House Hunting: "The Diamond in the Rough"

With an MLS hook like “diamond in the rough” I was hoping for some Aladdin type treasure. C’mon, you know what I’m talking about, where Jaffar makes him go down the creepy evil sand guys mouth to find the diamond in the rough? Yeah, basically that’s what I was expecting…minus all the sand.  Alas, there was no giant diamond, there wasn’t even a stinkin’ lamp (although there probably was at some point not too long ago haha. The house belonged to some 95 year old lady who passed (about 4 years ago) and the son who lives about 1.5 hours away just wasn’t able to keep up with it anymore. So it was about 90% vacant. Walking in you knew it was an old lady's house...it just smelled like old person haha. Jason opened the linen closet, and I was literally knocked over with the stale, mothball smelling air that gushed out. I think it even made my hair ruffle in it's disgusting breeze, BLARGH!

The Stats:

• Age: 42 years
• House size: Bungalow (with master suite 2nd storey addition) roughly 1300sq ft
• Prop. size: 75 x 175 
• Bedrooms: 3
• Bathrooms: 1.5
• Other: Sewers, and central air (woot woot, no window shaker!)

The Pros:

• Great Layout
• Good size rooms with deep closets
• Doesn't need any major work (mainly just updating)
• Huge lot to expand with (and lots of room to add a porch in the front)
• Forced air heat AND central air (which excites me more than I would've thought haha)
• Garage
• Large master bedroom (with a bathroom that we'll make into an ensuite)
• Full basement (unfinished) with tons of room for finishing a rec. room, bathroom, laundry room, etc.
• Decent price point (and it's been listed for quite some time, so there should be more room to wiggle)
• In a town - which is good for walking with baby (yes, baby brain is growing ever stronger & after  looking at a few in the country & being sad I would have to drive somewhere to take the kids for a walk.) Hey I have to think long term right haha

The Cons:

• TINY kitchen! (as in there's about a 6 x 6 space) - however the room includes a "dining area" so there's room to make it bigger. The fridge & stove are original to the house :S...the oven isn't even 2ft wide..WHAT?!?! And the fridge is only 5ft tall haha
• The furnace needs to be replaced, definitely before next winter (if it'd even make it through this winter hehe)
• All of the appliances need to be replaced

We, really liked this house. As in, it gave us that tingly, butterfly in your tummy feeling. Just plain good. We liked pretty much everything about it...we could see where our things could go, how the house could grow, how we could make it our own. We liked it so much that we're going to go back! We're taking papa B-rad so he and Jase can discuss in their know-it all tone about structural, plumbing, electrical, and all the general blah blah stuff that you need to know about, but I don't really know/care too much about haha. We'll bring the mama's with us too, because they want to see it too. SOOOOO....stay tuned, because we may have some exciting news coming up! 

 We are really happy that we like this place, because we really didn't have too many options left, at this point in time...and we told the landlord we'd be out at the end of our lease. So now hopefully we won't have to move back in with Ma & Pa Armitage.