House #2

House #2 another day, another viewing:

http://www.realtor.ca/PropertyDetails.aspx?PropertyID=10537029&PidKey=284820014

Ben and I just came back from viewing another potential property.  It looked really good on paper - 6 bedrooms, 3 baths, large house, huge lot, over sized double garage - but wait, that's not all!... no, that was about it...

This house was really poorly designed.  Like the owners just put up a wall to make a bedroom whenever they needed one, but there wasn't much rhyme or reason to it.  Let me take you on a tour.

When you arrive at the house, as you can see from the pictures in the posting, there is a long driveway on the side, and a very cute house, with a front deck.  It looks great from the outside, and you can tell the house is fairly new and well maintained.

When you step into the front door you are in a large room with vaulted ceilings - the living room is on your left, and the kitchen your right - just like that, you step into the kitchen from the front door.  There are no walls put up to break up the space, you just have one large room with counter tops and cabinets on one side, and couches on the other.  The kitchen itself was nice, with lots of storage and new cabinets and bright colors.

When you walk forward into the hallway the first door on your left is the main floor bath, which joins to another door which ends up being your walk in closet, which then joins to your master bedroom.  That's right - right in the middle of the house is your bedroom, and guests can waltz right into your closet after going pee.

On the right side of the hallway was a tiny little room plenty big enough for an office, but not much else - perhaps a nursery?  Then ahead of you was a staircase going upstairs, and around the corner from that stair case was the back door, and the stairs going downstairs.  We went up first.

The stairs were very nice, with a bright window over looking the backyard halfway up.  Once you reach the top there are two large bedrooms.  When you walk into one, it's a room much bigger than the master bedroom, and off of that is a bathroom with tub, and off of that is the walk in closet for the next room, and off of that is the next room (they really like their combined rooms hey?).  The second bedroom is also big, and they have a train that runs around the track near the ceiling between both rooms. 

Heading to the basement is where things get really weird, up until there we could see potential.

When you reach the bottom of the stairs, to your right there is a small cold room under the stairs used for storage, the next room is a little "bedroom" no more than 8 x 8.  Next to that is the furnace room with a large storage cabinet.  across the hall is the laundry/bathroom (all in one room) and then at the end of the hall the floor slopes upward toward the last too rooms (and when I say slopes upward, I mean by about a foot - it's like a ramp for some odd reason).  The room on the left was another small box, maybe 10 x 10, and the room on the right was a little bigger, maybe 12 X 10 - and I'm assuming was the "rec room" the listing spoke about.  It's the room with the swing in the pictures.

The backyard was decent, the back door takes you outside on the right of the house at the back and a path leads you to a beautiful over sized double garage.  To the right of the back door the concrete pad from the front extends almost to the garage (what a waste of grass!) but the grass on left side of the yard was decently sized.

All in all, another fixer upper.  It was very oddly put together, and the basement calls for a "do-over"  I dont understand why people don't have a Den/Man Cave in their basement?  Where do you snuggle up and watch movies?  Where do you put up your surround sound?  Where do you put the wet bar?

Ben and I watch a lot of movies, and are very excited about having a corner of the house where we can put a big comfy sectional and curl up to watch movies with a mug of hot tea - not to mention, when we get the house, we are getting cable, which mean I can finally watch my team, and I need a place to do it damn it!

We're not discouraged, it just means we're one house closer to finding "the one"!