I'm a cypher, wrapped in an enigma, smothered in secret sauce. Also, my name is Kev and I own this here website.
Armed with the feedback given to me by readers for what makes a place female friendly, I have been on the hunt for a new place to live. I have come to one clear, indisputable conclusion:
Finding a place is harder than HGTV makes it look.
I’m looking to rent, not buy, which should (in theory) make the process easier on me. I’m not looking for a place to live for 15+ years. I’m looking for a place to live for six or twelve months, and then I’ll see where I’m at and go from there.
My wish list? Oh, nothing extreme. I just want an awesome place in an awesome location for an insanely low, awesome price.
(Coincidentally, I would name the place “Fort Awesome.”)
Should be easy, right?
Well, it’s not.
There are two homes I’m considering. I don’t have photos of either to show all of you, but I’ll do you one better. I’ll paint mental pictures for you with my words. Doesn’t that sound like fun? No? Well, aren’t you the joykill.
House A and House B are located less than a minute from each other. Both are close to where I work (less than 7 minutes away) and ridiculously close to my gym. When it comes to location, House A and B are equals.
House A has hardwood floors in parts of the house. This is good.
House A also has carpet, inexplicably, in the kitchen. This is bad.
House B has tile in the kitchen. This is good. It has no hardwood floors, but the carpet is fairly nice. Carpet isn’t ideal, but I can live with it.
House A, in the rooms where it doesn’t have hardwood floors (including the kitchen!), has shabby, ugly carpet. This is bad.
House A has one full bath and one half bath. However, the half bath (off the master bedroom) is barely big enough for an infant child to fit inside. This is bad.
House B also has one full bath and one half bath. Its half bath is actually human size. This is good.
House B has a garage for my car. I have never had a garage. This is good.
House B’s garage is detached. This isn’t the end of the world, but on days where it’s raining really hard, I’m not going to like it.
House A doesn’t have a garage, but it has a carport. And said carport is attached to the home. That means I can get from house to car and car to house without getting wet on rainy days.
House A has an ideal, perfectly-sized dining room with hardwood floors for my antique table. This is good.
House B has two places where I could put my antique table, but I do not consider either of them ideal.
House B has an ideal place for the pool table given to me five Christmases ago as a gift. This is a good thing.
House A has no room for my pool table. It would have to remain in storage (i.e. in my parent’s bonus room), which is where it’s been the past five years.
(Oh, did I not mention that the mental picture I’m painting you with words was going to be random and unorganized? Hopefully you guys have been jotting down notes so you can keep track of which house has what.)
There’s more, but you guys get the idea. Each house has pros and cons.
I guess the real questions I should ask are these:
If I’m not 100% pleased with either house, should I pass on both and wait for something better to come along? Will something better come along? Given the emphasis I seem to be placing on location, it’s possible nothing better will come along in the near future.
Decisions, decisions.
I guess I should just relax and daydream about Fort Awesome some more. Did you notice how it has a mote to keep the riffraff away?
That’s my favorite part.
Enjoy your Memorial Weekends, everyone.
;-) 5.22.09 at 7:34 pm:
Do not get House A.
Also, there is a google ad on this post featuring several different types of flooring options, and I find that to be amusing.
;-) 5.22.09 at 11:42 pm:
I agree. House B sounds so much better. Enough room for your pool table! What could be better than that?!
Oh, btw…did you notice that Fort Awesome is on fire? I hope you can put that out before it gets too serious. Love that mote though…keeping riffraff away is the most important thing. : )
;-) 5.23.09 at 8:35 am:
Compromise but DO NOT settle.
I do so hope that was helpful!
;-) 5.23.09 at 12:06 pm:
if you have other options in mind, check those out. i agree that settling in housing choices would be very upsetting..
it’s a recipe for unhappiness to be thinking about that better option every time you run through the rain from the detached garage or perhaps cursing your bad decision-making everytime you drop something on the kitchen carpet.
BTW, why on earth would anyone put a carpet in the kitchen. seriously. what kind of poor planning were they doing!??!
;-) 5.23.09 at 8:24 pm:
I’d skip House A – if the carpet is shabby, you never know what could be growing in it.
