Sheesh, where have ya been?!
Sorry for the long break in blog posts. I could come up with a million excuses but I'll save you from the complaining and just sum it up with "I've been too dang busy!"
I mean seriously? How is it already Easter? I swear it was just Christmas. Usually I'm eager for Winter to fly by fast, but around here time is flying but doesn't feel like Spring is getting any closer (at least weather-wise).
But anyway.
One of the FUN reasons I've been busy is because we've started the hunt for a new house. Yay! With John's graduation less than two short months away, we figured it was time to start looking at what's on the market and getting a sense of what we want in our "forever" home.
And to be honest, it's been a little discouraging.
We've found some beautiful houses online and when we go to see them, reality is so far off from what we'd envisioned in our heads! Rooms much smaller, yards with no privacy, houses on top of each other, even one with a pool that had huge power lines hanging above! (Those were conveniently cropped out of the pictures!)
I feel with the price range of houses that we're looking at, we should be able to get what we want but the more I see I am starting to doubt that. Or at least people that have what we want, aren't selling! Fortunately, our brother in law is our realtor so we don't feel too bad dragging him to places we wish we could afford and dreaming a little bit.
So if we can't find what we want, we've started thinking perhaps building is a better choice for us. I've always pushed that option aside for numerous reasons. First reason, I think it ends up being more expensive. From what I hear EVERYTHING is an upgrade. Oh, you want doorknobs? Sorry, that's an upgrade.
Second reason, I am inpatient. I realize building pushes out the timeline that I have in my head fairly significantly for when I'd like be moving.
Last reason, the decisions. ALL of the freakin' choices you need to make. I don't want to have to think about how high my ceilings are or whether to use copper pipe or pex (?) or poured or block basement. It gives me anxiety just thinking about it.
However, it may end up being our only option (or settling for what we don't want) so we need to gather information and see if it's something right for us. A custom builder in the area we are looking at was recommended to us, Parry Custom Homes. We had our first consultation a couple weeks ago in their showroom and it was exciting and scary. Exciting in the fact that you can get exactly what you want. Scary in the fact that exactly what you want comes with a pretty hefty price tag.
We came to the agreement that if building is something we want to do, it likely would not be able to break ground until next year. Which means another year of townhome bliss, but more time to save. We were on our 'let's build' high when reality set in that we don't have land to build a house on and that needed to be factored into the price we wanted to spend. Cue the "wann wannn" sound..
The past few weekends we've been driving around looking at lots. Some in neighborhoods, some not and it's just seeming near impossible to find at least a half an acre, relatively flat in Westmoreland County without selling your first born. I am tempted to start knocking on doors and asking farmers if they will sell me just a teeny bit of their field. I really took for granted growing up in the country.
One thing I am learning quite well. If it seems too good to be true, it usually is. We found a lot 2.8 acres, about half of it flat, the rest wooded hillside. It was pretty nice and inexpensive.
Come to find, if you want to build there you have to dig your sewer line through the neighbors yard which, oh by the way this neighbor is going through the foreclosure process and there is no saying how long that's going to take. No biggie, we don't need water or toilets.
So at this point, there is nothing new to check out so we're just in sit and wait mode. I'm sure more houses and lots will come up for sale as Spring approaches and I'm hoping whatever happens, it's an easy decision for us and we know it's the right one. For now, we're focusing on the long list of things we need to fix up around here, which seems to be growing by the day!
