Saturday, February 16, 2008

me? house hunting?

Before the whole speech therapy thing came up, I made an appointment to see a house this morning. I've been thinking I want a bigger house, and we've also been considering building an addition instead of just a simple (ha) kitchen and bathroom reno. I also want a second bathroom.

And, um, oops - I've gone an fallen in love with a house in a serious way.

My wish list includes:
separate family room as well as living room
nice big kitchen, preferably open to family room
second bathroom on main floor
ensuite would be lovely
walking distance to downtown
good school

This house has:
gorgeous kitchen open-ish concept
no separate family room
but very large living room with built in shelves and window bench
absolutely nothing for us to do, not even painting
three bathrooms, including one in the unfinished basement
but the only tub is downstairs and it's much smaller than our leaking clawfoot
walking distance to downtown but up and down a huge hill

I could go on and on but mostly it's the bright open concept, enormous kitchen with gorgeous cabinetry, nice yard with two-tier deck, and its quiet, mature neighbourhood that get me. It's in a part of town I've never lived and I don't know if anything is within a 3-10 minute walk. Not too sure about the school but the local k-6 has a nice profile that highlights the work it does in the arts.

It was only supposed to be an exploratory, research-oriented viewing but I've gone and fallen in love with a house that has a bigger price tag than I'm comfortable with... the truth is we don't do a budget so I don't actually know what we can afford.

The major reason I'm bloggging this right now is because I've exhausted Sugar D's ear and he wants to spend Swee'pea's nap working on my website, and none of my family is near their phones. The nerve!

Help! What do we do?

11 comments:

Aliki2006 said...

The house sounds wonderful!

I'm sorry I'm only catching up now and I missed responding to your Mama angst. Sometimes kids just need extra time/help to catch up, and then they do, all at their own pace.

If it makes you feel any better, T. just turned four and she hardly ever pronounces her blended consonants or -sh and -ch sounds properly. And we still do some translating for her as well. We brought this up at her 4-year appt and her ped. was completely unconcerned. She said to just work with her ourselves and, if she was STILL at the same place next year, then we could consider speech therapy.

IMO, Sweet'Pea seems a little young to be overly worried about his speech. I've known so many kids who just needed to grow into this.

Suz said...

I'm a really bad one to ask about the house question, since I would just say "go for it"!! If this is the house that you plan to be in for next few years, I would make sure of the neighborhood, though.

On the speech thing, I just wanted to mention that I had speech therapy when I was little. I only remember small fragments, but I do remember liking the attention. It was fun!

Bea said...

Oooh, email me the MLS listing number! I am obsessively checking MLS today because our builder just came back to us with significantly higher numbers than we were hoping for, which puts us right back into the middle of the buy/build dilemma. I am rolling around pros and cons in my head like a maniac.

Kyla said...

I'd say to work on a estimated budget of what you already spend consistently (bills and such) and then decide if it is feasible. I think it sounds GREAT!

flutter said...

do a budget asap, and see what you can afford, go from there.

Beck said...

http://www.mortgageintelligence.ca/handy_tools_qualifier_calculator.aspx
There's a mortgage caluclator where you punch in your incomes and such and it tells you how much of a mortgage you qualify for...
I fell DEEPLY in love with a house before we bought this one, back in North Bay and I still dream of it - but we couldn't afford it at the time. Shucks.

Anonymous said...

Twelve years ago now, after my son had been in kindergarten one week, I got a call from the school speech teacher. She said, "I bet you've been expecting my call," and then went on to tell me my son would need speech several days a week. I was flabbergasted! I understood him perfectly! When I told my parents, my dad said, "I knew he'd need help because I can't understand a word he says!"
With the help of a professional, there was immediate improvement in his speech. There were goals that were met, and practice at home. And the teacher made speech fun! She once told me most of her students are boys. My son went to speech through the end of second grade because the "r" was hard until his mouth grew a bit. Also, they try to reach the goals with 90% consistency.
It was hard for me to accept at first...I feel your pain. I cried when I hung up the phone with the speech teacher. In our district, speech is part of special ed, and there were IEP forms, and meetings.
But my son truly needed it. He improved immediatly and now it is a distant memory.
It will be okay!
Oh- and my second son needed speech too. Not so shocking the second time around.

ewe are here said...

Ooooh... house hunting. Always exciting, and tiring, and exciting, and time consuming, and exciting....

Cloud said...

We bought the house we're in now last September. It is our first (houses are pricey here). I actually fell in love with a different house (open common areas, awesome view, sunroom for Pumpkin to play in....), and was arguing we should buy it until we went back and seriously thought about fitting our life in to it. The scarcity of closet space did it in! So keep looking- you may find something even better. We love the place we're in now, for different reasons than we loved the first one.

Oh, and do the budget. Otherwise, you have no idea how much you can afford, and buying less than you could and having to move sooner than you'd really like is not such a great thing. We use Quicken, so we just got really rigorous about entering categories on our expenses, and then let Quicken tell us how much we were spending on various things. The budget was easy after that.

Good luck! House hunting is fun, but nerve-wracking.

Janna said...

Good Luck - I am sure you will find it difficult to focus on ANYTHING else until you make some decisions...I will echo the comments on the budget - I know I am budgetarily obsessed, but it is definately good to make sure you know what you are getting into...I found our last mortgage to be strapping (mind you, the house needed so much work, and you wouldn't have that problem), but that trapped feeling is horrible....plus you have to save enough to visit me in Malawi!!!
My thoughts are with you!

Janet said...

Crunch some numbers.

Then post pictures of the house on your blog. I'm nosy. ;)