jennanddave.com

We went and looked at two houses on Friday. They were not so great. In fact, they were so not even halfway decent that we renewed our vow to figure out a way to make our current house work better for us. We're happy in our house, but now that we're expecting Thing #2 and have more of an idea of what kind of home equity loan we can get, we're looking at having to reconvert our first floor office into a bedroom (it was the original "master bedroom") until we can better afford the addition of a third bedroom upstairs, although I have to admit I don't love the idea of being on a different floor from my kids. (Remember back when we hired an architect to reconfigure our upstairs to add a third bedroom? That was a less than stellar experience and after waiting five months to hear from them about their progress with "Phase 2"; ie. making the exterior not look like a giant box fell from space and landed on the back of our house, we terminated the contract.) Although moving downstairs reduces the amount of shared living space and also, unfortunately, relegates guests to the pull-out couch (again), we could definitely make it work. After coming to that decision, I slept very soundly. Then I happened across a listing for a farmhouse that had been seriously beautified and brought up to a standard that Dave and I could only dream of in a house for it's age and everything went out the window. Again. The problem is it's ever so slightly out of our price range. On the other hand, it's been on the market for a year or so. On the other hand, our area hasn't experienced the real estate bubble burst that other places have. In fact, it feels like it's just the opposite, things are getting more expensive. Darned universities and prisons and hospitals and all of the job security that goes along with them. (Not really. Never bite the hand that steadily feeds you.) We drove by the place a bunch of times over the weekend hoping the charm would wear off, but it hasn't. So we're going to look at it this evening in the hopes that there will be something we really don't like about it so we can move on. I have a bad feeling though...