First, I didn't get lost on my run this morning.
Second, our offer was accepted for 3 Claremont Park #7. We've scheduled the inspection for tomorrow and I plan to take lots of pictures. Look for the slide show to change sometime tomorrow so you can see what our new home looks like.
Friday, July 18, 2008
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Running in Boston
I have a running route that works well for me here; it’s just shy of four miles and includes some pretty scenery like the Commonwealth Avenue mall and around the lagoon in the Boston Common.
However I’ve had some issues with my left knee since moving here and I believe its due to the way so many surfaces slant here.
Let me explain. To get to our rental apartment, we climb a lot of stairs and those stairs slant in toward the stairwell. So if you are going up the stairs, you’ll experience the stairs as slanting to the left. Once in the apartment itself, the living room floor is slanted—lots more than our house in Kansas City. I can really feel the slant on the stairs in my left knee. So returning to my running route, I run around the lagoon. It’s very pretty but it’s slanty, uneven and has lots of fairly sharp turns (well they feel sharp when running).
So I’ve eliminated the part of my run that takes me around the lagoon, but that’s left me with a route that’s just a little too short. Yesterday morning I decided to run through the park and then around it on the street sidewalks. Long story made not quite so long, I ended up getting pretty lost and was able to find my way back home only by looking up at the skyline for the Prudential building.
Other than getting lost, I had a great run.
However I’ve had some issues with my left knee since moving here and I believe its due to the way so many surfaces slant here.Let me explain. To get to our rental apartment, we climb a lot of stairs and those stairs slant in toward the stairwell. So if you are going up the stairs, you’ll experience the stairs as slanting to the left. Once in the apartment itself, the living room floor is slanted—lots more than our house in Kansas City. I can really feel the slant on the stairs in my left knee. So returning to my running route, I run around the lagoon. It’s very pretty but it’s slanty, uneven and has lots of fairly sharp turns (well they feel sharp when running).
So I’ve eliminated the part of my run that takes me around the lagoon, but that’s left me with a route that’s just a little too short. Yesterday morning I decided to run through the park and then around it on the street sidewalks. Long story made not quite so long, I ended up getting pretty lost and was able to find my way back home only by looking up at the skyline for the Prudential building.
Other than getting lost, I had a great run.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
And the winner is . . .
Last night we checked out the property I mentioned in yesterday’s entry. This unit is a penthouse unit and is on the fourth floor; you climb five flights of stairs to get to it because the building’s entrance is a full flight of stairs above the street. I will say the kitchen was fantastic, and I really liked it a lot. And the apartment was very bright because in addition to the windows, someone had put in a lot of skylights.
But all those skylights limit what can be done on the roof (the unit has roof rights, which is considered a selling point). Boston code requires that any roof structure be set back three feet away from the edge of the roof at all points. Because of the large number of skylights, we’d have had space for at most a four by four deck space. To us, the juice just wouldn’t be worth the squeeze. So combined with the unit being further south than we really wanted to be, plus the huge number of stairs required to get to the apartment, plus no outdoor space since the roof was useless for renovating—we decided against that unit.
As we hiked down the stairs (why did I wear my cute Van Eli sandals?), Kent and I briefly touched base just to make sure we were in agreement, and we were. By the time we reached the second floor, we’d told Paul we were ready to make an offer on 3 Claremont Park.
Now here’s another interesting difference between how real estate is handled in Boston compared to Kansas City. We still have not seen a seller’s disclosure form because apparently those are not shared until an offer is received—the buyer just puts in a contingency about the disclosure. And we don’t know the owner occupancy rate for the building yet—another item that is done after an offer is made. Finally I know if we’d told our realtor in Kansas City that we were ready to make an offer, she’d have hauled out her paperwork on the spot. Paul smiled and said he would pull everything together the next morning.
We had dinner at Stella’s last night. Paul said it was good and he was not wrong. Of course this morning I’m wishing we hadn’t split a bottle of wine. Running will not be much fun.
But all those skylights limit what can be done on the roof (the unit has roof rights, which is considered a selling point). Boston code requires that any roof structure be set back three feet away from the edge of the roof at all points. Because of the large number of skylights, we’d have had space for at most a four by four deck space. To us, the juice just wouldn’t be worth the squeeze. So combined with the unit being further south than we really wanted to be, plus the huge number of stairs required to get to the apartment, plus no outdoor space since the roof was useless for renovating—we decided against that unit.
As we hiked down the stairs (why did I wear my cute Van Eli sandals?), Kent and I briefly touched base just to make sure we were in agreement, and we were. By the time we reached the second floor, we’d told Paul we were ready to make an offer on 3 Claremont Park.
