kind of excited..

Please be patient with me..I have a few pictures..unfortunately my camera died after taking the first 5 shots..I didn't even get to take pictures of the kitchen, sunroom, bedrooms, bathroom, or diningroom (though you can see a very small part of the dining room through a doorway in one of the pics. I wish he would leave all of his stuff though. He has excellent taste.

HAHA you mean you wished he'd leave all that snow? LOL It looks well kept inside from what I could see. Going to make an offer?

OMG it is really cute! I love it inside and out.

Oooh! I love the Tiffany style lamps, especially the blue one.

I like the pic with the stairs in it because it gives a nice view of the woodwork (which is nice). Everything looks in very nice condition, too. No dings or chips or problems that have to be dealt with, which is usually a good sign that they've done regular maintenance.

I wish I had the pics of the kitchen and other rooms to show you they are very nice. We looked at other houses as well (I didn't take pics at those) one was so horrible I would not even let my dog poop there for fear of him catching a disease. The others wanted way too much money for the size (or should I say lack of size of the house). So far this is the only one that has really caught all of us.
Here are the positives and the negatives.

Positives:
Newly remodeled rooms (they sunk some money in the kitchen)
Love the outside look of the house
love the inside look of the house
dining room (which we've never had before)
2 pantries
indoor sunporch
outdoor wrap around porch
nice neighborhood
low taxes
huge basement (plenty of room for storage)

Negatives

There is only 1 closet upstairs in the master bedroom and it's a sloping closet. There aren't any other closets for clothes or linens, etc for the upstairs bedrooms or bathroom. I would have to do some measuring to see if I could fit a shelf cabinet with doors or something somewhere. Roll under the bed storage would be a must. When the day comes JJ moves out, then we could make the smallest bedroom a walk in closet for clothes, towels and linens. But until then we would need to come up with creative storage. We noticed leaking on the pipe and top of the fuel tank (fresh) it isn't on the ground or anything. It appears as if there may be a crack in the pipe, not the tank. We would have to have the fuel company come look at it and give an estimate. The seller is moving to California and said he doesn't want to mess with it and doesn't think there's a problem with it. We would have it looked at and an estimate done for whatever the problem is and he would have to take that $$ off the price of the house. On the sunporch one of the windows has a big crack in it and would need to be replaced, we would have to get an estimate for that also and take the $$ of the price of the house. The last negative is a big one, but one we are willing to deal with. I have never seen this before, but the garage floor is wood...and the doorway that you drive in is not tall enough for our truck (though the inside space is).. When late spring rolls around we would have to take the door out..make the door hole higher, then put a different door in....jack the garage up pour a slab and then drop it back down on the slab. That cost will have to be taken off the price of the house.. Also the biggest bathroom is very small, no cupboard, and really no room to put one. I would have to measure and see if I can fit a cabinet in the hall upstairs to put a few towels and bathroom necessities.

He is probably not going to take off the price for the garage, and it can be done without jacking it up( it would be cheaper to build another garage)....it sounds like he is moving regardless, and won't want to deal with the things that are broken, meaning, he won't take them off. I hope he does for your sake, but I would definetely not expect it.

Over the toilet cabinets from Target?

He DOES have excellent taste, I have the same curtains in my bedroom.

Sounds like a lot to think about, and there may be a better home for you. If you do decide to bid on it, here's a solution for bathroom storage. I actually got a magazine holder for our bathroom, but this company (WG Wood Products) does make larger units such as this one that have some shelving, hold tp as well as magazines. The units are installed in the wall between the joists and can be made of wood or painted to match the existing room trim so they look like they've been there forever:

http://www.wgwoodproducts.com/store/agora.cgi?cart_id=2395585.27938&p_id=MPU-7&xm=on&ppinc=search2

For the full listing of their products:

http://www.wgwoodproducts.com/

Sounds nice Kelly. This thread had given me lots to think about when it's time to sell our house. Assuming we ever finish any of the 5000 ongoing projects, lol. The fuel pipe definitely, storage space is something you can creatively work in. We had none in our house when we bought it. We added a couple tiny ones though,

As for the garage I am sorry to say but if a potential buyer told me they wanted to raise it and take the cost of my price I would probably fall over laughing as I told them to get a car. That is not really a fault that needs to be dealt with from his prospective. Perhaps if it were condemned or falling down but there is no way I would pay to adjust anything to accommodate a vehicle just to sell my house.

