Adventures in House Hunting

Long time, no see. Hey, guess what? WE MADE AN OFFER ON A HOUSE!

The lovely house that inspired us to possibly take on a mortgage, as seen through Waterlogue.
I'm not sure we'll actually end up closing on the house, but it's exciting nonetheless. And getting to this point was an adventure. In January, we started randomly dropping by open houses, and that's how we found our realtor, Eric Workman. Eric is patient, not pushy, and he has a great sense of humor. Like, we dropped by to visit an unoccupied house at night, and the power was turned off. Did we leave? NO! We were all, "Let's break out some flashlights, prowl around like burglars, and hope the neighbors don't call the police!" Yeah, we've had a lot of fun looking at houses.
At first, the bad houses were really funny. We visited a house that actually vibrated during rush hour, because the back wall of the house was 25 feet from interstate 440. We saw a weird renovation that made us ask, with all sincerity, "Is this another living room? Or is this... the garage?" We saw a master bedroom with a ceiling so low, I could touch it without standing on my toes. And I'm 5'4. We visited a house with a frightening gas leak, and after 90 seconds we left with pounding headaches. We visited a house that had what looked like a panic room hidden behind a closet... and what looked like bloodstains next to a creepy metal rack in the garage. I AM NOT MAKING THAT UP, Y'ALL. And those were just the houses that looked pretty in the listings, so they seemed worth visiting. Here are some houses we didn't see in person.

It's a Barbie Dream House!

The Barbie Dream House bedroom leads to this bathroom!! WOW. I do like the bathroom's layout,
with his and hers closets on either side of the entrance to the bathroom. That seems very functional.

What have we learned from this picture? Basement stripper poles are classier with faux marble bases.

Maybe this would make sense if you use a wheelchair? I'm not sure.
But it would be awkward to say, "Honey, don't walk in the bedroom. I'm peeing!"
After a few weeks, the bad houses weren't funny anymore, and we were discouraged. And a lot of the cute, reasonably priced houses built before 1950 are being sold to developers who plan to knock them down and build three ugly, skinny houses on a single lot. If you live in Nashville, you've seen those houses. I hate them. HATE THEM.
The neighborhoods where we were looking weren't turning up anything good, so I asked Eric to show us a house a bit further south than where we thought we wanted to live. To make a long story short, the clouds parted, and everything was bathed in golden light. Angels played flourishing little riffs on trumpets, and we made an offer on the house. Now we're batting offers back and forth, and I'm not sure what's going to happen next. It's a nice house, and it has a clawfoot tub that practically had me in tears when I first saw it. But it's not worth the asking price. So if we don't get it, I won't be heartbroken. Stay tuned.