August 25, 2006 | Filed under: country mouse, loves, misadventures
Click the picture of my would-be backyard or here for Quicktime–works best with Firefox!
You can also watch in Flash here at blip.tv!
If owning a home is the American Dream then looking for a home must surely be the American Nightmare. Great house? Bad street. Bad house? Great land! Nice yard but no porch. Big lot but no fence. Good house, good land, but no town. We’ve seen all manner of house/land/town combinations and we’ve only been at this for two weeks. We’re exhausted and drained, our heads hurt and we squabble constantly. He wants acres and I want to be able to walk to get a cup of coffee and a newspaper. We still have a lot to figure out.That lovely parcel of land you see in that photo was nestled by a small creek in Catskill, NY. The drawback? The house was a total re-do, and not just the insanely painted rooms and scuzzy 70’s carpet, either! Both the bathroom and kitchen would need to be completely replaced, the second floor wasn’t heated properly, the pink insulation had been installed upside-down and there was a half-assed joist in the basement that may or may not have been holding up the whole house. To top it all off Brian noticed a man surveying the creek as our realtor gave us the grand tour. Apparantly he was gathering information for the condos that were being built there. So much for that. The other House of Horrors featured in the video had more skylights than you could possibly want–it was almost as if the whole roof was transparent. In August? Oppressively hot. It was like being in a big glass pizza oven with bad carpeting.
There was one house in Hudson that was very nearly perfect and I fell madly in love with it even though I did not fall madly in love with Hudson: a cute little colonial with perfect wide-slat wood floors, vintage light fixtures, a nice back yard and a barn.
Of course it’s on a truck route.
“busted frog”
.22
Courtesy of the Podsafe Music Network
August 26, 2006
@ 9:31 pm
They raise animals to be killed by wannabe hunters? LMAO! WTF is that about? Why don’t they just travel to somewhere with natural animal populations. Lord knows we have enough deer up here!
Good luck with finding a house. I hope that everything works out.
Evan (http://e-vlog.blogspot.com)
August 26, 2006
@ 10:15 pm
Wow that was one ugly ass house. The land and that deck were awesome though!!
The tiny door is very creepy.
Good luck with the house hunting, what a pain. It always cracks me up to see some peoples decorating sense.
Dawn
August 27, 2006
@ 11:13 am
If you’re looking in the Catskill/Hudson/Albany area, try looking in a little town called Kinderhook. It’s halfway between Hudson and Albany. Very, very quaint, nice, quiet town. (I’m a little biased because my best friend lives there, and I would love to move up there!!) (sorry if this was a double post - I went to leave the comment again because it looks like the first one didn’t go through)
August 27, 2006
@ 2:30 pm
Evan, no silly! They don’t raise the animals to get hunted on purpose! The Catskill Game Farm is a sort of big-game zoo upstate…they’ve been around for as long as I can remember, and apparantly they’re due to close soon. That’s why the shooting worried me…I had this horrible idea in my head that they were letting hunters have their shot (so to speak) at safari-style hunting to thin out the herds before closing! Since it’s not hunting season yet I couldn’t think of why else there were all those shots going off!
August 27, 2006
@ 9:07 pm
Hahaha.
Wicked.
That house looks like it’s right out of x-files.
:S
We’re looking too.
Maybe the 4 of us shoudl get a big place together in Hawaii?
J
August 28, 2006
@ 6:36 am
Good luck with the house hunt! xo
August 28, 2006
@ 6:27 pm
Maybe Cheney was just making an unscheduled visit.
August 28, 2006
@ 9:59 pm
The only thing worse that looking for the right house is trying to sell the one you have. Good luck with the craziness and stay away from the truck routes.
August 29, 2006
@ 5:29 am
Have never been down the house hunting road, however have faint memories of my folks moving when I was younger…
Hmmm…Every house they would see, my brother and I would size it up by the way the place smelled…
Why do I remember that…
August 29, 2006
@ 10:02 pm
Thank you so much for making me laugh and smile. Really it is such a joy to watch your videos to see and hear your thoughts and to smile and laugh.
A squirrel on crack….that is hilarious . I don’t know though the game farm is closing the dolls could get trashed and paint could do tons. I hear getting the smell of meth out is a little more difficult. But that is just what I’ve heard.
September 1, 2006
@ 9:51 am
Damn that was funny! From the looks of that first house that small door could have been a portal into Brittany Spears head.
September 3, 2006
@ 3:30 am
You really have a great on-camera persona and capacity for humor. Takes me back to my own house-hunting days. You were really lucky to have spotted the surveyors! Dang. Condo construction would have been such a terror.
RE: the truck route - having bought a beauty on a flight path, you can get used to anything if the house & price are right.
September 3, 2006
@ 7:31 pm
70’s carpet- UGH!!! As if that wasn’t bad enough, the insulation and heating issue would be enough to make me run!
September 4, 2006
@ 12:48 am
You’re looking in Hudson? I was born in Hudson Memorial Hospital! Lived my childhood in Glenco Mills, about 10 miles outside, I was right between Hudson and Lake Taconic. I sure do miss the beauty of the Catskills… especially in Autumn.
Anyhow, the Catskill Game farm was one of my favorite places when I was a little kid, though I never did think to hunt any of the animals there… if I only knew! Actually I’m really bummed to hear it might be closing.
Anyhow, good luck with the searching!
September 12, 2006
@ 12:26 am
Catskills–cool!
What was with the orange walls and black trim and curtains. Black curtains–I have never seen them used in a good way. Never. Maybe there isn’t a good way.
For that matter, I can’t think of any holdays whose color schemes make for good room decoration (except perhaps Hannukah blue.) Red and green? Orange and black? Easter pastels? Yikes!
September 17, 2006
@ 6:48 pm
dude
the dolls
so wrong so wrong