We saw the house

The kids and I went yesterday to see the house. If you click on that link, you can go look at it yourself and then what I say will make a little more sense.

First of all, the agent reeked of desperation, so we probably could get them to significantly lower their price. But would I want them to? I just don't know.

I didn't love it. And I did a million mental gymnastics yesterday trying to determine just how we could arrange our belongings to make it work. None of those amounted to anything I could be very excited about.

Basically, the house went like this: Walk in the front door which deposits you in the kitchen. The picture of the wood stove is what is to your left as you enter, and the kitchen picture is directly in front of you. If you have seen our current kitchen, it is about that size. But with the wood stove there, I couldn't figure out where the table could go. To the left is the larger bedroom (about the size of the boys' current room) with a large cedar lined closet. It also has a door to the back deck, so it would not be usable as the boys' room, and we find it easier to give them the big room so they have space for the toys. To the right of the kitchen is the living room with doors off of that to the smaller bedroom, the bathroom and the basement. The bathroom is small but in good shape. The smaller bedroom has a walk-in closet/dressing room which could potentially hold the drum set. The living room is about the size of our current one. In general, it's about the same amount of space we now have, except instead of the room with the bookshelves in it, we would have 2 large closets.

In order to have the work space I want to have, ie. a large table for doing projects, a place for my sewing machine, etc., we would have to make the living room the workspace. Then we'd take the large bedroom for ourselves, but also have the couch and TV in there. Give the boys the smaller room, and get bunk beds (but a 3 year old kid in town died by hanging from a bunk bed recently).

And then there's the basement. It was wet. Puddles all over the floor. This is not the end of the world, but it would mean that the drums couldn't go down there and that there is the potential for a mold problem. So that's no good.

On the other hand, the yard is near perfect and even has a little stream. The boys would love it there. And the drive is fine; it's only 10 minutes to the highway/town.

But I did see that big old St. Bernard-esque dog wandering around again, and that would drive me nuts.

The best I can say is: We'll keep it in mind.