So this house was the first we toured, and we had such high hopes for it too. From the street it looks very nice. The photos on the GRAR listing were very nice, too; clearly they know how to market the house. Things were a little different once we got inside, though. For starters, it would appear that the main entrance to the house is through the kitchen. That seems a little weird to me. There is no dining room, so the dining area is just a table stuffed into the kitchen. I am NOT a fan of that – I don’t need a formal dining room, but I want the table to have it’s own space. The kitchen, and by extension, the kitchen cupboards, were very tall. I could probably just barely reach the second shelf. Not all bad, so long as I have a step stool. Directly off from the kitchen was a bedroom, which was again, odd. Not a terribly spacious bedroom, either. From the kitchen, we went to the living room. That’s when we discovered that all the other rooms were directly off of the living room; there was no hallway. The master bedroom was off the living room through some double doors, the den was right next to the master bedroom, and the bathroom was right next to the kitchen. I can handle a den being right off the living room, but I do not want the bathroom right off of the living room. Already points against it. The listing also said the house had a Michigan Basement. I’ve heard about 4 different definitions of Michigan Basement, ranging from “dirt floor cellar” to “normal, but short, basement”. This basement was definitely on the dirt floor end of the spectrum. The washer and dryer were down there (how they accomplished that I do not know), but not much else. I would not feel comfortable putting Zoe’s litter box down there, or leaving the basement open to rest of the house. At this point we had pretty much decided against the house, but wanted to check out the garage, since that was one of the selling points. The garage had been advertised as “built like a fortress” with gas, telephone, electrical and a stairwell to the storage loft. The electrical was outdated – I think we saw maybe 2 grounded outlets out there, which is bad considering most power tools are grounded. The “stairwell” to the loft was a glorified ladder. I wouldn’t feel comfortable climbing it with anything in my hands, which makes the concept of storing anything in the loft rather difficult. Final impressions? Not the house for us; time to continue the search.
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#1 by Mors on April 4, 2007 - 1:07 pm
I had rather high hopes for this house, but was quite disappointed. The house is not bad, it’s just odd. The basement actually had a cement floor which was better than I expected, but the walls were stone and concrete, it looked to be in ill-repair, the ceiling was way too low, and was downright scary. On the plus side, the ceilings in the upstairs rooms were quite tall. I like that open feeling but unfortunately the rest of the house didn’t quite match up with what we’re looking for in a house.