The House in the Woods Part 1

And so we are closing on a new house in about three weeks.

We have been talking about buying a place ever since we fled from the disaster that was our apartment on Georgia Avenue (the one on the third floor that flooded repeatedly? Yeah, that one). We got settled in our jobs and we knew that we were going to stay in the DC area indefinitely. We wanted to actually settle down and start the life that our kid needs--one that is as stable as we can make it and still leave it fun. We just wanted something where we could paint it and bang holes in the walls and not worry about returning it to white in a year or so. We wanted a permanent address.

The lease on our townhouse ends in October, so we thought we'd start the process of actually looking at places to buy starting in January. We hashed out some priorities and parameters and started scouring Zillow for likely prospects. We went to a few open houses--if anything just to rule out floorplans and neighborhoods. We talked to some friends about how they went about buying their houses. I started budgeting and projecting and figuring out finances.

Then, about a month ago, we decided to hit four open houses in a day. It felt Serious. These houses looked like good places, things we wanted to live in. Two of the three were amazing--AMAZING.

One of the houses was the COCKTAIL PARTY HOUSE. It was kind of mid-century modern. Designed like a cube with windows sticking out of it, a roof that was (designed with energy efficiency in mind) reminiscent of a Pizza Hut, it had a screamingly cool backyard with bamboo and deer and firepits and things and a CrossFit gym in the basement. The owner was, apparently, a hardcore XFit trainer. And it was just a cool space, man... like some kind of space-age cave. The whole thing. I wished I had a better credit score, a better budget. Despite that, we had a conference in the backyard and determined that it was a possibility. We'd go and see these other two houses and maybe, at the end of the day, put in an offer on the thing.

The second house was SOMEONE ELSE'S HOUSE. It was big, in a quiet neighborhood, and well-appointed. It had an expansive set of closets and a massive master bathroom. There was even a Harry Potter Room under the eaves. It was great. But it wasn't our house. It felt like the owner, apparently a successful, self-made single mother or divorcee, had infused her soul in the place, and it would never be my house. It was just... not for me. Carly liked it, but she knew why I didn't, and it didn't matter because the thing was off the market by the end of the day.

The fourth house was HIDDEN HAIR SALON HOUSE. It was being sold by the original owners who had, apparently, archived the smell of every dinner in their house. It wasn't bad, but it was distinct. There were quirks with the layout that felt like someone had simply been accustomed to that I found challenging. Why is there an outlet here, in the middle of the floor? Why is the kitchen counter angled like that? Why does the backdoor open to, well, open air (I called it the "mother-in-law door")? The best part was the hair salon in the basement. Like a full business put together in 1989 and never updated. The smell, it turned out, wasn't food... it was hair chemicals and food.

The realtor at HIDDEN HAIR SALON HOUSE was a little off-putting. Kind of an uptight middle-aged bitty who talked down to her younger, black associate. She just stood there disapproving when I said things like, "this is overpriced." She made some comments like she's a deep-boned racist. I dunno--it really put me off the place.

The third place was PERFECT, NORMAL HOUSE. It was on a quiet cul-de-sac, not too old (built in the late 80's) but intelligently renovated and redecorated. It felt right, when we walked in. The kid ran around like it was his private play room, and everything about it hit the right notes in our must-have or wish-to-have lists.

After the open house at PERFECT, NORMAL HOUSE was done, we just hung around and talked to the realtor. Turns out, she wasn't really representing the sellers in that one, just covering for her friend. She gave us a really straightforward and honest rundown of the market and advised us on what to do if we wanted to put in an offer on that house. We got a plan together and agreed to take her on as our agent. It... was going to be a busy week.

We spent the next few days finally going out and getting a pre-qualification letter from Bank of America (that was its own blog post, more on that another time), fully exploring the depths of our finances, and getting excited about it.

By the next weekend, we were ready to put in an offer on PERFECT, NORMAL HOUSE, but something was bugging me. We hadn't really played the field. We got lucky--we found a great house basically by accident. It would be perfect, but... we didn't really know. So we called up our realtor and asked her to show us a handful of houses that we had sitting on our Zillow saved homes lists.

And that's how we found it. The HOUSE IN THE WOODS.

Going to see SAVAGES tonight. Enjoy this:

Another Permanent Address

Every few years, I post something called "Another Permanent Address." It's  a reference to a song by Chroma Key, a weird little solo project from one of the founding members of Dream Theater. Goes like this:



I bloody love that song. It has a specific kind of place whenever we're looking at moving. This time, we're looking at moving to an actual permanent address--somewhere we'll stay for an indefinite period.

A SHORT HISTORY OF MY ADDRESSES, CA 1989- PRESENT.

~1989 - 2001 - Lived with my parents in Castle Boring, on a State Highway in Ravenna, Ohio.

2001 - 2003 - Thayer Ave, Akron--lived with my best friends in the apartment over the owners of a Christian gift shop.

2003 - Back with the parents for about 8 months.

2004-2005 - Back to the Thayer house, but in the apartment my ex-girlfriend shared with her high-school friend. I lived there alone until I met Carly, we got a dog, and eventually moved in together on...

2005 - 2007 - East Glenwood house. We got this thing thinking we'd be there forever. It didn't work out. After law school, Carly got a job in her hometown in Mount Vernon. So we moved to...

2007 - 2008 - Sugar Street. I was unemployed, but somehow we bought a historic house for $80,000 or so. I loved the house, hated the town. Couldn't wait to get out. So I looked far afield and dragged Carly to...

2008 - 2010 - Lincoln Park, Newark NJ. The apartment we lived in was in a renovated former bordello and probably crack house. It was great, for a time. There was Jodi, the weird hoarding yoga instructor. There were the car break ins, and Clement Price... but ultimately the neighborhood failed to improve so we took off for the bright lights.

2010 - 2013 - Paulus Hook, Jersey City, NJ.  This was one of my favorite places to live. Yeah, the rent was steep and it wasn't the most up-to-date apartment, but it was good enough for us and it was close to all the things we loved.

2013-2014 - That apartment complex in Wheaton, MD. This would have been great if we weren't overlooking the busiest road in the greater DMV, flooded four or five times despite being on the third floor, and generally kind of hating it.

2014-PRESENT - That townhouse in Wheaton, MD. This place has been a pretty good home, but we knew when we moved in that it would only be for a limited time. It would have been better if we found it when we first moved to DC, but at that time it was occupied by people who didn't care much about the cockroaches in the walls and under the carpet and everything.

NEXT, we think we found a place. More to that later.