House Hunting 9/20

Today's trek was to Litchfield Park. It's about 20 minutes from Mike's work. We took Glendale from the 101, and found out that the Candy Store is replaced by Xplicit. Looks brand new, like it was built for the stadium after-parties. Anyway, looked at several houses and may put a bid on one.

First, the bad news. It's about 45 minutes for me to get to work (over an hour in traffic), so I will have to work out a better schedule and definitely work from home once a week. It's about 4 miles from Luke Air Force Base, which is one of the top flight schools in the country, so while we are not in the flight path, we are likely to get some of the noise.

Why we love it. The lot is about an acre and a half. The house is not too far back on the lot (like we have seen in some cases.) It is listed as 5 bedrooms but there is a sixth small bedroom--the kennel room likely.

The downstairs has the common areas, plus a little room for the extra fridge and freezer, the kennel room, and a master bedroom that would probably be a gym. It's all tile except the piano room, which we would get tiled. Kitchen is very nice, some interesting features, gas stove, no fridge, a desk off the dining room. We looked at another house with essentially the same floor plan that was not set up as nicely. This house does not have a fireplace, but that's not a deal breaker for us.

The stairs are bamboo wood which continues through the hall and master bedroom upstairs. There are three more good size bedrooms, which would probably be the his and hers offices and guest room. There is also a loft (needs carpet to be replaced with wood, same as the offices) for the pool table.

The front is beautifully landscaped, with a 3 car garage, RV gate, nice entry and artificial grass. We could do without all the palm trees , and there is a path on the left that goes directly into the wall, but we would put another RV gate there when we do the back yard.

It is very reasonably priced so we will have money in the budget to re-paint the interior as well as put in alternate flooring in the areas with carpet and replace all the window coverings.

After we are settled in (assuming we get it--crossing everything!), we will have a huge backyard to be landscaped; nothing is done except the block fence. I think we will have a lot of it done professionally so it can be done more quickly. We may want to put in a balcony, extend the patio, put in doors upstairs, and of course a doggy door somewhere. Later, we may put in a detached RV garage/workshop/kennel. Still working on getting my chicken coop but Mike thinks I'm nuts. (He married me anyway....)

I'm excited and trying not to get my hopes up in case we don't get it.