71 posts from 2007

After a year of looking at homes for sale on-line and walking through new home models, we decided to take the step of going and looking at actual homes for sale. With approximately 25,000 homes on the market and a good percentage in foreclosure, this is a good time to buy and a bad time to sell...

We found a house that is a bank short sale, priced average for the area, but still a great deal for the size of the house. I called up a Realtor friend and she arranged a time for us to go look at it.

We really like the house. We could totally see ourselves living there. Perhaps by the start of the year we could be in the process of buying a house.

The house has some good curb appeal, but the landscaping has been neglected. If you were losing your home would you give a shit what condition it's in?

First the pros of the house. It has a really great floor plan. It has a lot of potential if we wanted to, say, completely renovate the kitchen a few years down the road. It has a decent number of windows to allow for natural light in the house. It has a decent backyard with a pool and a hot tub, a gas stub for a built in BBQ, and enough room for a medium sized dog to be happy (see past post regarding dogs). It has a downstairs office. It has a fairly large laundry room on the second floor. The master bathroom is huge with 2 walk in closets, and big bathtub. I would probably rip  the bathtub out and replace with a Japanese soaking tub.

Now for the cons.

The carpet. All the carpet in the house needs to be ripped out. The current "owners" have a cat who has destroyed the carpet. That and it looks like it's been a while since it's been vacuumed. Plus, carpet is just nasty anyway

The paint. The kitchen is painted dark red. It's not a bad color, just not for the kitchen. The rest of the common areas of the house are painted flesh tones [vomit] and the three upstairs bedrooms are painted bright blue, PINK, and some random crap. The house is gonna need a 55 gallon drum of KILZ primer. I'd say this is the worst of it.

The drywall. There is some drywall damage that needs repair in a number of areas. Overall it is very minor.

The backyard. It has a pool and hot tub which is very nice to have. Right now it is just dirty and needs to be cleaned. The landscaping is pathetic, which is nice as it is sort of a clean slate to work with and put in what we want. The block walls need to be raised up for additional privacy.

The Realtor has called her appraiser to have that taken care of either Monday or Wednesday. She is going to do the title research on Wednesday to find out exactly how much is owed on the property, so we can decide if we want to put in an offer and if so how low can we go before it would be insulting.

If the house was in perfect conditions, we would be willing to put in an offer close to what it is listed for. But given the state of things, are first offer would be total low-ball. It is bank owned and banks don't like being in real-estate and usually will sell for way lower than asking, just to unload the property.

Eek... we could be getting pre-approved for a home loan by the end of the week, as it is a requirement for putting an offer in on the house.

I took some pictures of the house... just try to ignore the bad paint colors and all the people's crappy stuff. I forgot to take pictures of the backyard and pool.

We have an appointment to look at a house on Saturday afternoon!!

One house is just about everything I want in a house. The only downside, so far, is that it is in a gated neighborhood. Eric said that's not a total downside, only if it has a super restrictive Home Owners Association like where we live now. I still don't know. It would have to be one hell of a house for me to consider it.

However, it is an excellent price for the house. Hopefully it doesn't have a tiny useless kitchen.

A few things we want in a house:

1. A decent sized kitchen for all our kitchen stuff. I am tired of storing cookware in my oven.
2. Enough room to host Thanksgiving dinner.
3. A three car garage so Eric can have room for all his tools and stuff and so our mountain bikes do not have to be stored in the dining room.
4. Enough rooms to have a proper guest room, a room for Eric to have an "office"/room for all his crap that ends up stuffed all over the house, and a place to store all of our books.
5. A hot tub would be nice and a pool would be a bonus.

The big, scary part of all this is the prospect of selling our town home in a shitty housing market.

What was your major or field of study in college? Did you wind up working in that field or using that degree? If not, what field have you wound up in? 
Submitted by sneuf. 

I studied and earned my B.S. in Geology.

I currently work as a geologist/jack-of-all-trades environmental scientist for an environmental consulting firm.

Which breed of dog is your favorite? Post a picture of it. 
Submitted by Melissa.

Boxers

I have finally started the massive undertaking of scanning to digitize an enormous amount of old family photos. Some of these photos date back to the early 1900's.

There are a number of things that is going to make this a daunting task. The majority of these pictures have been poorly cared for for the last 80 years. Some are curled, some are faded, a majority of them are of places I have no idea where or when they were taken. I will probably never find out either since the people who would be able to answer those questions have been dead for a long time now. It makes me sad.

Once I get them scanned in (I am scanning at 1200 dpi as its the best I have for now) I will have to go use PhotoShop to see if I can digitally repair some of the pictures as well as try to organize the actual photos into acid free albums.

This is going to take me forever.

Have you ever found that you have a button or switch in your car that you have no idea what it is for?

I have one in my 4Runner. It is labeled ECT. When I push it a green light on the dash display says 'ETC Power'.

I looked in the owner's manual to see if it is defined. Nope, nothing even close in there. I proceeded to forget about it most of the time.

I have had the truck for 3 years now and finally got around to looking up what it is. I looked online and found that it is an Electronically Controlled Transmission button to supposedly control where the shifting points in the transmissions are 'set'.

I don't notice anything different if it is in 'normal' mode or 'power' mode, so it just stays in 'normal'.

What is your daily commute like?  What is the weirdest thing you've seen on that commute? 
Submitted by E. 

I drive about 3 miles to get to the freeway entrance, drive for 14 miles to Boulder City. Not too bad, it takes about 25 minutes each way every day.

Morning traffic isn't so bad, but the afternoon traffic people drive like complete assholes.

Not so much weird but ridiculous is that Fridays are even worse driving home due to all the people, most driving like major assholes, coming up from Arizona and California through Boulder City. Hello people! there is no need to drive 95 on a road where the speed limit is 65. Las Vegas isn't going anywhere. Why be in such a hurry to blow all your money.

What's your favorite kind of homemade cookie?  Share the recipe if you have it.

It would be my super-duper chocolate chip cookie recipe. My cookies are so good, I have been told they are better than Mrs Fields.

I am at work so I don't have the recipe with me, but here are the basics:

1. Mix together ingredients in a secretly guarded amounts, combinations and order:
        brown sugar
        butter Crisco
        vanilla- the good stuff only- not that imitation crap
        eggs
        flour
        milk
        chocolate chips of your choice

2. Dollop dough balls onto a baking sheet with a Silpat and bake for about 10 minutes in a 350 degree oven

3. Remove tray from oven and burn fingers and mouth on freshly baked cookies.

4. Try and let cookies cool completely before eating them all

Yield: Depends on how much dough I eat.

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