Now here’s another interesting difference between how real estate is handled in Boston compared to Kansas City. We still have not seen a seller’s disclosure form because apparently those are not shared until an offer is received—the buyer just puts in a contingency about the disclosure. And we don’t know the owner occupancy rate for the building yet—another item that is done after an offer is made. Finally I know if we’d told our realtor in Kansas City that we were ready to make an offer, she’d have hauled out her paperwork on the spot. Paul smiled and said he would pull everything together the next morning.
We had dinner at Stella’s last night. Paul said it was good and he was not wrong. Of course this morning I’m wishing we hadn’t split a bottle of wine. Running will not be much fun.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Updates and changes
So we’ve made a couple of decisions, although not the final decision of which unit to buy.
First, 114 Chandler is off our list. The living space is just too small and that’s something that cannot be fixed. I still love the two floors and the extra half bath but I think we’d all go nuts trying to cram desk space and eating space and living space in the tiny living room.
Second, 31 Concord Square is also off our list. I told Kent last night that while I love the apartment, especially all the light and the really nice kitchen, at the end of the day I think that apartment would be a gilded cage. He got my point immediately, and agreed 100%
3 Claremont remains on our list. We checked it out again last night when there was less natural light, and it was no darker than it had been when we’d seen it Saturday morning. That surprised us both. We love the layout and we really love that it's just a bit bigger.
We have one final potential contender we will look at this evening. Hopefully this link will stay up and you can take a peek at the listing details. I found another site that does show pictures but requires registration. This site doesn't show the pictures but take my word for it, the space looks amazing. We don’t especially like the location since it’s a little further south than we’d prefer to be, and we definitely would prefer not to be on the 4th floor. However this unit does come with a parking space and also roof rights (that’s a fancy way of saying we’d need to spend money to make the roof into deck/outdoor living space).
First, 114 Chandler is off our list. The living space is just too small and that’s something that cannot be fixed. I still love the two floors and the extra half bath but I think we’d all go nuts trying to cram desk space and eating space and living space in the tiny living room.
Second, 31 Concord Square is also off our list. I told Kent last night that while I love the apartment, especially all the light and the really nice kitchen, at the end of the day I think that apartment would be a gilded cage. He got my point immediately, and agreed 100%
3 Claremont remains on our list. We checked it out again last night when there was less natural light, and it was no darker than it had been when we’d seen it Saturday morning. That surprised us both. We love the layout and we really love that it's just a bit bigger.
We have one final potential contender we will look at this evening. Hopefully this link will stay up and you can take a peek at the listing details. I found another site that does show pictures but requires registration. This site doesn't show the pictures but take my word for it, the space looks amazing. We don’t especially like the location since it’s a little further south than we’d prefer to be, and we definitely would prefer not to be on the 4th floor. However this unit does come with a parking space and also roof rights (that’s a fancy way of saying we’d need to spend money to make the roof into deck/outdoor living space).
Sunday, July 13, 2008
House Hunters
We love to watch the show House Hunters on HGTV. Right now I think we are in the show, or at least the at-home version of it. For those of you who’ve been following along in fascinated horror as we look for a place to buy—we’ve narrowed down our options to three choices. I have floor plans for all three, so you can take a look and tell us what you think.
We started by figuring out what was important to us and then sort of ranking those features because we knew we probably wouldn’t get everything. You never really do when you buy a house, there are always trade-offs. So our pie-in-the-sky wish list included a bath and a half, laundry in the unit, some sort of outdoor space, and two levels of living. For anyone familiar with the Boston real estate market (within Boston, not the suburbs), I’m sure you are already shaking your head at us. But as someone we knew in Kansas City was fond of saying, “A closed mouth don’t get fed.”
I'll start by saying all three have laundry in the unit and all three also have some outdoor space. Now for the details:
One property does have all four features—114 Chandler. We saw this unit during an open house, and really liked it a lot. However, it’s the smallest of the three on our list (just 671 square feet), and the living space is small while the bedroom is large. We’d rather have those proportions reversed because really, who needs a bowling ally as a bedroom? On the plus side, we love the deck, we love that the half bath is on the upper level, and we love that the unit isn’t all garden (aka basement) level. On the down side, the kitchen needs to be updated, as does the full bath. However, this unit is the cheapest, with a listing price of $419,000. Yes that one is the cheapest . . .
We also really like 31 Concord Square. This second floor unit is in a brownstone overlooking Concord Square itself, which is a perfect example of the Victorian style of neighborhood common in Boston in the 19th century. Although this unit doesn’t have two levels, and lacks the extra half bath, we do like that you can get to the bathroom either from the living area or the bedroom, plus it’s got in-unit laundry. It’s also a little bit bigger than the Chandler unit at 683 square feet. The deck is pretty big, but since it’s the top deck on the building, it doesn’t get any shade. That can be good in the winter but possibly not so good in the summer. Plus you have to go through the bedroom to get to the deck. The kitchen has been recently updated but the bathroom needs some love. This one is the most expensive of our three choices and is listed for $499,000.
