My new house in Hello from Open Diary

Moving sucks. Everything about it is a pain in the ass. The only fun part of moving is shopping for a new house. I hate shopping in general, but house hunting is the one exception to that. When I visited the area before I accepted the job, I looked at several houses, and two of them really stood out to me. The downside to house hunting is that I have to make a decision, and I fucking hate making decisions. I would rather have someone just tell me what to do. So in that vein, I am going to post the information about these two houses and hope that the decision will be clear to someone, because it sure as hell isn’t to me.

3 bed, 2 bath, 1612 square feet, built in 2005
Distance to work: 7.7 miles/15 minutes
Distance to grocery store: 7.2 miles/15 minutes (5 miles/9 minutes out of the way from work)
Distance to Walmart*: 20.5 miles/29 minutes
Distance to nearest airport: 57 miles/70 minutes
Price: $30k more than I paid for my current house

More pictures

Pros:

• The biggest advantage of this house is the amazing dream kitchen. I’m talking state of the art, stainless steel appliances, awesome gas range, double convection oven, engineered granite counter tops and tons of cabinet space (all with soft-close doors).
  
• This house has real hardwood floors in the kitchen, living room, dining room, and halls.
  
• It has a huge master bathroom with a jetted tub.
  
• There is a hot tub, a fairly large deck, and two storage sheds in the back yard.
  
• It is located close to work, and I will be going to work more often than I will go anywhere else, so that’s important. It’s also located very close to the local large body of water, and has access to a boat slip at the end of the street (which is not really a selling point to me, but could help resale value). The neighborhood is pretty nice, though small.
• It has a split bedroom floor plan, although I have mixed feelings about that. This type of floor plan supposedly has a lot of advantages, but I think it makes more sense to have all the bedrooms together. I’m sure I would get used to it, though.

• The property is on a hill, and the driveway situation is kind of weird. Coming out of the garage, there’s a 90-degree turn and then a steep slope towards the road. It seems like it would be a nightmare in the winter, but then again, winter is much milder in this location, so maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.
  
• I’m not sure if the hot tub is a pro or a con because I probably wouldn’t use it, and it would require upkeep.
  
• There are some dead trees in the back yard that will need to be cut down (which doesn’t bother me all that much, but my mom is obsessed with how big of a problem this is).
• I do not like the paint in this house, and I know that sounds stupid because I can easily repaint, but that would take time and money. Plus, I know myself – I’ve been living in my house for over 5 years and haven’t gotten around to painting it, so it will probably be a while before I get around to dealing with this paint. The living/dining areas are painted a horrible pink color, and I’m no interior designer, but I’m pretty sure it would look disgusting with my greenish-beige living room furniture. There’s a reason there are nine pictures of the front porch and not one of the guest bathroom, and that is because said bathroom is painted in what is best described as baby poop brown.
• Then there’s the issue of it being $30k more than the other house. It is probably worth that much because of the kitchen remodel, more square footage, real hardwood floors, hot tub, storage sheds, and location, but should I really spend that much more when the other house is perfectly adequate?

3 bed, 2 bath, 1442 square feet, built in 2004
Distance to work: 13.1 miles/22 minutes (I think the time is overestimated because I drove the route while I was in town and it only took 18 minutes, and I went about 3 minutes out of my way because my GPS tried to drive me into a lake)
Distance to grocery store: 11.1 miles/19 minutes (4.3 miles/8 minutes out of my way from work)
Distance to Walmart*: 12.4 miles/21 minutes
Distance to nearest airport: 49 miles/62 minutes
Price: Same as what I paid for my current house

More pictures

Pros:

• I really like the neighborhood. A lot of this area is very rural, but this neighborhood is a quiet but nicely-sized subdivision full of relatively new homes.
• The house is in great condition and very clean. The owners clearly read a book about staging because they made it very appealing.
• It has beautiful landscaping and two decks in the back, including a small deck off the master bedroom.
• The paint is mostly fine – not my first choice, but I don’t hate it (except the master bedroom).

• It’s almost twice as far from work as the other house, which will not only mean more time commuting, but more miles on my car and money spent on gas.
• It is smaller than the other house, but then again, it should be perfectly adequate for my needs. The garage is on the small side, and it would be a tight fit for two cars (but then again, I only have one car).
• Various aspects of it are obviously cheaper than the other house. The floors are laminate wood instead of real hardwood and vinyl instead of tile. The kitchen counters are laminate. The kitchen appliances aren’t great, and it has an electric range (I prefer gas). Yeah, I know I could upgrade any of this, but (1) I know myself and I probably won’t, and (2) it would eat into any cost savings from buying this house instead of the other one.
• The house is situated on a hill, and there is a crawl space, which I find weird because I have literally never seen a crawl space before I looked at this house. My research tells me that I will need to have a vapor barrier installed in the crawl space because the current owners have not done anything with it. I have no idea how much this will cost.
• I hate the chocolate brown paint in the master bedroom.
• The master bathroom is adequate, but not nearly as nice as the one in the other house.
• The closet in the master bedroom is off the bathroom (i.e., you have to go into the bathroom to get to the closet). This is one of my pet peeves in a floor plan… but I think I could get used to it.
• I’m not sure if the landscaping is a pro or a con because it would probably require some amount of effort and/or money for upkeep. I’m used to my HOA taking care of the landscaping.