We finally went and did it. We bought a house!
Actually, as I write this, we bought it almost six years ago (we celebrated New Years Eve 1999 by hauling the last loads out of the old place, coming home, and climbing in our new hot tub with a bottle of Moët & Chandon just in time to toast the new millennium). I still haven't got a lot of pictures of it to post, but I'm working on it!
For the first six and a half years Tony and I were together we lived in West Seattle, in a dumpy little house with a million-dollar view. Our landlord was a complete flake--he couldn't be bothered to fix or maintain anything (we had to call the city housing inspector on him once to get the stairs fixed so we could get in and out without putting our lives in peril). Of course, it was a tradeoff--he couldn't be bothered to raise the rent, either, for the first five and a half years we lived there. Then, all at once, he decided to make up for it and raise it 54% (yes, that's legal--Seattle doesn't have any form of rent control). That was all it took. We figured out that, if we could just scrape together a minimal down payment, we could be paying less on a mortgage, and having no one but ourselves to blame for the lack of upkeep. So we took a first-time homebuyers course, we met with a mortgage broker, we cleaned up our sorry credit records as best we could (it's not a myth--there really are things you can do), and we found out just how much cash we could beg and borrow towards a down payment. But we were still a bit little amazed when we actually got pre-approved for a loan.
We saw the ad for this place when we first started looking. It sounded bigger than most places in our price range. The ad said it had a gas kitchen and gas heat, two baths, a two-car garage, and hardwood floors, which were all big pluses. It was the hot tub, though, that made us ask "Okay, what's wrong with this place that they're not telling us?" We looked at the address and got our first clue. Tony said "It has to be right on the end of the Sea-Tac runway!"
Not quite...the runway starts eight-tenths of a mile from us, and we're about half a mile off the flightpath. We're close enough that the house has the "Port Package," a set of soundproofing improvements (insulation, double-pane windows and doors, etc.) that the Port of Seattle had to install in this neighborhood as a result of a class action suit over the noise. It just about makes it so you can't hear the planes (much) in the winter when the windows and doors are closed. In the summer, however... But we don't mind. It's a great house, in good shape, a bit bland perhaps, but nowhere near as ugly as a lot of the others we looked at. It only has two bedrooms, but the master bedroom and the living room are enormous for a house this size. The kitchen was just remodeled and I love it (the hot tub was Tony's fantasy--this kitchen was mine. I hugged the stove when the realtor first took us inside). The neighborhood is perfectly decent, and our commutes have been tolerable. We quite simply couldn't have afforded this much house anywhere else that didn't have some big (and possibly less easy to live with) drawbacks.
We do miss the view, though.
I'll put up more pictures eventually, but for now, here's one of Tony and me in the hot tub.
Here are a few places I've found to go when calling the landlord is no longer an option...
BobVila.com "The ultimate home site."
MichaelHoligan.com "Your online source for home building, buying and remodeling."
How Stuff Works: Home Improvement Everything from water heaters to three-way switches to solar cells.
Home Maintenance and Repair Michigan State University Extension Service has some really useful articles, searchable by topic.
DIY: The Do It Yourself Network has tips and how-to information on projects including home repair, gardening, decorating, crafts, car care, and more.
Open Directory Project's Home: Do-It-Yourself and Home: Home Improvement listings
Appliance411.com can help you select, maintain, diagnose and fix problems with your major household appliances
RepairClinic.com is another place to go for appliance parts and free repair help.
Toiletology 101 The care and repair of toilets.
Sunset Magazine fueled my nesting fantasies for years before we finally bought a house.
Better Homes and Gardens Another great source of tips and ideas.
Quentin Crisp said that he didn't bother with housecleaning, because after ten years, it doesn't get any more dirty anyway. I tend to agree. Here are some more of the Rules of Housekeeping that I live by.
Updated 1/3/07