The House

The realtor finally managed to get us an appointment to walk through the house (See the post from about a week ago). It's actually even nicer than we thought and the current price is $50,000 lower than their initial asking price. It's apparent that the couple has put a lot of work into the home and they wanted to try to capitalize on it.

In short, it's a little two-bedroom with a nicely finished basement. Hardwood floors throughout with an unfortunately small kitchen. In fact, all of the rooms are pretty small, but the fact that it is on three floors adds to the size substantially. There is a small yard in front, on the side and in back with heavy foliage all around the property. It's a stucco house, which irritates me to no end, but I guess it could be worse.

Marie doesn't like the fact that the laundry room is in the basement, but I believe that's pretty typical of older houses. Moving into that house would mean some serious lifestyle changes that, ideally, I would like us to make, but I don't know if we'll be able to handle it all at once.

For example, Marie-Pierre and I watch a lot of television. This is not something about which I am particularly proud, but it's the case. Also, even though we said when we got married that we'd never eat in front of the TV, we do so virtually every night. In the new house, there wouldn't be enough room in the main living area for the TV because the room is small and has a substantial fireplace. There would simply not be enough room for a TV as well. This means that the TV would need to be in the basement living area. Now, this would either force us to watch less television or we would end up spending most of our free time in our basement, which seems like such a shame. I'd obviously prefer the former, especially since we basically live in a basement now and we'd be wasting all of that nice landscaping.

Also, Marie does most of the laundry (OK... she does all of the laundry and most of the ironing) so it'd be a real hassle to haul the dirty clothes down to the basement from the 2nd floor and then haul all of the clean stuff way back upstairs. Theoretically, this problem would be solved by watching less television and doing laundry slowly throughout the week instead of once a week or once every other week. But, just like above, I'm not so sure we'd stick to that.

There is other stuff, but the last down-side is that there is no air conditioning. Now, I never had an air conditioner until I moved in with my roommates in University. Also, people lived for centuries without it. However, I like having it and Marie thinks it is a necessity. We'll see how that pans out.

In general, we liked the place (Marie even said that she was "falling in love" with it). However, I think we like it more for what it looks like than for its practical appeal. No matter how good a home looks, it's not worth much if it doesn't fit the lifestyle of it's occupants.