Here we go again...

After taking some time off from the house search (consciously or unconsciously, I'm not sure), we went out again last night to look at some places. Our initial list of houses we wanted to see consisted of 8 homes. Our agent contacted the appropriate agents, to report back to us that 3 of the homes we wanted to see had already been sold. Coincidentally, all 3 were the houses I was really interested in.

Needless to say, I wasn't feeling overly positive about the outing.

We had 4 houses confirmed for our viewing, and were awaiting the 5th. When we met our agent, he told us the 5th had also been sold, conditionally. It was more than a little depressing to watch him physically cross out the homes we wouldn't be seeing because we'd missed the boat on them.

The ride over to the houses was pretty silent. Whether it was my pessimism at what was to come or my "summer fog" (a result of throwing my schedule away during summer holidays--I know, I have it so hard...), I'm not sure I said more than 5 words. I made a comment to Jon as we walked out of our house that we should have kept a video of us walking to our agent's car for the first round of looking at homes, and then comparing it to the misery our faces were surely showing as we walked to his car last night. Our usual house-looking accouterments (tape measure, pad of paper) seemed embarrassingly hopeful to me, and I asked Jon why we even needed them (we never used them, anyway).

But we brought them along.

The first house we saw was...alright. It had some nice character details (stained glass feature windows, original baseboards and trim), but the kitchen was tiny. Our agent informed us that offers were being accepted that night at 8:00, but that no offers had been registered when he had called in the morning. I temporarily overlooked the unusable kitchen at the possibility of actually not being in competition. Jon noticed quickly that there was no possibility of parking, and that we couldn't access the backyard except by going through the house.

"Here we go again", I thought. Jon's much better at pointing out the faults with a house than I am. While I'm so thankful he's much more practical than I am, I'll admit it sometimes drives me slightly crazy that he can't look beyond certain (incredibly important) things.

He was totally right, though. There wasn't even street parking, so I accepted that this wasn't the house for us, despite it's potential availability.

So we went to see the next house. It was at the upper end of our budget, but it had the possibility of a basement apartment. The house had good bones, but it needed a lot of work. It had a sunroom-type room off the back, making the dining room/living room kind of tiny. The bathroom was really small, as well. We've seen enough houses in Toronto to be realistic about bathroom size. We know we're not going to have a separate soaker tub and shower, but this one didn't even have a bathtub, just a shower stall.

No thanks.

The next we saw was sort of hilarious, and was probably good for us to see, if only to provide a much needed laugh. It was listed at the top of our budget. The three bedroom house had been completely gutted, and people had clearly begun a remodel job and then ran out of money. All of the tiles (expensive ones, too), toilets, bathtubs, etc., were lying around (and were part of the purchase of the house). The idea was, you buy the house, use the materials, and finish off the job.

They had thought to put two ensuite bathrooms in two of the three bedrooms (rough-ins for the bathrooms). Great idea, as it's nearly impossible to find a house with an ensuite.

However...there was no main bathroom. You'd have to go through one of the bedrooms to get to a bathroom.

This is a bad idea. Baaaaaaad idea, potential home renovators.

Jon noticed they had soldered the pipes without guarding the wood behind the pipes, so there were big burn marks around the soldering sites. Awesome. They had also sawed out a huge chunk from a support beam to (I guess) have a pipe running across it.

Mike Holmes would have had a field day.

The last house we saw felt good as soon as we stepped in it. Beautiful leaded glass and stained glass feature windows, originial hardwood trim and baseboards and staircase. The flow of the house was great, and we were happy with how wide the house felt (25'--crazy huge in Toronto standards). The kitchen was kind of a butt. Something felt like it was missing as I looked around it...then I kept walking and realised the kitchen had been split into two parts, with the stove and dishwasher on one side of the wall, and the fridge and a huge eating area on the other side. This would pose a problem for some, but not for us, with Super Handyman Jon at the helm.

I won't go through the whole detail of the house (hopefully I can post pictures after it becomes ours), but it had so much of what we're looking for.

So is this a positive post? Could it be?

We've put in our offer. I'll let you know how it goes within 48 hours when our offer expires.

Fingers crossed, folks, fingers crossed...