House Hunters: Picky bitches are picky. Also, I wanna house.
So I've been watching a ton of House Hunters (regular and international versions) and Love it or List It and all those other home-buying/improving shows, because being in a steady relationship is making me all nesty and I'm eventually (gods know when, but some day!) going to be getting a home or apartment or domicile of some sort with the RTB. It's amazing what people consider to be "deal-breakers" in terms of buying a house. Now, I understand home ownership is a fairly hefty commitment: you're paying for something for the next 30 years. So you'll want to get the details just right, and you don't want to shell out $400,000 for a condemned rat hole with quirky plumbing. And if you have two kids and a dog, and your prospective home's yard is two blades of grass inches from the freeway, that could be an issue. But for CRYING OUT LOUD, picky rich home buyers, bitching about the style of cabinets or wallpaper (WALLPAPER! THAT YOU CAN PEEL OFF YOUR WALLS!) is just excessive.
It has, however, given me a pretty good idea of what I would like in a prospective home:
1. Fenced-in backyard, because at some point the RTB and I plan to adopt a dog.
2. Wood floors. Vacuuming pet hair gets old. Carpets would not be a deal breaker, as they can be easily ripped up and replaced.
3. At least two bathrooms. I have grown up (and currently live in) a house with one bathroom. I will not go through life this way.
4. At least three bedrooms. An extra room for an office/computer room would also be nice.
5. A full upstairs AND a full basement (which the RTB and I agree will be the Nerd Cave for gaming purposes <3). Ideally the basement would have at least a half-bath. I only say this because my current house is 882 square feet with paper-thin walls and you can hear everything that goes on from any room in the house.
6. A dishwasher.
7. Decent insulation. Our house was built in 1910 and according to tradition was actually the servant's quarters for the other, much larger house next door. Since servants don't need anything resembling comfort and should just be happy with four walls and a roof, the ingrates, the house boils in the summer and freezes in the winter. I got up last week to find out it was 55 degrees indoors. Fifty-five. Goddamned. Degrees. And yes, we've called a guy to inspect the insulation to see if maybe we can actually improve on horsehair and sheep wool (with the age of the house that wouldn't surprise me), but apparently the severely slanting walls combined with zero access to the crawlspace make new insulation literally impossible without spending tens of thousands of dollars.
8. A garage would be nice, if only so I wouldn't drive off to work with my hands frozen solid to the steering wheel (although depending on where we end up, I may not have to deal with as much snow as Michigan throws at us).
9. This is just a nitpicky preference, but I love colonial-style houses. It would just be icing on the cake, though.
Hardly an unreasonable list of requirements, yes? Yet the number of people who dismiss houses because "it didn't have walk-in closets for my six frillion pairs of shoes" or "I NEED AN OPEN FLOOR PLAN LIKE OXYGEN" on these shows is absurd. Also people put unnecessary stock in views. I get that you don't want to be staring a brick wall smack in the face every time you open a window, but you shouldn't sneer at a house because it doesn't ~*~overlook the ocean~*~ like you've always dreamed. One woman kept bitching that she didn't want a house with stairs at the front door. HI, YOU LIVE IN BOSTON, most of the houses are vertical and unless you move to the suburbs (and again, every city dweller wants to live in the very center of "the action" then gets shocked at the sticker price due to limited space) there WILL be stairs at the front door.
And the number of couples who disagree to the point where I'm surprised they're even compatible enough to maintain a relationship. "She wants the city, he wants the suburbs!" One woman had what she described as "baby fever" (engaged six months after they met, and her fiance looked terrified every time she said the word "baby"), and EVERY SINGLE DETAIL of the home revolved around whether it would be ideally conducive to the safety and comfort of babies (not children--BABIES. Because they never grow into actual humans!). I'm convinced she will be the sort of parent who ends up writing their child's college application essay. The highest priority of the her fiance? A drum room. A room so he could play drums. No, he was not a professional musician, he just really liked playing drums. He was a 30-year-old frat boy, she was a walking uterus. I give their marriage two years, tops.
Another couple had three children under six, and the dad's priority was a swimming pool. Not, y'know, square footage, location, schools, any of that piddling shit that "uncool" folks care about. A frickin' swimming pool. If a house didn't have a pool, he didn't even want to look at it. Never mind that drowning is the second leading cause of death for children under twelve! Bonus: They lived in Nebraska, where swimming pools are about as common and affordable as pet tigers.
I dunno, it's ALWAYS cosmetic shit like linoleum or curtains (seriously, one woman bitched that the CURTAINS were ugly!) or carpets or SOMETHING that's easily replaceable. These people should just feel lucky that they can afford a nice house in the first place. I mean, I've seen houses with completely unworkable features...when Shade and I were house-hunting, the realtor showed us a house where you entered the basement through the kitchen via a hole in the floor. A HOLE IN THE FLOOR. No railing, no safety measures, nothing but a lethal eight-foot drop to the basement, in the dead center of the kitchen. Oh, sure, there were stairs (ugly, moss-green, shag-carpeted stairs), but I can't imagine how the previous owners handled a midnight snack. ("Hmm, I'm starved! Wonder what's in the friiiieeeeeeEEEEEE-") Another house had a toilet in the middle of what I think was supposed to be a bedroom. A large, open, carpeted room, with the sole feature of a toilet cheerfully greeting you as you entered. No sink or any other indication that it may have once been or connected to a bathroom. And yes, it was a working toilet, so clearly SOMEONE went to the effort of installing plumbing and pipes and basically going to the effort of making this toilet a permanent fixture in the room.
