Three to be precise. The first one was $269,000 and it had six bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. It also had a partial kitchen and full kitchen. The main problem is that the full kitchen is on the second floor. It was originally set up as a house that rented out rooms and has three separate entrances. It wasn't bad, especially for the price, but with the kitchen upstairs it had to be struck off the list. I just cannot climb stairs three times a day to make dinner and converting the downstairs one into a full kitchen would be difficult, though possible. But nothing about the house really sang to me anyway.

Then we went to see the dream house that is too expensive right now ($419,000 and I'm sure it will come down again). It is four bedrooms and 2.5 baths. This is the one DH toured a while ago and took pictures of, and I had seen the virtual tour online, but had never been to. A lot of it is perfect, but not all of it. There is one bedroom downstairs and in order to put a king size bed in it, it would have to go with the head under the windows. Any other place in the room and it would block either the bathroom, the closet, or the door leading into the room.

I don't like having my head under the windows because I easily catch cold that way. We did discuss just putting the bed against the closet and getting a wardrobe for hanging clothes or taking the door off the closet and leaving just enough space between the wall and the bed to get to it. We have a fairly large dresser for most clothes anyway. Otherwise I really love it. Not enough to do anything crazy for it. And we aren't really ready. Right now we are just looking to get an idea of what we want.

We looked at another fairly large home (1 story) that had four bedrooms and 2 full baths. It had a large garage (neither of the other two, did), but it's the sort that is stuck on the front of the house so when you pull in all you see is garage, not house. It needs a new paint job on the outside. The kitchen was nicely sized but didn't have a drawer stack. It was all cupboards with a bitty drawer above each lower cupboard.

It was a good price for it's size, $229,000 and because of the state of the outside of the house I am sure it could be talked down to $200,000. It smelled though. It smelled like a nursing home or a hospital, disinfectant, urine, and sick people. Enough so that I had to wonder if someone had died in the house. It definitely wasn't the smell of animals makring their territory. The rugs were extremely ugly and would have to go (I think that was where the smell was from. One tub and shower would have to be replaced as you can tell there was mildew in the seams. The neighbors had a giant RV parked along the property line, so I'm sure that would be there all the time except when they were on vacation, a constant eye sore.

I didn't love the house, but I didn't hate it, either. The problems could be easily rectified, especially at that price. The location would put it in a different district for high school, though. I think it would be the same one for middle school.

We still have a long way to go before we are ready to buy though and I'm in no rush. DH and my mom went out to our house today and took another load to the dump. That should keep the HoA off our backs for a little while. I would like to get the piano moved this hitch if we can. I want it here where it will do some good and get some use.