit my house looked and I was lame to nto hire him and I just closed teh door - I know it looks shitty but I am cultivating the haunted hsoeu look

https://www.coldwellbankerhomes.com/az/concho/669-county-road-8235-stanford/pid_18337473/

i mean

http://cdn.cbhomes.com/s3/mediasvc-prd/properties/0e649C29481740f-215144.jpg
http://1cdn.cbhomes.com/s3/mediasvc-prd/properties/D3ebC435fA2742e-215144.jpg
http://1cdn.cbhomes.com/s3/mediasvc-prd/properties/F1d6138844Bc4D8-215144.jpg