My point is, yes, there are horrible, weird, spatially-challenged houses out there designed by three-foot-tall schizophrenics with toilet fetishes, but the people on House Hunters and its ilk will walk into zillion-square foot Victorian mansions with fully renovated state-of-the-art kitchens, bathrooms the size of tennis courts, and their own helipad, and proceed to complain that the previous owners painted the guest room the wrong shade of blue.
It has, however, given me a pretty good idea of what I would like in a prospective home:
1. Fenced-in backyard, because at some point the RTB and I plan to adopt a dog.
2. Wood floors. Vacuuming pet hair gets old. Carpets would not be a deal breaker, as they can be easily ripped up and replaced.
3. At least two bathrooms. I have grown up (and currently live in) a house with one bathroom. I will not go through life this way.
4. At least three bedrooms. An extra room for an office/computer room would also be nice.
5. A full upstairs AND a full basement (which the RTB and I agree will be the Nerd Cave for gaming purposes <3). Ideally the basement would have at least a half-bath. I only say this because my current house is 882 square feet with paper-thin walls and you can hear everything that goes on from any room in the house.
6. A dishwasher.
7. Decent insulation. Our house was built in 1910 and according to tradition was actually the servant's quarters for the other, much larger house next door. Since servants don't need anything resembling comfort and should just be happy with four walls and a roof, the ingrates, the house boils in the summer and freezes in the winter. I got up last week to find out it was 55 degrees indoors. Fifty-five. Goddamned. Degrees. And yes, we've called a guy to inspect the insulation to see if maybe we can actually improve on horsehair and sheep wool (with the age of the house that wouldn't surprise me), but apparently the severely slanting walls combined with zero access to the crawlspace make new insulation literally impossible without spending tens of thousands of dollars.
8. A garage would be nice, if only so I wouldn't drive off to work with my hands frozen solid to the steering wheel (although depending on where we end up, I may not have to deal with as much snow as Michigan throws at us).
9. This is just a nitpicky preference, but I love colonial-style houses. It would just be icing on the cake, though.
Hardly an unreasonable list of requirements, yes? Yet the number of people who dismiss houses because "it didn't have walk-in closets for my six frillion pairs of shoes" or "I NEED AN OPEN FLOOR PLAN LIKE OXYGEN" on these shows is absurd. Also people put unnecessary stock in views. I get that you don't want to be staring a brick wall smack in the face every time you open a window, but you shouldn't sneer at a house because it doesn't ~*~overlook the ocean~*~ like you've always dreamed. One woman kept bitching that she didn't want a house with stairs at the front door. HI, YOU LIVE IN BOSTON, most of the houses are vertical and unless you move to the suburbs (and again, every city dweller wants to live in the very center of "the action" then gets shocked at the sticker price due to limited space) there WILL be stairs at the front door.
And the number of couples who disagree to the point where I'm surprised they're even compatible enough to maintain a relationship. "She wants the city, he wants the suburbs!" One woman had what she described as "baby fever" (engaged six months after they met, and her fiance looked terrified every time she said the word "baby"), and EVERY SINGLE DETAIL of the home revolved around whether it would be ideally conducive to the safety and comfort of babies (not children--BABIES. Because they never grow into actual humans!). I'm convinced she will be the sort of parent who ends up writing their child's college application essay. The highest priority of the her fiance? A drum room. A room so he could play drums. No, he was not a professional musician, he just really liked playing drums. He was a 30-year-old frat boy, she was a walking uterus. I give their marriage two years, tops.
Another couple had three children under six, and the dad's priority was a swimming pool. Not, y'know, square footage, location, schools, any of that piddling shit that "uncool" folks care about. A frickin' swimming pool. If a house didn't have a pool, he didn't even want to look at it. Never mind that drowning is the second leading cause of death for children under twelve! Bonus: They lived in Nebraska, where swimming pools are about as common and affordable as pet tigers.
I dunno, it's ALWAYS cosmetic shit like linoleum or curtains (seriously, one woman bitched that the CURTAINS were ugly!) or carpets or SOMETHING that's easily replaceable. These people should just feel lucky that they can afford a nice house in the first place. I mean, I've seen houses with completely unworkable features...when Shade and I were house-hunting, the realtor showed us a house where you entered the basement through the kitchen via a hole in the floor. A HOLE IN THE FLOOR. No railing, no safety measures, nothing but a lethal eight-foot drop to the basement, in the dead center of the kitchen. Oh, sure, there were stairs (ugly, moss-green, shag-carpeted stairs), but I can't imagine how the previous owners handled a midnight snack. ("Hmm, I'm starved! Wonder what's in the friiiieeeeeeEEEEEE-") Another house had a toilet in the middle of what I think was supposed to be a bedroom. A large, open, carpeted room, with the sole feature of a toilet cheerfully greeting you as you entered. No sink or any other indication that it may have once been or connected to a bathroom. And yes, it was a working toilet, so clearly SOMEONE went to the effort of installing plumbing and pipes and basically going to the effort of making this toilet a permanent fixture in the room.
My point is, yes, there are horrible, weird, spatially-challenged houses out there designed by three-foot-tall schizophrenics with toilet fetishes, but the people on House Hunters and its ilk will walk into zillion-square foot Victorian mansions with fully renovated state-of-the-art kitchens, bathrooms the size of tennis courts, and their own helipad, and proceed to complain that the previous owners painted the guest room the wrong shade of blue.