Finally, there’s 3 Claremont Park. Here’s where the variables get tricky. This unit is by far the largest (1038 square feet), and has a huge patio (about 400 square feet). I love the floor plan because the largest amount of living space is where we’d need it—in the living room and the dining nook, not the bedroom. As with Concord Square, there’s only one bathroom but you can get to it from the hallway or the bedroom, plus it has in-unit laundry. However, this is a true garden level unit which means the bedroom is mostly below street grade and has just one small window. The living room has two windows, but they don’t get lots of direct light (one window is below a deck for the unit above it), and the dining nook has an exterior door which has windows in it. But make no mistake, this isn’t a sun-drenched unit by any means. We do think the current owner did himself no favors by the paint colors he’s chosen, and he definitely shorted himself on ceiling lights. Both of those issues are fixable, but there’s no way to add more natural light. The kitchen is up to date and the bathroom is fantastic. This unit lists for $495,000.
The homeowner association fees are about the same for all three units; taxes are not because they are based on size, but they aren’t crazy out of line. We can rent a parking place right by the unit on Claremont for $175 a month (which is a great price); parking isn’t available nearby for the unit on Chandler so you are talking street parking which means you have to move it for the days when the city does street cleaning.
So what do you think?
We started by figuring out what was important to us and then sort of ranking those features because we knew we probably wouldn’t get everything. You never really do when you buy a house, there are always trade-offs. So our pie-in-the-sky wish list included a bath and a half, laundry in the unit, some sort of outdoor space, and two levels of living. For anyone familiar with the Boston real estate market (within Boston, not the suburbs), I’m sure you are already shaking your head at us. But as someone we knew in Kansas City was fond of saying, “A closed mouth don’t get fed.”
I'll start by saying all three have laundry in the unit and all three also have some outdoor space. Now for the details:
One property does have all four features—114 Chandler. We saw this unit during an open house, and really liked it a lot. However, it’s the smallest of the three on our list (just 671 square feet), and the living space is small while the bedroom is large. We’d rather have those proportions reversed because really, who needs a bowling ally as a bedroom? On the plus side, we love the deck, we love that the half bath is on the upper level, and we love that the unit isn’t all garden (aka basement) level. On the down side, the kitchen needs to be updated, as does the full bath. However, this unit is the cheapest, with a listing price of $419,000. Yes that one is the cheapest . . .
We also really like 31 Concord Square. This second floor unit is in a brownstone overlooking Concord Square itself, which is a perfect example of the Victorian style of neighborhood common in Boston in the 19th century. Although this unit doesn’t have two levels, and lacks the extra half bath, we do like that you can get to the bathroom either from the living area or the bedroom, plus it’s got in-unit laundry. It’s also a little bit bigger than the Chandler unit at 683 square feet. The deck is pretty big, but since it’s the top deck on the building, it doesn’t get any shade. That can be good in the winter but possibly not so good in the summer. Plus you have to go through the bedroom to get to the deck. The kitchen has been recently updated but the bathroom needs some love. This one is the most expensive of our three choices and is listed for $499,000.
Finally, there’s 3 Claremont Park. Here’s where the variables get tricky. This unit is by far the largest (1038 square feet), and has a huge patio (about 400 square feet). I love the floor plan because the largest amount of living space is where we’d need it—in the living room and the dining nook, not the bedroom. As with Concord Square, there’s only one bathroom but you can get to it from the hallway or the bedroom, plus it has in-unit laundry. However, this is a true garden level unit which means the bedroom is mostly below street grade and has just one small window. The living room has two windows, but they don’t get lots of direct light (one window is below a deck for the unit above it), and the dining nook has an exterior door which has windows in it. But make no mistake, this isn’t a sun-drenched unit by any means. We do think the current owner did himself no favors by the paint colors he’s chosen, and he definitely shorted himself on ceiling lights. Both of those issues are fixable, but there’s no way to add more natural light. The kitchen is up to date and the bathroom is fantastic. This unit lists for $495,000.
The homeowner association fees are about the same for all three units; taxes are not because they are based on size, but they aren’t crazy out of line. We can rent a parking place right by the unit on Claremont for $175 a month (which is a great price); parking isn’t available nearby for the unit on Chandler so you are talking street parking which means you have to move it for the days when the city does street cleaning.
So what do you think?
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Cheap entertainment
While I’m still job hunting, I’m mostly stuck in the apartment every day. Partly that’s because I don’t really want to go off exploring by myself since Kent and I love to do that sort of thing together. It’s also a money issue—if I’m out, spending money just got a lot easier. So I spend my days gaming, surfing the web, cleaning this dreadful place and looking online for jobs.
