Under Contract Again!

Yes, we are in negotiations for another house!  I have a really good feeling about this one.  We saw it about two hours after it came on the market and offered on it that night, I wrote a letter to the sellers explaining why we loved the house and why we should be the ones to live there, and the sellers accepted our offer the next day even though they had other interested parties!  The sellers are a nice couple in their late 40s who obviously care about the home and have taken very good care of it.  The house is a mid-century modern (1960) in the South Beacon Hill neighborhood on a quiet cul-de-sac.  It's just about 5 miles from downtown, which is a bit farther than we wanted to go, but still bikeable and within walking distance of the Light Rail station, a Safeway, and the elementary school.  The lot is large and level, and the sellers have done a great job with their garden.  All it needs now is a chicken coop and a beehive!  I usually hate split-level houses, but Mr. Mac convinced me that this house had the mid-mod charm to pull it off, and it does!  The upstairs is one large room with living, dining, and kitchen areas...perfect for us because we love to cook and entertain.  There are three bedrooms upstairs as well as one full bath with a jack-and-jill sink.  Downstairs is the family room with a second fireplace, the garage, another bedroom, a quarter bath which we will quickly transform into a half bath, and a large partially finished game room/utility room.  It's just about 2000 square feet, which is over twice the space we have now....looks like we'll need to get some more furniture!

The inspection is Tuesday, so hopefully everything will go smoothly!  The next step is completing our loan application and getting the VA appraisal.  Wish us luck!

Disappointment and a Chicken Dinner

Sigh...our home search continues, sadly.  Our purchase of the Beacon Hill house fell through after the sellers refused to give us a price reduction.  The inspection revealed so many costly repairs that we needed to ask them to replace the roof, fix some plumbing issues, reduce the price, AND give us a closing cost credit so that we could do some remodeling immediately (the leaky shower, which they should have fixed years ago, had seeped through into the joists and flooring, necessitating a full bathroom remodel).  They were willing to do the repairs but not to drop the price, so we had to move on.  After talking to my favorite contractor and brother-in-law Mr. Finch, I'm more and more certain that we made the right decision.  Better to walk away than to get mired in increasingly expensive renovations.

But!  We made a great chicken dinner on Friday night that helped to ease the pain.  The recipe is from America's Test Kitchen, and they don't call it Simple Roast Chicken for nothin'.  Perfectly cooked, moist chicken in less than two hours!  

Here she is in all her glory.  We used a 7 lb. broiler-fryer from Foster Farms, which was far to big a bird for our little family, but we will use the meat for chicken soup and the carcass for stock.  The recipe is as follows:

Preheat oven to 450 F.  Place oven-safe skillet in oven.

Wash chicken, pat dry.

Rub liberally with olive oil and season with 1 tablespoon kosher salt and 1 teaspoon ground black pepper.

Tuck wings into leg folds and tie legs together loosely.  (We used a silicone rubber band...easy peasy.)

Place chicken thighs-down in hot skillet (remember to use a potholder!).  

Roast at 450 F for 30 minutes for a 4 lb. bird (45 min. for a 7 lb. monster).

Check breast temperature.  Thermometer should read 120 F at thickest  part of breast. 

Return chicken to oven, turn oven off.  Leave chicken in warm oven for 30 minutes.

Remove chicken and check breast temperature.  Thermometer should read 160F at thickest part of breast.

Let chicken rest for 20 minutes on cutting board before carving to allow juices to redistribute throughout meat.  

See?  Easy.  Now for the sauce.

I removed the giblets from inside the bird's cavity before I washed it, put them in a small saucepan, and covered them with two cups of cold water.  I added some dried Italian herbs and some No-Salt Seasoning from Costco and let the concoction simmer while the chicken cooked.  Result: a nice flavorful stock.  After moving the chicken from the skillet to the cutting board, I poured most of the fat out of the skillet (trying to keep the solid drippings in wasn't easy...I used a shallow spoon to get the fat off) and set it over medium heat.  I deglazed the pan with the giblet stock and Mr. Mac added one minced shallot, a dash of balsamic vinegar, and a shot of fresh lemon juice.  We let the sauce reduce on low heat while the chicken rested, then whisked in a couple of tablespoons of butter to finish.  As the French say, "monter au beurre."

By the time the chicken was done, Mr. Mac and I were starving and Mac Mini was asleep, so we fell upon the chicken wings like hungry cannibals...best wings I've ever had!  The skin was crisp, the meat was juicy, and they were gone in seconds.  Thus fortified, we were able to control ourselves long enough to finish the accompaniments: steamed broccoli with garlic and mashed Yukon Golds with the skins on.  We sliced the chicken breast (one was big enough for us to share...this bird was HUGE), poured the sauce over it, and sat down to enjoy our chicken dinner.  

Next up:  making stock from the chicken carcass, and our search for Earth...I mean, HOME...continues.

Hello again!

Well, once again it's been far too long and things have been happening!  I am proud to announce that after touring 111 houses and putting offers on 5 of them, we are now under contract at long last!  Offer #5 reached mutual acceptance May 25th and we are knee-deep in the negotiation process.  First, the good:  we LOVE this house.  It's only three short miles from downtown Seattle in the lovely neighborhood of Beacon Hill, right across the street from a large park and a 10-minute bike ride to the light rail station, public library, and grocery store.  It's a safe, diverse, established neighborhood full of well-tended houses.  The house was built in 1927 and much of the original character is intact.  The doors, trim, and moldings are mahogany, the fireplace surround is marble, there is beautiful Art Deco tile in the kitchen and upstairs bathroom, and there's a laundry chute in the hallway.  This house has a butler's pantry, built-in cabinets in the living room, a telephone alcove, and an attic space big enough to remodel into a master suite with vaulted ceilings.  The lot is level and mostly fenced,  there's a garage and a carport, and there are several mature fruit trees and rhododendrons in the yard.

Now the bad and the ugly:  the current owners have neglected almost all routine maintenance for at least the last ten years.  The roof is an eyesore.  Mr. Mac was able to stick his hand through it and wave at us from the attic.  The gutters and downspouts are completely clogged and improperly positioned, directing water right down towards the foundation.  The flashing around the front porch and under the beautiful picture windows is detaching from the house, letting water in by the gallon.  The oil furnace was last serviced in 2003.  The electrical system is a convoluted nest of knob-and-tube wiring, spliced copper, and lamp cord.  There are several active plumbing leaks, including one so bad that the floor joists under the shower may need to be replaced.  The basement ceiling has water spots and must be replaced.  All of these are simple problems that, had they been addressed promptly, would have cost the owners a minimum amount of money and time to fix.  Instead, they chose to ignore them and now they won't be making any money on the sale of the home that they've lived in for 35 years.

Fortunately, most or all of the moisture issues will be solved by fixing the roof and plumbing leaks.  As our fantastic home inspector Reis put it, "...anything can be fixed, it's just a matter of how much and who pays."  Today we're compiling our list of repair requests, price reductions, and buyer credits.  We'll see whether the sellers are willing to comply or whether we walk away and continue our search.  The suspense is killing me!