The Creative Juices Are Flowing!

Mr. Mac and I have been busy dreaming about our dream home and touring all kinds of homes.  On Tuesday, he emailed me a new listing and I was able to see it with our realtor that afternoon.  Along with half of the prospective homebuyers in Seattle.  It was an enormous 1901 Victorian-style manor, smack-dab in the middle of First Hill, with seven bedrooms, three bathrooms, a good-sized backyard, and a parking space...for $270,900.  An unheard-of price for that neighborhood, which usually commands home prices of over half a million dollars.  Simply the best deal we've seen on the market so far.  The catch?  It had fallen into disrepair and needed some serious TLC.  I walked into 4,000 square feet of cracked lathe and plaster, peeling linoleum, funky wiring and plumbing, ancient carpet, and dry rot and fell deeply in love.  Our realtor estimated over $150,000 worth of repairs for a full renovation, but I wasn't afraid.  We would do this ourselves, room by room, scraping away the layers of bad wood paneling and uncovering hardwood floors that needed only a buffing and a coat of shellac to gleam like new.  This was a grand old house, three full stories and a basement, winding staircases with bannisters, crown moldings and ten-foot ceilings, just waiting to be refurbished and rehabilitated.  I envisioned a library on the second floor, a finished basement playground for Mac Mini, a formal dining room, and a third-floor suite for the au pair.  We would remodel the home, live there happily for decades, then sell it for three times the price.

 Four other interested parties toured the house with me, and I knew this home would disappear quickly.  So Mr. Mac and I arranged to see it again on Wednesday during his lunch hour.  This time, there were two other groups of people waiting to see the house, but for some reason the doorknob had been removed and replaced, the lockbox was locked inside the house, and the seller's agent could not be reached by phone.  Something was definitely fishy.  Mr. Mac took a good look at the yard and the outside of the house, but no one could get inside.  That's when our little dream began to fade.  We had a heart-to-heart with our realtor, who reminded us that the home would be the center of a cutthroat bidding war by the end of the week, and made the hard decision that we had neither the savvy nor the budget for that kind of fight.  Sigh.  So our dream home is still out there somewhere, waiting for us.  Ah, what might have been.

Mr. Mac and I had intended to buy a fully remodeled or newer home, but this experience has inspired us to go for a diamond in the rough and make it our own.  I have many, many decorating ideas percolating.  We're touring another spate of homes on Saturday, and apparently springtime is when the sellers emerge from hibernation and the market becomes more open to first-time homebuyers in our price range.  So wish us luck...hopefully we'll soon be sanding, painting, papering, and gardening!