I also work very hard to keep the kitties awake during the day. They still have the nocturnal wild thing going on and can be counted on to spaz out around 11:30 PM, 2 AM, and 4 AM every single night. Eddie is the worst offender mostly because of his size and weight. At over 14 pounds, when he runs into the hallway, he makes a huge thundercat racket. Plus as I’ve mentioned before, he’s got the loudest meow I’ve heard on an indoor neutered cat. It’s bad enough when he stands right beside my head and yowls (remember, the mattress is on the floor). It’s far worse when he does it by the front door because I know from experience that his yowl carries clear to the first floor and even (if windows are open) outside to the street level.
So I pick them up frequently (and annoy the crap out of them when I do it), all to keep them awake. They hate it, and Wally has taken to finding the weirdest, most out of the way spots he can to sleep. This picture isn’t one of those spots (by the time I get the camera, he’s moved); instead it’s the beanbag ottoman I put behind the red chair so that when we open the curtains, they can look outside. They love it, as you can see.
I’ve mentioned before that I sew. I’ve made a couple of dresses for our granddaughter (you can see them here and here), which has been a lot of fun. I have a pattern for a doll which also has a pattern for a doll for the doll. With me so far? Well the doll is pretty big, like 21 inches, so rather than make a doll that’s ¾ size of Alison, I thought I would make the doll’s doll. At six inches I thought it would be perfect for her to play with and still big enough to be a safe toy.
It turned out like crap. I made it from an Irish linen handkerchief I’d bought at an estate sale and boy that material slipped and moved no matter how much I pinned it. I made her, got her face on her, made her little dress and apron, and even put her hair on her before I called it quits. She just looks stupid and lumpy.
The cats, however, adore her. I didn’t intend to let them play with her but they found her before we moved and took turns carrying her around like a dead mouse. Come to think of it, she’s probably about the size of a large mouse. She just has yarn hair. So I gave up and let them play with her because she was definitely too yucky looking to give to Alison. Yesterday as the kitties were voicing their discontent and trying to turn things into toys that ought not to be toys, I remembered the doll. So I dug her out and wow were the cats happy. Here’s what she looks like now.
Just as I finished typing this up, Eddie ran over and got her again for another round of mauling. Cats are freaky aliens, I swear.
I also work very hard to keep the kitties awake during the day. They still have the nocturnal wild thing going on and can be counted on to spaz out around 11:30 PM, 2 AM, and 4 AM every single night. Eddie is the worst offender mostly because of his size and weight. At over 14 pounds, when he runs into the hallway, he makes a huge thundercat racket. Plus as I’ve mentioned before, he’s got the loudest meow I’ve heard on an indoor neutered cat. It’s bad enough when he stands right beside my head and yowls (remember, the mattress is on the floor). It’s far worse when he does it by the front door because I know from experience that his yowl carries clear to the first floor and even (if windows are open) outside to the street level.
So I pick them up frequently (and annoy the crap out of them when I do it), all to keep them awake. They hate it, and Wally has taken to finding the weirdest, most out of the way spots he can to sleep. This picture isn’t one of those spots (by the time I get the camera, he’s moved); instead it’s the beanbag ottoman I put behind the red chair so that when we open the curtains, they can look outside. They love it, as you can see.I’ve mentioned before that I sew. I’ve made a couple of dresses for our granddaughter (you can see them here and here), which has been a lot of fun. I have a pattern for a doll which also has a pattern for a doll for the doll. With me so far? Well the doll is pretty big, like 21 inches, so rather than make a doll that’s ¾ size of Alison, I thought I would make the doll’s doll. At six inches I thought it would be perfect for her to play with and still big enough to be a safe toy.
It turned out like crap. I made it from an Irish linen handkerchief I’d bought at an estate sale and boy that material slipped and moved no matter how much I pinned it. I made her, got her face on her, made her little dress and apron, and even put her hair on her before I called it quits. She just looks stupid and lumpy.The cats, however, adore her. I didn’t intend to let them play with her but they found her before we moved and took turns carrying her around like a dead mouse. Come to think of it, she’s probably about the size of a large mouse. She just has yarn hair. So I gave up and let them play with her because she was definitely too yucky looking to give to Alison. Yesterday as the kitties were voicing their discontent and trying to turn things into toys that ought not to be toys, I remembered the doll. So I dug her out and wow were the cats happy. Here’s what she looks like now.
Just as I finished typing this up, Eddie ran over and got her again for another round of mauling. Cats are freaky aliens, I swear.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Banished
I banished Eddie to the green pet carrier at 11:30 last night. Enough was enough.
We looked at about seven properties yesterday evening. The very first one we saw a week ago remains on the list, along with this parlor level apartment, and this penthouse level apartment. We'll look at more on Saturday.
We looked at about seven properties yesterday evening. The very first one we saw a week ago remains on the list, along with this parlor level apartment, and this penthouse level apartment. We'll look at more on Saturday.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)