On the Hunt... Again

While winter seems to be rounding the corner to spring for most around the country, here in Colorado the winter season soldiers on. We've had a couple of rather cold and dreary days here, but it's typical to not really reach spring time here until late April or early May. How can one complain though when we get so many beautiful days of sunshine even in the heart of winter? As has been pointed out before, we don't get a lot of spring or fall. It mostly goes from winter to summer and vice versa.

Typical view/weather from about November until May at the current house
(except that the mountains aren't pictured here)

Though we had a coldish weekend this past week, Sam and I ventured out for a round of house hunting again. Unfortunately, the house we were under contract with in Denver didn't work out. We discovered some structural integrity issues (basically, the foundation was crumbling and shifting), and while we really like the house, and more so the area, we weren't certain we could take on the costs of replacing or repairing the foundation. When this fell through, we talked about what we really want in a house and a 'hood. We discovered that these were the top things on our list:
1) Ease of walk-ability/bike-ability
2) Proximity to an art scene, whether small or larger
3) Comfort/ease within the community
4) A house that feels like home, and that functionally serves our purposes
The extra "bonus" item would be to try to find a turn of the century house to live in. So, after some debate and  a reality check in regard to our budgetary concerns with potentially owning two houses (and renting out the current one), we considered the idea of staying in Longmont, but actually living in the city instead of the fringe area we currently inhabit.

While in need of work, this house was not completely horrible from the outside;
however, it was completely destroyed inside

Our weekend hunt led us to several houses around the city and we were surprised both at the extreme dilapidation of some of the houses, as well as the great living spaces we were able to find. It's a little sad to see so many potentially great houses in complete disrepair. If we had the ability, I know we'd love to take one of those on as a project, but since we do have to live in the house while doing repairs, it must be at minimum, inhabitable while we work. The good news is, we found a few houses that we really loved, and one in particular that stood out as "our home." An offer was put in on Monday, and now we wait to hear the results.

I will say, one of the most exciting things about the house we found is the walk score. Our current home is a 12 out of 100, while this one we found is a 68 out of 100 (in the beta version of Walk Score, it's actually a 70 out of 100, and the current home is a 10 out of 100). Quite a difference going from "car-dependent" to "very walkable."

So, we start again and hope for the best with our home hunt.