;-) 5.25.09 at 2:23 pm:
Jenny has the right idea. Don’t spend anything on a house you don’t like 100% (or can’t be made to like through some simple changes in paint color).
;-) 5.25.09 at 4:54 pm:
I vote NO CARPET IN THE KITCHEN.
Can you imagine having to shampoo your carpets every time you drip something?
I don’t know how ideal House B is for you either, but…the awful carpets and carpet in the kitchen would be an immediate deal breaker for me…
;-) 5.26.09 at 10:42 am:
@Kevin: Yes, I get the Google ad for flooring options, too. Isn’t Google super duper helpful? I think I will go with the bamboo. It’s such a funny sounding word, so the floor MUST be great. Bamboo. Bamboo. I love it.
@Audrey: Haha. I can read between the lines. What you’re really saying is, “Good grief! ANOTHER guy with a pool table?!”
Wha?? My fort is on fire?!?! Those darn neighbors’ kids. You see, THIS is why I had the mote installed!
@Jenny: Compromise, but do not settle. Methinks putting that into practice is a LOT harder than it would seem! Haha.
@gianna: I have NO idea why they have carpet in the kitchen. It’s been there for years, from the looks of it. I can only assume the old flooring needed to be replaced (as well as the flooring in the rest of the house), so rather than put in a LITTLE bit of effort and money into the project, they just decided, “We’ll just put carpet everywhere.” Nice, guys. Very professional.
@Angie: Ooooh. I hadn’t considered that. There’s no telling what could be underneath the carpet. Hey, maybe that’s where they hid Jimmy Hoffa?
@Josh: Gotcha. So wall color is something I should let slide. A half bath that is two feet by six feet, on the other hand…
@Angi: No joke. Honestly, though, the carpets were shabby enough that I could probably spill something in the kitchen and no one would be able to tell the difference. They were that bad.
And the thing is, three steps away is a dining room with beautiful hardwood floors. It’s as if those three steps take me into some kind of bizarro universe.
;-) 5.26.09 at 12:05 pm:
A carpeted kitchen? I think that’s enough to choose House B.
;-) 5.26.09 at 2:13 pm:
Not just underneath the carpet but IN the carpet. I have a long and rather disgusting story about my prior rental experience that I will keep to myself for now, but suffice it to say you just never know who was doing what on the floor before you and whether it was cleaned up.
Jimmy’s up here in Michigan. Granholm first crossed the border years ago to suck the life out of him like the succubus she is. (And did you see she’s on King Barry’s list for SCOTUS? I used to think he was playing games with our heads, but now I’m wondering if he isn’t borderline retarded or something.)
And dude, yes, TOTALLY go for the pool table. But good luck on the search.
;-) 5.28.09 at 1:57 am:
Yeah, I hope you can use water from the moat to put out the fire.
In two homes, I had carpet in the kitchen. It is really densely woven and easy to wipe up spills. Temperature-wise, it is nice for going barefoot in the winter.
;-) 5.29.09 at 2:25 pm:
Good catch on the fire, Audrey, hahaha! At least Fort Awesome 1.) is made of stone and 2.) has a moat filled to the brim with water. It’s a dual-purpose moat! Good planning, Kev!
House B, especially since you’re only planning on six to twelve months.
;-) 6.1.09 at 5:24 pm:
I’m going to throw my hat in the NO-CARPET-IN-THE-KITCHEN ring. I’ve never understood why some people have decided that carpet in the kitchen, or bathrooms would be even a semi-good idea.
Any room in which there are regularly liquids not concealed in pipes or a fish tank should expect liquids on the floor. The condo I’m currently renting has all tile downstairs. And while this makes it “cold” in the “cold” winters (cold is kind of relative in Southern California), it is wonderfully easy to clean up when things have been spilled.
;-) 6.1.09 at 9:43 pm:
Our kitchen had carpet when we bought our house. We haven’t replaced yet but we HATE it.
;-) 6.3.09 at 3:35 pm:
[...] that, you say? There wasn’t a “C” option when I talked about the possible rentals I was considering last [...]