Even if you are in love with it, keep looking, look at a few more before you decide anything. You may fond something else you love as much if not more that will be more fitting.

You do have to keep looking. I fell in love with an older home that was located in town. Bungalow/craftsman style, original woodwork, had a lot of character. I finally had to admit that the lack of any sort of a yard really bothered me, plus the upstairs bath only had a claw-foot tub. There was a shower down in the basement, but I absolutely could not see myself going down there every day to take a shower. I didn't want to mess with remodeling, either. Still like to look at the house when I drive by it, but it wasn't the house for me.

Tara..we would not be asking for $$ off the house because we would have to raise the garage door, but because the wood plank floor is hugely sagging and the boards are probably ready to break.

We did some more looking earlier..and aren't impressed with what the area has to offer in our price range. However after looking at your message Lori about a recessed cabinet area, It got me to thinking about a couple areas where we could do recessed shelves or cabinets..of course they couldn't be too deep, but enough to store stuff. That would really help. We have done nothing but talk about this house, other houses, etc for days..this one keeps coming back up because we love it's charm and would feel at home there. None of the others in our price range have stood out.

It has a lot of charm, that's for sure!

Well we set up another appointment to look at the house again, Wed night as 6pm. I am going to bring spare batteries this time so I can get pics of all the rooms. There were some things we wanted to check again, some things we forgot to check, some measuring I wanted to do. Also, keeping in mind some new ideas for clothes and personal items storage. We also had the realtor set up an appointment for the fuel company to check the fuel tank. Kris has an appt with Aroostook Savings and Loan tomorrow, he canceled the one with TD Banknorth yesterday after some deliberation the night before. We are just waiting for the appraiser to come here before they seriously get going on the paperwork to get this place sold. We are so hoping that he will come down on the price of the house from $109,000. to $95,000. We can go $100,000. but don't really want to if we don't have to..hopefully he would be willing to come down to $95,000. or $100,000..... we talked to the realtor and she hasn't had anyone interested in the house yet...so I am hoping he will be willing to go lower, though it does say the price is newly reduced..

Making appts today to check out two other properties sometime this week. I just want to be sure that if we go for the one we are looking at, that we have given just about everything in our price range a good look.

Just make sure that you love the house for itself and not the way it looks with his stuff in it. It is a fact that it helps to sell a house when it is well furnished and decorated. However, many a buyer has been sad when they see the house they bought without the previous owner's stuff in it. I know your camera died, but the pics you took are more of his stuff than the house itself. Not trying to be rude, just a word of caution because houses are a big commitment, esp if you are planning on staying there the rest of your life.

I do admit that I like his stuff. However I wasn't taking pics of his stuff, rather I was taking pics of each side of the livingroom and the camera died. Though I won't have as nice stuff as him, I do love the layout of the downstairs, the kitchen, the pantries, the sun porch, the layout of the upstairs. It is lacking a bit in clothes storage, but I think I can work with that. In a year and a half my youngest will be in the Navy and his room could be a walk in closet area. I am going back to take a 2nd look tomorrow night and have bought extra batteries this time..

The house has been on the market for a while... and it probably will continue to be so... so do yourself a big favor and look at LOTS of other options... I know you're excited... but don't let emotions overcome you!

I'm in my 3rd house (in 37 years), all of which were built for us... and I can't tell you how many times after all was said and done, "I wished we'd.... (fill in whatever). There is no perfect house, but sometimes when we get excited and emotional... we overlook simple things... like not having adequate closet space or a larger bathroom...

Just use caution....and look, look, look!

