The House that Got Away

Here's the story - in October, Craig was waiting for his to-go lunch order at a Cajun restaurant (I don't know why I find those details important) and picked up a real estate magazine. He was amazed how many square feet a person could get in Mesquite and Garland, for not much more than our current house price. I had misgivings (so many rooms and so many square feet sounded too good to be true), but the following weekend we drove by the property he had noticed in the magazine. It had no curb appeal and we didn't like the neighborhood, but he kept talking about houses...so I said, let me see what I can find online. Basically, I thought I needed to take the wheel on this project - he was scaring me. I found several houses in a feasible price range and we viewed one the next weekend. We surprised ourselves by falling in love with the house - we soon found a realtor, made a contingent offer, and put our current house on the market. Viewings were slow over the holidays, and this week we learned we had lost the dream house - after months of the house sitting vacant with little buyer interest, someone else made a serious offer that was not contingent on a sale, and we weren't willing to move forward with purchasing before we had sold ours, so...

As soon as we saw the Morning Star house, the one that got away, I realized how strongly I had been wanting a 4th bedroom and a 3rd bathroom. In fact I often have dreams in which I discover an extra room in my house I didn't know I had (behind an unopened door, behind a wallpapered wall, etc.), but until we went to see the Morning Star house, I didn't think I could do anything - afford to do anything - about my craving for more space. This craving, this dream, must come from my childhood trauma of having so many stepsisters move into our modest-sized home...sometimes I retreated to cars parked in the driveway for privacy. (Cars are a good place to read and daydream unless it is hot, which it is most of the year in Tomball.)

The Morning Star house wasn't perfect, but having visualized ourselves there so strongly makes it impossible for us to be content in our current house. So, OK...I talked Craig into viewing 3 other houses today. He liked one and I liked another - I am trying to get him to seriously consider the one I like. Its worst feature is its vivid paint colors - bright moss-green in the master bedroom, deep harvest gold in the kitchen, downstairs and upstairs hallways and great room, and a pukey green-gold in one of the upstairs bedrooms. However the price is decent so I think we could afford to paint. There is lots to consider - the harvest gold house has many cool features but a very different floor plan than the one we had liked at Morning Star.

I'm not someone who has a deep belief of things being "meant to be," but quite a few people have told me they see real estate as working in that mystical way. Even some seasoned realtors apparently see it like that - maybe that's the only explanation that is feasible, with so many nebulous components - when you decide to sell your house, what you decide to charge, who you pick to represent you, the market conditions, the neighborhood conditions, the global economy...and all the same things on houses you look at, magnified exponentially since there are so many variables with so many houses in one city, metroplex or area...OK, it is maybe enough to make me mystical.

For almost 24 hours now I have adhered to my new plan: not to order things online until someone buys our house. Yeah. That is such a big sacrifice for me that it seems it should do some magic - a strong current going from me out into the universe.

Anyway...the main purpose of this blog posting is to show some photos that help explain why Morning Star inspired me to think about buying and framing more art for the walls. Morning Star had been rehabbed by investors who went very neutral - gray carpet, white walls, white cabinets, and pewter fixtures. The place cried out for art, in my opinion.

The curb appeal of Morning Star was great...


And we loved the idea of having a deck outside the master bedroom, and a view of the lake from the deck...

But it was filling the blank walls with colorful art that intrigued me the most. I'll continue this story in another post...too many graphics to attach in one sitting.