I'm back in the saddle again!

Rod and I were walking around the corner, headed for his car, and noticed there was an open house right next to the car. We sort of looked at each other, said, "What the heck?" and wandered inside. The place was gorgeous - a two-floor, four bedroom condo in great shape. It was no doubt way out of our price range, but we chatted with the mortgage guy to see if we could get pre-approved, and then talked to the broker to see what else might be available. It was as if, in the course of a half-hour, we had decided to buy a house.

So, we started looking. I spent a whole lot of time online searching for suitable places in the Boston area that wouldbe within our price range. I found several houses in Malden that we thought looked great on paper - or on a computer screen. So we called the Coldwell Banker folks and had them take us to the houses.

House One looked beautiful in the pictures. It had a white picket fence - gotta love it! However, in person it was small and (according to Rod) it smelled like grandparents. And the picket fence was plastic. House Two was also somewhat odd. Ot was strangely laid out, as if the upstairs and downstairs were two separate apartments, but the downstairs one was crappy. And the yard was odd - and the people had eleven snow shovels lined up out there. Weird. But if you think that's bad... you should have seen House Three.

From the outside, House Three looked like a crack house. The "yard" was concrete and there were random ugly folding chairs in the driveway. The porch was saggy and rotten and the paint was chipping off. It looked like there were termites. So we walked inside, very skeptically. Boy, were we surprised.

The first floor was like a palace. The floors were beautiful hardwood, with a large front hall and a beautiful staircase leading to the second floor. It had cathedral ceilings There was a dining room area that the current residents were using as a social space with couches and whatnot... and the connecting living room was lovely. They had a gold tea service on a mahogany coffee table, stunning marble side tables, and the structure of the house seemed stunning. The kitchen itself had an ebony dining room table in it - there was that much space - and marble floor tiles with granite counter tops. There was a wall of cabinets... and that's where it got odd. On top of the cabinets was a decapitated mannequin head.

Then we went upstairs, and lo and behold, the outside of the house had apparently pervaded that level. There were mattresses on the floors, blocked-over windows, and a door frame that looked like someone had taken a sledgehammer to it. In addition, there was a dign on the door of the master bedroom which read, "realtor please keep locked." That didn't bode well for what might be behind Door Number One. We decided to pass on that house.

Three days later, Rod & I went along with another real estate agent to see two other houses. He showed us two houses, both with the same price tag. The first one had hardwood floors, a gas-powered remote-controlled fireplace, good windows, skylights in the (finished) attic and in the kitchen, ceiling fans in nearly every room, and a closet in the master bedroom that was - no word of a lie here - larger than the bedroom I had growing up. Lovely.

When we entered the second one, I nearly choked on the smell of smoke. It had linoleum floors and wall-to-wall carpets, plaster walls with some staining, incredibly dark front room, cruddy kitchen and small bedrooms that were laid out oddly.

Again I stress, same price as the other house.

Long story short, we put an offer in on the nice house; it was accepted, and we began the whole mortgage-buying-packing-moving thang. More on all that in the next post which, I swear, will come soon.