House Hunting

After nine months of living with my in-laws, we now feel ready to go and get a place of our own here. Just so you know, that is about seven months past my internal deadline that I had for something to happen with the Florida house and for us to have the freedom to get something here.

I keep on saying that living in one room at your in-laws’ is character building. And that is all that I can say. If I dwell on it too long, I will most definitely fall into a depressive state and pitch a tent somewhere in the Kanawha State Forest to live or something.

If one can make a baby in nine months, surely one can make a firm decision about where she wants to live. You would think that, but we are no closer to knowing what in the world what we want to do than the day that we arrived to West Virginia. Like most women, I have that mental checklist of must-have aspects to my new home. Here was my original list when moving here:

1. at least an acre of land on top of a mountain
2. architectural details that make the home charming/unique/not too stuffy
3. a huge gourmet kitchen with granite countertops, quality cabinetry, industrial-strength appliances
4. a playroom/bonus room for the kiddies to play
5. hardwood flooring throughout
6. a spa-like atmosphere in the bathroom
7. large windows
8. an outdoor living space, complete with an outdoor kitchen
9. and of course, a fantastically established neighborhood

I am not kidding. I really thought that I could get all of that. We quickly enlisted ourselves with a realtor as soon as we got here to start looking. I told him my list. And then I told him my price range.

“Well,” he said, trying to be tactful, “I am not sure how long it will take for that combination of wishes to come together with your desired price point.”

That is fancy talk for it’s a cold day in hell before you get all that. Come back to Earth, sister.


Okay, so I was dreaming big. That is my way. So I adjusted my wish list:

1. a good-sized yard
2. charming architectural details
3. a kitchen with potential to be my dream kitchen
4. hardwood floors
5. good neighborhood and good schools

We settled on two areas in the Charleston region. One in the city and one suburb right outside of it. After looking at about fifty or so houses and hours of looking on line at realtor.com, I came to realization that the idea of a yard is absolutely relative to who you’re talking to. If you are talking to a Floridian about yards, one with a beach in the back is the ideal situation. But we never think in terms of phrases such as “usable land”. All of it is pretty much usable. If you are talking about yards to a West Virginian, anything that you can stand on without fear of falling off the side of a mountain is “usable land”. Additionally, driveways in West Virginia usually require the help of some climbing gear to make it up the hill, especially in the winter. That is, if you even have a driveway. Usually, the owners of these houses are so delighted that they have found a way to engineer their houses to hang precariously off the side of a mountain, a driveway would have been just too much to figure out.

Meanwhile, I have been watching way too much HGTV. My husband and I currently love the show, House Hunters. They make is seem so easy, you just pick a price, three houses, and poof! You have your home and sipping cocktails five months later with all of your home improvement projects completed. But we don’t just stop that that show; we watch pretty much all of them. And after prolonged exposure to that sort of can-do brainwashing, you start to really think that you are just like all of these experts, ready to take on any mess of a house and turn it into something that belongs to the cover of Southern Living.

This is not a good mindset to be in when you are on the hunt for a house.

We saw a house that “needs updating” and that “has potential”. This means in Realtorese that the house doesn’t cost much because no one would live there. Now this house was in a great neighborhood. Too bad all of the neighbors wanted to bulldoze the house down. I see it and begin to imagine all of the things that you can do with it. We can knock down walls! It is no big deal to replace electrical wiring. Refinishing hardwood floors? No problem! It got to where I didn’t even see the actual house; I just saw the finished product.

This happened again and again. We would say that we were fine with a house that needed work. But we would forget how much of a pain in the you-know-where it is to actually do that. Our first house needed an updated bathroom. So my husband took out the old vanities and put in new ones. That little switch-out resulted in four days without water and me showering at the YMCA.

So back to my list. I don’t know if I finally realized through a series of disappointments of realizing that we, in fact, are not destined to be an HGTV series. All of my fantasizing has exhausted me. As a result, my list has diminished to two items:

1. a place where I can move in with minimal work, and
2. be able to walk around naked in my own house

One forgets the luxury of being able to walk around naked in your own house until you live with others. It has been a huge fear of mine that I would exit the shower and have the door wide open and me on display for the in-laws because Mountain Child has opened it and not closed it. It’s not that I am even the type to walk around naked a lot. It is just the fact that I can’t and I want to have that option.

And if you really think about it, home way be where the heart is, but more importantly, it is where you can be naked.