vlbrown-mzydt

When we left Rich and Vicki, they had been driving around to the west and north of Seattle, looking at houses. (previous post)

We had seen a couple of places that were almost possible, experienced confusion and disappointment, taken several ferries, driven in the rain, and started to recognize street names and city locations.

On Sunday, Nov 22,  we got up at 5am to get on the road by 6am to catch a 7am ferry at Mukliteo to have a 9am showing of a small Craftsman house in Oak Harbor… We had seen it from the outside the night before and, after looking at the web page, had high hopes.

It was dreadful. We had such high hopes and… ugh. The walls were thick with paint – like an apartment I once lived in. The kitchen was UGLY. The basement had low ceilings, was pretty much unfinished, and probably should be gutted.

The rooms were small, the staircase was narrow, it had a broken window, There would be no way to make the place cat safe.

In other words: we hated it.

The yard was terrific. The siding was new and the paint job was pretty.  The rest was a Great Big Nope.

We were very disappointed.

So, we called the agent for a place in Silverdale that we had originally planned to see at 11 am and reset our appointment to later to give us enough time to get there from a different direction. Then we ferried over to Port Townsend (a beautiful town where we had lunch), drove down to Kitsap County, and then drove around for another hour or so until 3pm.

We didn't really expect to like this house. From what we'd seen, just driving past earlier, the yard looked pretty but small and the inside of the house, from the photos, was nothing special.

Remember what I said about how the photos lie?

We liked this house a lot.  It has a very nice yard, a good floorplan, a back deck… and a neighborhood walking trail. (Read that part again. 😉

We spent an hour looking around until Ida (the listing agent) had to go to another appointment, but she said we could walk around outside for a while, so we did.

We were walking down the street and Rich said, “I bet you we could carve a path into this greenbelt area from the back gate”. Then we took three more steps and there’s a trail! It’s a neighborhood greenbelt and there's a neighborhood trail. And it just goes… for a relatively long distance through the middle of the neighborhood greenbelt and we were in love with that.

A neighborhood trail that comes with a house!

So, we got back into the car, drove over to the shopping center, called Susan, and said "Help us buy this house."

Susan started putting an offer together.

We drove to Bremerton and got on the ferry.

Back at the AirBnb, we had a phone call with Susan. There were Questions. We made Answers. There were offer logistics. There was paperwork to sign. (Making an offer to buy a house is more complicated than buying a car.)

Now we wait…