On Saturday morning we took a drive around the county scouting out a few of the places that we would visit on Sunday with our scheduled realtor appointment. We got out well beyond Marsh Creek, crossing 401 on 113 to see one particular house that was far too crowded with trees for our tastes.
Judy from Keller Williams took us out on Sunday to look through five houses that we had pre-arranged from a list they had provided last week. Of those houses, one was in Uwchlan township, two were in Exton, and two were in West Bradford. The houses ranged in price from $330k to $495k.
The first house on Peck road in Uwchlan township was very nice. It felt very open inside and had a lot of yard compared to any of the other houses we saw. It had all of the rooms we needed, although the basement was unfinished (but with tons of potential in the glass doors that are open to the back yard.) The master bedroom was painted pink (attractive, but would need to change) and had an adjoining office. The room with the washer and dryer on the first floor led through to the garage. And the price was the most attractive in the $400k+ range.
In my opinion, this house is as close to perfect as we can get. Berta’s concern is that the neighbors (two of whom were apparently blobbing around topless on their back porch during the showing, scratching their hairy selves) aren’t close enough to offer playmates for the kids, and that walking on Peck road, with its high traffic, is not advisable for the kids.
The two houses we looked at in Exton were nearly identical. One of them had a finished basement (though somewhat uninspiring), and the other had a hot tub on the back porch. Both houses had virtually no yard, although they were both in a thriving development. These two houses also seemed kind of small, the first one particularly so with its darker indoor paint. These two were the only houses in the set that were under $400. Neither Berta nor I liked either of these houses for various reasons.
The two houses in West Bradford were located in a community off of 322, halfway between our current house and my mom’s, and about 3 minutes drive from work. The houses in this development are all nearly identical, and form a ring around a drainage area that contains some trees.
When we pulled into the development, the neighbors had blocked off part of the road so that they could have a cookout for Memorial Day. There were moon bounces and music with tables and chairs set up in the streets for the grilling that was going on. We went on with our home tours.
The first of the two houses was very nice. Most remarkable about this house was the three-tier wooden deck attached to the back. The back yard was larger than the Exton sites, but still not big enough for a miniature game of badminton. The requisite rooms were present, including an unfinished basement that looked out onto the back yard (similar to the Peck Road house). There was another unfinished room on the second floor above the garage, attached to one of the kid’s bedrooms.
It’s odd that in any of the other houses, this would have been a room off of the master bedroom, but as situated, I’m not sure how this space would be made usable, since you would need to go through a bedroom to get to it. 
Also strange, the washer and dryer were situated in their own little room at the end of a small hallway behind the garage that had no other exit.
Another peeve is that the area being used by the current residents as the office was actually the dining room (being next to the kitchen) and the living room was being used as the dining room. If the actual dining room was used for the dining room, there would not be a lot of room for the dining set in there, and the room otherwise offers no privacy, with a giant doorway (virtually fully open if not for the little 6-inch room-delimiting “walls”) toward the front of the house, and the exit directly to the kitchen.
I tried not to be biased against this house when writing this up, but I can’t help it. A general feeling of “this is not my house” overwhelmed me in this place. Writing out practical things I didn’t like about it just makes that feeling worse. The deck really was awesome, and the neighbors (one of whom met and spoke to us on the way out) seemed very nice, but I can’t explain it… It just didn’t feel right to me.
The second house in that development was about the same, but slightly larger. Any problem with space inside the first West Bradford house was remedied in the second. All of the rooms were just slightly bigger. And also filled with bright white wall-to-wall carpet.
The wierd extra room over the garage of the first house was arranged properly in this one - attached to the master bedroom as a study. The basement in this house was also not finished, and Judy pointed out that a new code requires that basements that will be finished must have an egress, which this one did not. That is, unless we added an exit to the basement (by tearing down at least part of a basement wall) we couldn’t add drywall partitioning in the basement. This problem was evidenced elsewhere in the development, where some heavy machinery was trashing the lawn of a perfectly good $490k+ house to add an egress to their basement. Sad.
This second house had a small deck out of the kitchen, and virtually no back yard.
Berta was very taken with the first West Bradford house. I admit that it was nice. I thought so when we first drove by it on Saturday. The idea of a better neighborhood of kids for our kids to play with is of interest to me, too. While it’s evident that there would be plenty of kids in West Bradford, it’s not necessarily evident of the house on Peck Road. Apart from the house itself, I think the Peck Road location is better (not the position on the street, but as far as being close to things like groceries, major thoroughfares, parks, etc.) and the house is more established.
For the house in West Bradford, I imagine myself saying things like “Let’s go back to the house” rather than “Let’s go home”. Like “the house” you stay in temporarily on vacation, except it’s the house that you own - your house. I just don’t envision myself bonding enough with that house to call it “home”.
It’s been bugging me since then that my idea of having a house that feels like my own (rather than some anonymous cinder-block apartment like our first place, or my parent’s old house like we currently live in) is in conflict with Berta’s desire to have a big (read in my mind as “gigantic”) house. She’s talking about compromising; finding a different house that suits both of our needs. There just aren’t any other houses that even approach these two. The market here is not big enough. There were maybe 20 houses in our wide price range, and from those only a handful seemed promising enough on paper to bother visiting.
I am left feeling like I should have known better what she wanted all along, and now I’m shocked - really shocked - to find out that she wants “big house” more than she wants “our house”. At least, that’s how her selection process feels to me.
At least one of us should be happy, so maybe she should just pick one. After all, she’s done all of the work to get us to this point in moving. What stake do I have in the decision apart from having to live with and help pay for that selection for the next 30 years?
Whatever. I was pretty upset about this over the weekend. Not that I’m not now, just that I’m tired of being upset so I’ve stopped. I’m tired of worrying about whether $2500 per month is going to kill us. I’m tired of looking at houses and thinking they’re great to find that they’re totally not what Berta wants. I’m not optimistic for finding anything new, but I guess we’ll wait to hear from Judy and see if she has anything else for us to look at before we start throwing darts to choose a house.