Oh yeah, I agree. My house is 6 months old and we always says " I wish we would have.....".

Here's another one we are looking at. Kris and I talked about it and by being willing to go up $10,000. more we are able to have a few more choices and get more house. You guys are probably going to be so sick of me posting stuff...lol

I will post both the google map and the real estate links:

the listing is 271 Van Buren Rd, Caribou, ME 04736 listed at $119,500.
http://www.central.maine.remax.com/PropertySearch/ListingDetail.aspx?lid=69045403



if you want to check out the details. Basically it's 3 bedroom, 1 bath, finished basement, deck, paved driveway, 2 car garage, the home was built in 1969. All of the appliances are included, it looks to be quite nice. It has everything we all want. It doesn't have the outside look of the other house but it does appear to have cedar shakes. I just don't care for the look of vinyl siding (it's what I have now). The rooms don't have the slanted walls, and it's a ranch. By being willing to pay a little more we would be happier in this house I think for a long time to come. What do you all think?
this is the google map:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=271+Van+Buren+Rd,+Caribou,+ME+04736&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=45.063105,79.013672&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=271+Van+Buren+Rd,+Caribou,+Aroostook,+Maine+04736&ll=46.886213,-68.013804&spn=0.009547,0.01929&z=16&layer=c&cbll=46.886068,-68.013757&panoid=1jbZlLASbfZAAwCaV_UavA&cbp=12,96.03,,0,1.78

Have you figured out how much your payments will be? like if you pay XXX for 30 years it wll be XYZ?
Thats how we did it, we figured out what we wanted to pay monthly, in our case $1300 ish. and priced accordingly. It made it alot easier on us picking out a floorplan and builder. We use the same idea when we bought our previous houses.
There are mortgage calculators online.

Yes, Kris crunched the numbers earlier this evening. He also had his meeting with the bank today for pre-approval. He talked with the loan officer and it seems they are willing to lend us more than we want to borrow. He will have a good % rate because his credit is almost in the excellent range. After the sale of this house we will have $15,000. to put as a down payment. For this house on the Van Buren Rd it would be $11,000. down or 10% required, but we would be putting the $15,000. down. Also if you pay bi-weekly it shaves 6 years off the back of the loan the loan officer said, and for every $1,000. you pay on the principal if you can sneak in doing that once in a while it takes 10 mos off the loan. It's looking like we will still have a good amount of breathing room with the higher price..but not going out of our comfort range.

Personally, I like the open floor plan, tends to feel bigger. Downside, only 1 bath? is there anyway you could include a 2nd? Boy, no way could I live with one bathroom, even though it's just Chuck and I, but those few times a year we have guests overnight, or when "omg, I need to use the bathroom... no I need to use the bathroom" 2 or at least 1-1/2 have is better :-)
But a double garage... who nice is that? and it looks nice from outside, sure, not quaint like the older one, but probably less maintenace will be needed.

Keep looking Girl!

I like the open floor plan better, I have an open floor plan....but 1 bathroom? wow, we are thinking of adding another 1/2 bath, and we already have 2 full baths for 3 people.
We pay bi weekly, and double notes every other month it really is worth it in the long run.
i am all about paying stuff early, we financed our other house for 15 years, and paid it off in 9. Saved us a ton of interest. I also believe in buying as much house as you can afford, it will pay off in the long run.

There is plenty of room to add another bath. There is a finished basement. Which would be used as an office for Kris, plus gaming area with couch and whatnot..we could add a bathroom down there probably. I don't know, I have to go look at it. It is literally right around the corner from the hospital and town. We are going to try to set up some more showings for this weekend. I am calling the realtor today. Now that we are looking in a slightly higher price range there are a few more houses we want to look at, the Van Buren Road being one of them, then there's one on Westwind Drive too, hopefully we can look at them this weekend.

Our house has one bath for 6 people and if anyone had told me that it wouldn't be a problem I'd have told them they were nuts. But strangely, it really has never been a problem. One day we plan to put in a second bathroom but other things (new roof) were more pressing.