the house i'm not getting
Oct. 31st, 2018 08:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishIt's been a busy month.
Of relevance to this post: after THREE MONTHS I finally have a new kitchen/hallway tiled floor, at no monetary cost to me. When the previous owners put in the new floor they didn't put in any transitions, and there's no way to get matching laminate five years later, so the budget called for basically replacing the whole floor. For the same (probably less) money, and way less hassle to me, I got them to replace the half-ruined entryway and kitchen floor in tile. It looks nice, and it supposedly raises resale value.
I also found out a couple of weeks ago that they managed to lose my dishwasher. I am not entirely sure how this happened, but whatever. They finally got me a new one on Monday. Which is good because that was the re-re-rescheduled photoshoot for putting the condo on the market. I believe it should be listed today or tomorrow. With any luck I will soon have enough money that I can withdraw it in rolls of loonies and build myself a coinroll cabin. Like a log cabin, but less insulative.
Now that the condo is on the market I'm starting to think about where I'm gonna be living. My current "plan" (if something this vague can be called a plan) is to find a house up north near Erin and a cheap room in Vancouver, and be down in Van one week a month. Unclear as to whether this will /save/ me any money over living in Van but it's unlikely to be any more expensive.
Last night Erin and I went and looked at a number of houses. Most of them were in town, kind of generic houses, in varying states of disrepair. There's one or two that might work out.
And then there's this gorgeous house. I'm not sure how long the link will be live; the realtor said she's taking it off the market today. Apparently the owner was looking to sell and move someplace else... and "someplace else" sold last week to someone else.
It has two major negatives, which are significant enough to keep me from buying it. First, it's about a ten-minute drive from town, and hence a half-hour drive from Erin's place. Second, and more importantly, the driveway is long, narrow, and uphill, and there's not enough room at the top of it to turn around unless you're driving a Smart. This is an annoyance for April through October, and a severe problem for snow-covered November through March. (There are two minor negatives, those being "the kitchen" and "the main bathroom," that can be solved by throwing money at them.)
But, gods. The view over the lake. The light, the ... openness? of the main floor. The nestled-into-the-forest-ness of it. I'm having almost the same reaction to this house that I had to one of the houses Erin and I looked at for her last spring: it feels like Pop Shackelford's house. I think that's a combination of one-storey (or at least looks-like-one-storey) and set-into-the-woods.
It feels like the perfect house for me. Only not for me as I exist but for a me three years in the future, or me at slightly oblique angles to who I am or where I am right now. And yet I want so badly to settle into that house and never leave it, make it mine and stay there for the next fifty years.
Oh well. Something like it will turn up again.
Of relevance to this post: after THREE MONTHS I finally have a new kitchen/hallway tiled floor, at no monetary cost to me. When the previous owners put in the new floor they didn't put in any transitions, and there's no way to get matching laminate five years later, so the budget called for basically replacing the whole floor. For the same (probably less) money, and way less hassle to me, I got them to replace the half-ruined entryway and kitchen floor in tile. It looks nice, and it supposedly raises resale value.
I also found out a couple of weeks ago that they managed to lose my dishwasher. I am not entirely sure how this happened, but whatever. They finally got me a new one on Monday. Which is good because that was the re-re-rescheduled photoshoot for putting the condo on the market. I believe it should be listed today or tomorrow. With any luck I will soon have enough money that I can withdraw it in rolls of loonies and build myself a coinroll cabin. Like a log cabin, but less insulative.
Now that the condo is on the market I'm starting to think about where I'm gonna be living. My current "plan" (if something this vague can be called a plan) is to find a house up north near Erin and a cheap room in Vancouver, and be down in Van one week a month. Unclear as to whether this will /save/ me any money over living in Van but it's unlikely to be any more expensive.
Last night Erin and I went and looked at a number of houses. Most of them were in town, kind of generic houses, in varying states of disrepair. There's one or two that might work out.
And then there's this gorgeous house. I'm not sure how long the link will be live; the realtor said she's taking it off the market today. Apparently the owner was looking to sell and move someplace else... and "someplace else" sold last week to someone else.
It has two major negatives, which are significant enough to keep me from buying it. First, it's about a ten-minute drive from town, and hence a half-hour drive from Erin's place. Second, and more importantly, the driveway is long, narrow, and uphill, and there's not enough room at the top of it to turn around unless you're driving a Smart. This is an annoyance for April through October, and a severe problem for snow-covered November through March. (There are two minor negatives, those being "the kitchen" and "the main bathroom," that can be solved by throwing money at them.)
But, gods. The view over the lake. The light, the ... openness? of the main floor. The nestled-into-the-forest-ness of it. I'm having almost the same reaction to this house that I had to one of the houses Erin and I looked at for her last spring: it feels like Pop Shackelford's house. I think that's a combination of one-storey (or at least looks-like-one-storey) and set-into-the-woods.
It feels like the perfect house for me. Only not for me as I exist but for a me three years in the future, or me at slightly oblique angles to who I am or where I am right now. And yet I want so badly to settle into that house and never leave it, make it mine and stay there for the next fifty years.
Oh well. Something like it will turn up again.
We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it. The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written in another language.... You do not suppose, my lady, that if all of Archimedes had been hiding in the great library of Alexandria, we would be at a loss for a corkscrew?
--Tom Stoppard, Arcadia
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Date: 2018-10-31 07:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-11-02 03:43 pm (UTC)