Houses

We are officially house shopping now. We finally got numbers back from our lender and we are starting the search. Since I work for a real estate agent, we're gonna make him find us the perfect house, which is great. But it also means I can do a lot of the footwork myself and not waste our time looking at houses we already know we don't want.

We've learned a few things about what we do and do NOT want in a house from living in our current home. The funny thing is that Josh and I have very different pet peeves. For example, Josh knows that he wants a house that does have 50 year old plumbing. He's tired of buying drano by the gallon. I know that I don't want to walk on blue shag carpet for the rest of my life. He knows he "needs" a garage. I know I "need" a kitchen. He wants a yard. I want counter space. Between the two of us we want a dang nice house! Problem is that we're trying to buy it just with Josh's income and not mine. That means that we're fairly limited.

So Sunday morning I pulled a search on the MLS and found that we have a few options.
1. We can live in a 100 year old tiny house with no windows in Salt Lake.
2. We can live in a BEAUTIFUL brand new condo with incredible community ammenities (pool, playground, clubhouse, exercise room, nice neighbors) in Eagle Mountain.
3. We can live in a small modest, medium sized home in Magna.
So far we're leaning toward Magna. Mostly because those homes have garages and for some reason, my husband "needs" a garage. Or 4.

We found one house for sale in our price range, it has 2 bedrooms, 1 bathroom, and is small and old and needs a lot of work on the inside. Josh is a handyman and could easily do all of that work, but in the past he has expressed his lack of desire to remodel a home for us. So, I kindof skipped over this particular home. But then he saw that it has a 2 car garage. AND a 2 car carport. Suddenly he wants to rennovate the whole home and make it ours and live there forever.

I quickly pointed out that right now we have EXACTLY 1 working vehicle. Yes, we hope redbox will give us another one at the beginning of the year, but that's it. Then we will have 2 working vehicles. So, I ask him why he thinks he needs room for 4 cars.
"For the 4-wheelers" he says as if it's stupid that I'm even asking.
"What 4-wheelers?" I ask as if I've never heard of a 4-wheeler.
"The ones we're gonna buy."
"We don't have a car, a truck, or a trailer to pull them with, but we're buying 4-wheelers?"
"well. yeah."
"We don't have a savings account, we're going to have babies (no not an announcement), bills, I'm going to stop working, and you want to buy 4-wheelers?" My voice is starting to get high and squeaky, classic sign that we're about to "discuss" read: fight.
"umm....Not today. no. But a house is a place you live for a long time, right? And I'd like to have 4-wheelers in a long time......for the babies to ride." Desperately trying to appease my need to take care of our unborn children without agreeing that we're not buying 4-wheelers.
"We'll talk about it in a long time and decide if we have the money to buy 4-wheelers. But let's not build our home around the 4-wheelers we don't have the money to purchase. OK?"
"OK" He breathes a deep sigh of relief. Barely side-stepped that one.

So, I think I don't wanna live somewhere that provides more room for the cars and toys than it does for the vehicles, but we'll see. Maybe it's perfect and it's not that I'm against a home with a lot of "toy room" it's just that I don't think it's what I want right now. You know? I feel more like we need room to put our selves and our stuff, and not save room for the stuff we don't even have! But, I'm sure that we will wind up somewhere amazing and perfect for us. In the mean time I'm gonna try really hard not to kill my husband.