Matching Tracksuits

When looking for a house, there are certain things you look for and think about and many details that just seem to disappear. Then, when you go to paint the house, you notice the details.

You notice, for instance, that a door was poorly hung and instead of fixing the problem, the installer just modified the placement of the strike plate; that all the door hardware has been painted, and that paint is now peeling; and that someone was once so lazy with painting that he didn't bother opening a window before painting it:

And all the things you want to correct (to put it mildly) grows daily. Hourly. By the second, sometimes.

As of Thursday afternoon, K and I are homeowners.

And it was surprisingly easy. We’d heard so many horror stories about people buying houses — troubles with financing, troubles with closing, troubles with the realtor, troubles with everything. We literally had no issues at all. We found the house, made an offer, waited for the counter offer, accepted the counter offer, set a date for closing, then closed the house.

I suppose it helped that the owner now lives in Nashville and was simply interested in getting rid of the house and not terribly worried about how much money he was making. He was just losing money, I guess, paying double mortgages.

So now we’re slowly moving in, and the real work begins.

is a very, very fine house, though without the two cats in the yard…

Perhaps it’s a bit premature, for we haven’t closed yet, but people have asked about what “our house” (though, again, it’s still technically still not ours) looks like…

From the street, it looks a little like a mini-Brady Bunch house. But that’s only an illusion, for this is a coveted “tri-level” home, whereas the Brady’s house was conceptually a bit more confusing…

The back of the house includes a fairly spiffy bi-level deck. There are doors to the deck from both the dining room and master bedroom, making the Friday night cigar tradition a little more convenient.

The back also also includes a fairly un-spiffy outdoor parrot cage (?!?) that will quickly be converted into something. Ideas? Nah, I didn’t think so. It will be one of the first improvements completed on the house…

Yesterday, we spent the day surveying. We learned a few things.

First, it’s hot in Greenville.

Second, the rear property stakes are all but impossible to find. One is at a fence, making a metal detector fairly useless. The other is God-knows-where in the back left corner. Half an hour with a metal detector only turned up the metal eyelets of my boots…

Third, doing surveying with an inexperienced “surveyor” (i.e., me) makes the process a fair bit more labor- and time-intensive.

Fourth, it’s really incredibly hot in Greenville.

And the final thing we learned: working on your own (though, technically, not really) home makes otherwise-unpleasant tasks almost enjoyable.

Now that we have a house under contract, K has joyfully jumped into the wide world of paints. We have swatches and brochures and booklets lying all over the place.

Since I’m colorblind, I can’t really offer that much constructive input. After all, I did once buy a dark blue fleece jacket that turned out to be mockingly purple. And I did think for years that my friends’ parents had a gray car, only to learn, after I’d confused everyone by suggesting we take said gray car, that they didn’t own a gray car — it was light green.

Still, I’m glad someone in the family is interested in it.

Even L was taking part in the discussion.

I've been thinking about what the ultimate real estate agent might look like -- what might (Picking a gender and going with it) she do, especially for out-of-town buyers?

One of the most helpful things would be to have an agent who also knows the ins and outs of inspections. She would go to the homes you've expressed interest in (from clicking through hundreds of online listings) and check a few things.

• foundation (Any cracks or other indications of problems, potential or actual?)
• windows (Are they double-pane?)
• door frames (Are they level and straight? Can you close all the doors with ease?)
• roof (Can it last a few years without significant work?)
• individual requirements (For us, that would be distance to neighbors, significant distance from major thoroughfares, not a corner lot, etc.)

Bear in mind that I'm not complaining about our agent. She's fine, and works very hard for us. So far we've had no issues -- hopefully that will remain the case.

This dream agent would look at these homes beforehand and note any potential issues, then get back to you: "Cross this one off your list because it has basement issues. And that one has issues with xyz."

This will never happen, though. Agents make money only if a house sales. While many might genuinely want buyers to be happy, they don't make money making buyers happy -- they make money turning potential buyers into actual buyers.

Dated bathrooms, horrid floor coverings, awful countertops -- these issues are non-issues. You can easily and relatively inexpensively change them.

You cannot change:

• Distance to neighbors;
• Foundations that clearly will be causing major problems within five years;
• Flood plain status;
• Distance from busy streets;
• Airport holding patterns;
• Neighbors' constantly barking dogs; or
• Exteriors covered with siding, which provide no structural reinforcement whatsoever.

These are the things you look at in a house.

Who cares what's on the floors? Carpet can be changed to hardwood. Who cares what the bathrooms look like? Tiles from the 70's can be replaced. Who cares whether the kitchen counter top looks more like a shower wall than a food preparation surface? It can be renovated.

We've come to realize -- and thankfully, rather quickly -- that we need to look first for problems, primarily with the basement and with privacy. It doesn't even make any sense to go through a house if there are signs that the foundation is weak or if the neighbors are too close.

It's better to take a pessimistic view of houses, because the pessimism will undoubtedly be tempered by the general optimism of looking for a house, and you'll end up with realistic expectations.

Doing so would have immediately knocked our "prime candidate" out of contention, and left our second brick preference out of any further consideration.