Day One of House Hunting

Wow. That picture I posted in the last blog is extremely unflattering. Poop. I just broke one of my new rules. I can't talk bad about myself, no scale, and say "thank you" after a compliment instead of ungraciously ripping it to shreds. Number two is going great because there is no scale in the corporate apartment I'm at this week. It's making me quite crazy really. How can I possibly decide how I feel about myself today? Ha! Actually, my mind is very much occupied with other things other then how fat my face is getting. This is another bonus to moving.

Yesterday a.m. I arrived in Denver. The corporate apartments Aaron is staying in our so daddy! I'm lovin' it! Exposed brick wall and air conditioning ducts, hardwood floors, beautiful kitchen and bath, a fireplace that turns on by a switch in the wall and a welcoming basket of cheese, crackers, wine and milano cookies. How do they know me so well? So my freakishly blessed life continues. (That matter is a whole other blog.) So, I spent the morning enjoying the temporary digs and finished my Stephanie Meyers book that I had started on the plane.

The house hunt began at 2. Loaded up with waters, fliers and my camera we set out for the foothills.  The FH will be a bit of a commute for Aaron but no worse then the one he has now. In fact nothing could get much worse then that. We are also hoping that we can keep this house if we return to Texas as a vacation home. So option 1 is to find a mountain retreat. Option 2 is to rent a house in Castle Rock where we already have a couple of old friends. We would rent until we find our dream house.

There were two houses we saw yesterday that we liked. One Aaron had seen on a previous outing before I arrived. The location is great, the property is beautiful, the house...meh. Needs a lot of updating and I mean a kitchen update which is the most expensive remodel one can do in a house. The house was built in the 70s and so there were some railings and things that were also in need of repair/update. The home was endearing though. Based on their decor we could tell they were in about the same place in life we were when we sold our first house. There is also no air conditioning. I think it would only be hot for a little while during the summer days but Aaron was pretty uncomfortable. The home was updated as far as you can on a limited budget. There was a toddler bed with a train table in one room and a nursery in another. I have to separate the nostalgia from the home.

The other home we liked is way up there. We could make the drive but we are wondering how a moving truck would.... Though it's in a mountain (well, what we call a mountain and they call a hill) it is also apart of a neighborhood. The hood had a lot of signs that there were young children about. Tricycles and toys were out. Not messy though, which is nice. The property is only about a 1/4 of an acre and that is a sloped lot. Not really a backyard to play in. That's OK because the house has plenty of room! The main part of the house is less then 2000 sf but with the basement...whew! Big-un. The home is new construction and so no updating is needed. There is not a nice big deck for outdoor entertaining but there are balconettes off of three of the 4 bedrooms. Well, 5 beds if you count the one in the basement. It was a really cool house and I think we would have the best of both worlds: mountain living with out being too isolated. I do want the kids to live too far from other little ankle biters. The house would have plenty of room for the guests that we are hoping/banking on coming out for visits. It was not far from a lake that had a beach off of it and lots of boats. The realtor said in the winter a large portion of the lake is roped off for ice skating.

The absolute worst house we saw deserves some mention because it was so darn funny! These little rough-ones are always what makes the house hunting fun. It sounded awesome on paper and the photos posted were strategic. Kudos to their Realtor. This home had the most awful lay out I have ever seen! The kitchen was huge and had plenty of work space and storage but the lay out had terrible flow. The three point kitchen arrangement was not there. To top it all off the walls of the kitchen were painted a delicate....PINK! The trim through out the house was all different. Different wood and different designs. There was a bathroom that it appears some renovation was started on. Very nice sinks and slate tile through out. Above the sinks were three different mirrors, Hollywood lighting, and....wait for it...pink walls. I went to catch up with Aaron in the Master Suite. The wood floors were lovely and there were lots of windows, one of which had a window seat. Then I turned my view to the right and....

"There it is!" Aaron laughed. He had been waiting for me to turn and see this....

...a bathtub right there in the room.

"Why is this not heart shaped?" I asked.

Oh my lands people! There was a tub in the room. A fairly nice tub with pretty tiling, I mean it was on purpose. There is no wall for privacy and try as we may we could not figure out how to add a wall to fix it. No matter how you figured it you would block half a window or create a very acute corner in the room that would just be wasted space. To highlight this feature they painted the walls mint green. Not a soft, cool mint but a neon type of mint. We laughed so hard. There was way too much work to be done in this house. I have only told you the half of it. Oh my gosh...I'm just remembering some of the other weird things about this place. We gave it a generous rating of a 3 on a scale of 1-10 and we've named it the Crazy Carnival Fun House. That is exactly how you felt walking through that house. We kept waiting for something to jump out from behind the corner or for a room of those funky mirrors that make you look all crazy. Well...there was that bathroom with three different mirrors...so...almost! It's really too bad because the property was lovely and had a pretty nice view of the mountains. So sad for that house!

We will head out for more today. I'm hoping we can find The One this week. I'm missing my sons and they are really tired of Daddy only being home on the weekends. This has been especially hard on Drew. Oh and he has two loose teeth. His first. They are very loose and I'm so afraid he'll lose them while I'm here and miss his first ones!! He promised not to wiggle them while I'm gone. Precious boy! Gabriel sent us off with instructions to find him a three story house in the mountains. On it sir! *salute*

The other thing I'm learning about CO is that the pace is slower. After our time out our realtor said she would spend the morning researching other homes and making appointments for us to come out the next afternoon. This sort of suprised me. Our realtor back home would've done all of this last night or had her people get it arranged and off we would go the next morning. Aaron said the pace is just slower here. No one has that kind of urgency. So I'm going to relax this morning, have a little time with Jesus out on the balcony, maybe check out a little Hulu...