Still recovering from a long weekend. The house hunt has begun anew in Ohio, and we spent all day Saturday seeing 9 places and winnowing them down to three. Of those three, all of them have stuff we love, including some element that is unavailable from the other two, and all have some nearly fatal flaw. There's a huge price difference, which adds to the complexity of the decision, and time is short. It's the opposite of the quandary we had here - then we didn't feel like we were even coming close, and now there's a wealth of possibilities.
This photo does not quite do the place justice. The inside is really nice, with a fantastic kitchen. We could pretty much move in and be settled. Also not visible in this photo are the half acre (including apple trees) behind the house, or the lovely decks off both the first and second floors. Sadly, what is visible here is the major flaw of the place: it's right on a state route, without even really adequate room to plant sound-absorbing shrubs. Also, while it's walking distance from campus, there are no sidewalks along this stretch, so at night it could get pretty dicey.
This place was undeniably stunning, both inside and out. Also huge. The lot is .22 acres, and almost 1/3 of that is taken up by the house itself. It's one of those old Victorians that has a sleeping porch and a back stairway and one room after another. Unlike the other two, the negatives of this one are more intangible. It is on a busy street (a fact mitigated somewhat by the fact that it's set back from the road and there are sidewalks). The lot is smaller than the other two, although comparable in size or larger than most of the places we saw in Maryland, and beautifully landscaped. It's in Mount Vernon rather than Gambier, which means we could not walk to campus. It would also mean a 30-year mortgage rather than a 15-year (and likely less down to boot), so we'd own less of it when the time came to sell. More than all those, though, is the feeling that it might just be too much house for the two of us. Certainly it has better long-term possibilities than the other two, and we could house both our families at holidays, but what about the rest of the year?
Again, the photo doesn't quite do the place justice, since in this picture you cannot see the stunning 2-acre lot, complete with tree-lined drive, well-kept garden, detached garage, and pole barn. It is the exact same distance to campus as the house 1, only it's on a far quieter road. Very peaceful, just the kind of place we imagined moving when we went out there. Unfortunately, the place needs a ton of work. Much of it is cosmetic, but some of it isn't - like, for instance, the severely sloped floors (could be normal settling, could be something more sinister) and the steps to the second floor, which will need to be moved to avoid the possibility of multiple concussions for both of us. Some brain trust decided to have the steps come out upstairs right where the roof slopes down. Maybe people were much shorter in 1890. Anyhow, it's a crapshoot - it could be fun to fix the place up and make it ours, or it could be a money pit.
So, we continue to waffle. Anyone with a brilliant insight is welcome to pass it along :-)
posted by Alison @ 2:06 PM
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