House Hunting
/We looked at three open houses in Waterloo yesterday, as we’re thinking about upgrading from our little ranch to something a bit more spacious.
The first house we looked at had a lot of character, though it was really showing its age in places. The somewhat-finished area in the basement had a sagging ceiling that was somewhat alarming, and the floors all squeaked loudly. The upstairs bathroom and the kitchen had been remodeled, though, as the women said “by a man” as they’re somewhat ugly and don’t fit the house at all, so would need to be redone if you had taste… The lot was small, so not a lot of grass to mow, and while it’s on perhaps the nicest street in town, the houses around it are very close and not anything grand…
The second house we looked at is actually on the same street, though farther down where it loses its boulevard status. It’s friggin’ huge, a great sprawling ranch house. The basement, though very dated, has a big bar in it, as well as a bedroom with egress window. Upstairs there’s a nice four-season room, family room, and a huge living room. It had a great entryway, and a very spacious kitchen as well. You can tell this was a very very nice home when it was built in the 1950s, but a lot of the home still feels like that era, and not in a good way. The brick work is very dated, including the triangle-styled cement block that probably was very cool back then, but just sticks out now…
The third house we looked at was also a monster, lots of space inside, with extremely high amounts of storage space. Every single bedroom has a walk-in closet, some of them big enough to park a car inside. Out back, there is a HUGE newish shed/workshop with almost 800 square feet of space alone, though it’s not currently heated or insulated. There’s a big addition on the back with a long family room and a fireplace at the end, but it felt like it was sort of done cheaply, and you felt kind of isolated from the rest of the house while you were there. There was a first-floor laundry, which was nice, but a lot of bathrooms in need of TLC, and basically every floor surface in the house needed to be redone. The wood at the entry way was spongy underfoot, and what looks like tile in the photos actually seems to be the peel ‘n stick squares, used throughout the first floor…
We haven’t found anything we love yet, so the hunt continues!
