December 18th 2005

So Friday we viewed the little yellow Colonial in Danbury and we also viewed the other house further down the street for reference and just coz it was handy.
The Colonial
Over-priced at $335,000, 3BR, 1.5BA, 1340sq. ft. Built 1878.
Initial thoughts - a nice quite small roomed house - clean floor plan except for 4 doors leading off a 10 x 12 kitchen. Small rooms upstairs and long thin bathroom. But otherwise nice. No wood floors under the carpets. The half bath was directly off the dining room so there would be some highly entertaining moments if you had guests over! The floors on the main level sloped alot into the middle of all the rooms - very noticeable - you walked uphill to lok out of the window. Odd street parking for one car - nice quiet neighbourhood.
We went up the attic. The flue from the furnace was looking a bit dodgy - crumbling cement outer layer and dripping on to the floor after the morning's rain. Closer inspection showed that water was coming in under the roof - probably at the apex and running down into the flue and also down the A-frames so they were all wet. Otherwise the attic was clean.
The basement told another story - new furnace - which looked like it had been put in with a knife and fork (DIY ?) and dripping water onto the floor. Basement was finished but bad floor plan. Basement gave out onto walk out screened in deck that was new and probably the property's best feature. There were also holes cut in the sheetrock and tubular supports had been put in to shore up the cross beam that was causing the floor to sag upstairs.
Overall thoughts: over-priced. Would probably offer $275,000. Nice house layoutwise, a bit small for us and too many red flags structurally that we could see to want to take it on.

The Blue Colonial
$349,000. 4BR, 2BA, 1922 sq. ft. Built 1898.
Definitely bigger than the other house but had a really bad floor plan that wasted probably 300 if not more sq ft with walls and bad layout (e.g. one bedroom upstairs was off another bedroom). There was a square addition at the back that had a large 21 x 13 family room on the main level and a similar space above but above it had been clipped into a master bedroom with half a vaulted ceiling at only 13 x 12 and a smaller office type space/small bedroom/large walk-in closet at 10 x 9. if they'd had the whole space as a vaulted ceiling master bed with a small walk-in and a bigger bathroom it would've been a fab space.
The other bedrooms were small with a strange room/space where the landing would be at the top of the stairs. Attic was full of junk so hard to comment except it seemed dry. Made me think that maybe it had been a rental and this was accumulated left over junk from renters moving out over the years.
Basement was a nightmare - structurally it looked sound - but when I walked down there I thought that there might be some homeless person sleeping down there as there was a side/coal access door that was not secured. The basement was a mess of full and empty wine, spirits and beer bottles and general mess and 2 extremely moldy fridges. Nice!
Double garage had crack in breeze block walls - nothing, all-in-all, that a good $100,000 wouldn't cure but it would be a big space if you did it over. Unfortunately we don't have the extra 100k.

All-in-all it was a good exercise and the start of figuring out what we want and how to go about viewing. Ginny was great. Bob and I need to make a list of what we want to help Ginny.