Options

(c) 2007 Ms. Huis Herself at musenmutter.blogspot.com

Still no new news about our secondary offer. As you'd imagine, we're getting a bit antsy, grumpy, and ready to move on. Either to move forward on that house, or to be done with this waiting and work on finding another.

And actually... we may have. We've continued looking on-line and at open houses while waiting to find out - both as distraction and in case we found just the right one. We went and saw one yesterday afternoon that was, while certainly not perfect, very nice.

Mr. Kluges's called it the first house's evil twin. They're both American foursquare style brick houses with very similar layouts. 4 bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs, a bedroom to use for an office downstairs, along with a living room, dining room, kitchen and sun porch... different arrangement, but same rooms.

But this new one has a nicely updated kitchen, and redone wiring (200 amp service instead of 100...and no knob-and-tube in use), and no asbestos shingles on the roof. It's got a two-car garage instead of a three-car, but it's attached. It appears to have been well kept up over the years and is in a historic area quite close to downtown and all its amenities. (Like walking distance close.) It's got two full bathrooms plus a toilet in the basement. The basement is nicely finished with a couple of rooms.

On the other hand, the yard is practically nonexistent. The backyard is fenced in, but it's barely big enough to play in, while gardening is right out. It's a corner lot, across from a county building on one side, with fairly busy roads. The layout is a little awkward on part of the main floor with the stairs, the way to the garage, the bathroom, the kitchen, and the hallway to the office kind of coming together in a crowded, narrow way.

Mr. Kluges called them the city cousin and the country cousin - similar houses, but the city one's got the small lot, close to amenities, and well kept up, while the more country one needs updating, but oh, the wonderful size of the lot.

So we'll see what happens. We don't love this new one enough to pull our offer...but we're considering it if this dog-and-pony show continues too much longer.

We have really gotten some comfort from finding this other house, whether or not we choose it. It means we've got another option. If our secondary offer doesn't work out, we're not starting over from scratch. And if our offer does succeed, we feel like we've now got some bargaining power, if only because we no longer feel so desperate to get that one particular house.

This is the most calm and peaceful I've felt for the past two weeks.