First day of househunting

[caffeine_girl]

Today we went and saw seven houses for sale in the neighbourhood we're living in now.  It was a pretty and warm October morning, perfect for choosing a house.

Most of the houses were not very nice. They had small rooms, small scrubby yards, and small kitchens.  How could a house with three bedrooms have an even smaller kitchen than the apartment

Comments

Re: Sometimes you just know

[caffeine_girl]

It looks huge, but it's actually only 1633 ft². Thinking about it, that's got to be pretty close to yours, right? It has two bedrooms upstairs, like yours, it has a living room and a family room and an office. The kitchen is smaller than yours, but it has an extra bathroom. It must be really close.

Texas houses don't have basements! Isn't that crazy? The ground here is mostly rock, making it difficult to dig so basements are too costly. All the houses we have seen are built on concrete slabs, and if you hate your carpet, you can tear it up and live right on the concrete foundation -- no subfloor! Erik and I will most likely do this until we are ready to put in a wood or composite floor.

So people have three options for storage: you can either limit your stuff to what fits in the space you have, or you can fill up your double garage, or you can rent storage. I once read that storage rental is highest in the southern states, including Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas. It sounds like people here just collect too much stuff, but in fact, I think it's because they don't have basements. I met a guy once who was living in an apartment like ours and was renting three garages in his complex, and all of them were full of stuff. He stored his car outside in a parking spot. Fortunately, the apartment parking areas are normally covered with big aluminum roofs, so when a hailstorm comes through, your car should be okay even if it is parked outside.

We're lucky because we will only have one car in a two-car garage, so we should have plenty of room for a workshop and some storage too. We are currently fitting both in our single garage (although you have to move the car out to work), so we will just have that much more space when we move.

It is exciting to look at houses, though. I'll let you know if we see any more amazing ones! And yeah, our 2009 vacation budget will be wiped out. :-(