Househunting: Take 2

First the good news: Our Houston house is in escrow!

Good sale price, and we anticipate closing the first week in December. Thank you all so much for praying of the sale of our house, and for God keeping our house safe during Hurricane Ike.

But...this means that we must now get serious about finding a place here.

The good news for us is that the home prices here are dropping daily. I looked at a house yesterday and this morning the price had dropped $20,000.

More good news: My new real estate agent Luanne is terrific! We looked at 22 properties in the last 24 hours, and it felt like being on a road trip with a good friend, with lots of yakking and laughing and enjoying all the fall colors around us as we drove between the houses I was seeing.

Right now we are focusing on houses somewhat close to downtown. That means older homes, and since ALL I am really interested in is getting a good mountain view, it also means I get to see a lot of houses that are real doozies.

I have to share the crazy fun of what some of the houses have to offer:

Do you like the marble on this vanity? The wall mounted pink toilet was a PERFECT match! And ONE of the lights above the sink still worked!

How about seeing this wall paper to wake you up each morning?
(If you are LDS and can't have coffee, I guess this would be the next best thing....)



Imagine you open the front door on another house and that this is the first thing you see.
Yes, gold veined mirror was BIG here at one point, and some folks forgot to take it back down once the craze was over.

But wait!

Don't let the mirrors bother you. Just look down instead....

Yes, right inside the front door below the mirror is this opportunity to descend down, down...down....into the brown unknown.

(I didn't bother to go downstairs; the view from the top didn't cut it with me. I was pretty sure the basement view wouldn't have been an improvement!)

If your bed looks like a tree, why shouldn't your room look like a squirrel's nest? ALL the rooms in the house were layered in cast off clothing.
I was nervous a body might be found under all the mess.

How could anyone sleep with a wallpaper ready to part and expose the hidden terrors of this place?

Which of course would be this.
But then again...aren't all laundry rooms terrifying?
I think so...it is just terrifying that how no matter how much laundry I do, the next moment there always seems to be more laundry...and this room seems designed to underscore that madness.

As I mentioned earlier, seeing the fall colors really brightens the house hunting experience.

Isn't this Japanese maple just absolutely amazing???

It is like a bush on fire!

Inside the house we found out that the bush wasn't the only "on fire" thing about the house. Luanne cracked me up: "Oh look! She must cook like I cook!"

This house was done mostly in Joan Collins silvery pink with crystal chandeliers EVERYWHERE, with gold leaf everything, and New Orleans-like wrought iron, only it all was painted gold instead of black.

Ewww....

With gold shag carpets.

Double ewww...

Gold shag carpet SQUARES with boxes of replacement squares still at the ready!

Hmmmm....maybe the gold shag carpet would work after all....why tear it all up when with just a little effort we could patch-patch-patch it right back up to 1960s style glory?

Same house....any one want to guess what this door is all about???

Maybe it would be better not to know.

Maybe we would sleep better at night if we never actually find out.

(For the record...I did see some nice houses, but seriously, aren't these pictures a lot more fun?)