House #1: Move-In Ready, Horrible Yard

Greg and I always love the tag lines they assign to the different houses featured on each episode of House Hunters. Things like, "Small Rooms, Big Potential," and "Bad Location, Nice Yard." Greg has made an art form out of coming up with his own hilarious, often inappropriate tag lines for houses we drive by. They usually involve something very descriptive about the way he imagines they smell inside.

Anyhoo.

I decided to attach my own tag lines to differentiate some of the houses we looked at last week. Without further ado, here is House #1:

It was one of the first homes that I saw when I arrived last week.

The dining room was on the left-hand side when you walked in the front door, and I loved it. The blue was interesting - not necessarily what I would pick, as I tend to be more of a traditionalist when it comes to dining rooms - but cool. I liked it.



The living room is on the right, and is open to the family room. The living and family rooms in our house now are similar, and I really like this layout. It's very conducive to having people over with enough room for everyone to be comfortable, and the furniture we have now would be perfect. I wouldn't even have to paint!



The kitchen was nice. Again, not really what I would pick, and not quite as big as my kitchen now, but lovely and adequate with plenty of room for a family of six.



Down the hallway you see in the picture below is a really pretty laundry room, entrance from the attached garage, and a study that would be perfect for our school room.



The master bedroom and master bath were tucked away at one end of the upstairs hallway, and were very nice.

One of my favorite parts of this house was the finished walk-out basement. It was sunny and bright and would be a perfect playspace for the kids. There was also a bedroom in the basement with big windows looking out into the backyard - a perfect guest room for all of the visitors we are hoping to host :-).

This house was pristine - I felt like I was walking through a Crate and Barrel catalog. The big issue for us was the yard. The house is in one of those new neighborhoods... lovely, custom-built homes, but small yards that all back up to one another. We are not used to this, and don't particularly like it. We by no means have a big, awesome yard in Pittsburgh, but we do have quiet and trees. We can sit on our deck in the afternoon and hear the birds and the wind rustling through the trees and... not much else. We have neighbors on both sides of us, but we're not surrounded by them. My realtor and I were standing at the window in the picture above, looking out at the yard, and she said, reading my mind, "Kinda makes you feel like a goldfish in a bowl, huh?" 

That being said, this house is awesome. We could move right in and not even have to paint! It has all the space we need with the exception of a full bath by the guest room, but it appeared there would be unfinished space where we could add one. No house is perfect, so we're going to have to compromise on something...

Stay tuned for House #2!