Monday, January 26, 2009

Ho hum

This weekend was one that was so ordinary! Saturday, I thought I might become a real estate mogul. K found a house here that was about $80,000 under price. We rushed over to look at it. It had been previously leased by a little girl who went to school with Lady Bug. I was amazed at how the house had been abused. I am not a fanatic house keeper. I'll be the very first to admit that. When I had a full time job, a part time (every other week as organist for a church), and trying to get a craft store going, I realized that something had to give. Since I wanted some time to be with family, I wasn't going to be a spotless housekeeper.

Looking at that house, I am a spotless housekeeper. That poor house was so trashed - in fact most of the trash was left behind in the house and scattered around the yard. The house has the strangest floor plan I have ever seen. The very center of the house is a dining room. A formal living is directly in front, and a small den behind it. There is no direct access from the kitchen to the dining room.

We looked and planned. It was daughter, son in law, the contractor, the real estate agent and me. None of us to come up with a good way to make that house one that would be livable. It was such a mish mash. The contractor estimated a good $45,000 to work on it. Both baths had to be completely gutted, and most of the kitchen. The first blow to the deal after that estimate was looking at the pool. It is literally the black lagoon. That didn't scare me that much because the first year we had the cover on ours, when the cover came off - it was the black lagoon. When I went to the pool equipment to turn on the pump - nothing happened. Ah so! Talk about a real money pit! The diving board had been broken off and was completely missing.

The real killer was when I looked over the back door. It appeared that that section had moved upward. The contractor then looked with more detail. There were lightning bolt cracks in the exterior brick - not one but several. That sealed the fate. Not the house for us.

I am still amazed at just how strange that floor plan was. I would love to know who built that thing. I would love to know what he was thinking. More than that, I would love to know who the architect was. He is bound to be out of business and very poor now!

Peace.

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