Observations from Attempting to Buy a House

Zach and I have gone full throttle into our quest to buy a home in DC. It has been fun and we're learning a lot, but also difficult because housing inventory is at a historic low. We've seen some very good contenders go on the market and sold within as little as 2 days. So once we find what we're looking for, we need to be ready to STRIKE.  As a person I'm acquainted with says, striking may involve me waving my check book around drunkenly in the air at the Open House and screaming that I want to "lock it in." That person has a curious imagination.

As we've gone through the process, I've noticed there are a few buzz words I keep hearing and styles that seem to pop up everywhere. So in case you are a novice to home buying, here is what you need to look for:

Exposed Brick
The first thing you should do if you're at an Open House is scour the home in search of the rusty red good stuff. If you can't find it, you should storm out and take it as a personal insult that someone would dare waste your time by putting their house on the market in that condition. The best next step would be to make a protest sign, return to the Open House, and shout "we want the brick" until the seller comes out of his/her hiding place with a hammer and pounds away at the plaster, sobbing until it's all over. If it turns out that the foundation does not include any brick at all, do the seller a favor by grabbing their hammer and tearing down the entire house so they can build it right next time.

the process of exposing brick in a home

exposed brick done right

"exposed brick" done wrong

Exposed brick for the sake of having exposed brick

Breakfast Bar
It is unlikely that you will complete a house search with out coming across a few dozen breakfast bars, which are often on the side of kitchen islands. Breakfast bars are most functional in teeny tiny houses where it's not possible to comfortably fit a table anywhere; however, in DC, the breakfast bar is usually just a stylish addition to your kitchen. Visually, the benefit of having a breakfast bar/island is that it brings the kitchen space together, especially considering open floor plans are hip right now and kitchens sometimes are not separated from the living room. I can't really imagine myself ever actually eating there though, I kind of like eating at a real table. Here is a house we looked at with a typical breakfast bar/island:

Below is another place we saw where the kitchen is just one long continuum and it's sort of awkward. Unfortunately, this space is too narrow to have an island or breakfast bar. This place also didn't have any exposed brick. You shouldn't be surprised that it hasn't sold yet.  

Boutique
Boutique houses are all the rage right now.  What is a boutique house, you ask? I'm not sure--in the real estate world it seems like it refers to anything that has had a nice renovation and stands out from the riff raff around it. I think there is a lot of backlash against the "builder grade" houses that seem very manufactured and are identical to other units in the building our houses on the block. Quality design and building, I can rally around that. However, I can't rally around the "boutique." The word conjures up ideas of luxury and specialness. It's obviously a marketing term adopted by the real estate world to make people feel good about themselves when they are overpaying for their house. This unit, which Zach and I might look at this weekend, would probably be described as boutique:

not shown, a motorcycle, which was included in the staging of this house

It's beautiful, but it's in a terrible neighborhood. So I'm not sure if that still makes it boutique. I'm still learning. Stay tuned.

i never thought i would see them both in one picture: the local web troll, peg leg, and ignatius, the unsung hero of america and inspiration for this blog. 

Happy Tomb Sweeping Day!

There are many things one can say about China, but I think this author of a Washington Post article I read today sums things up pretty well:

In this country of almost 1.4 billion people, life is an unending struggle for resources — money, property, even spouses. And it doesn't get easier in death.

So I admit, my view of China might be very, very skewed...I loved living there and probably have permanent rosy colored glasses. Sometimes it's easy for me to forget how serious some of their problems are right now.

That is, until I read articles like this that talk about how in as soon as 5 years, some provinces in China will run out of room to bury people. I guess in theory every country would eventually run into this issue one day, but as usual, China's massive population accelerates the problem--the Chinese government predicts that by 2025 as many as 20 million people will die annually.  Knowing China, I can imagine this turning into a huge, disgusting problem. Well, if some kind of "Walking Dead" phenomena ever happens, I am going to be so happy I made my way back to America.

To deal with the space issue, the Chinese government is promoting the practice of "sea burials", and in some cases, they are giving monetary incentives to those who do them. So here comes the real reason I am writing about this post: although Dalian is not mentioned anywhere in the Washington Post article, the featured picture is purportedly from Dalian. Afterall, Dalian is on the sea, and an initiative like this actually makes sense there. yeah, dalian's great, yeah yeah yeah! Okay, I'm done. Sea burials haven't really caught on yet, so in addition to paying people to do them, the government will also apparently pay for boat trips out to sea to do the burial.  I guarantee if this catches on the next big headline about sea burial will read something about how harmful toxins from the cremated remains are destroying Chinese waters. They just can't win.

So I will put this Washington Post article in context for you since the author either forgot the impetus for writing this article or it was merely a coincidence: it is currently 清明节 Qing Ming Jie, which is usually translated as Tomb Sweeping Festival. During Tomb Sweeping Festival, you are supposed to visit your ancestors' graves to honor them, give offerings (traditionally a whole rooster), and sweep the tomb clean. Then you can go fly your kite and enjoy the outdoors. Chinese propaganda describes it best:

All in all, the Qingming Festival is an occasion of unique characteristics, integrating sorrowful tears to the dead with the continuous laughter from the spring outing.

Sounds like a great way to spend a nice spring day.  I wish I was a Chinese ancestor so someone would always tend to my tomb and give me roosters I could gorge myself on in the afterlife.

I think I was traveling during Tomb Sweeping Day when I was in China and only heard about it through stories so I guess I never really made the connection between China's massive population and what happens to that massive population when they pass on. Somehow I managed to only see very quaint little mountain graves that made me think of old times in China and ancestor worship and honor and things like that. I won't go into the story of how Tomb Sweeping Festival came about but it is so typically Chinese.  I feel like in China some of the old traditions and ideas are so strong that even when participating in Tomb Sweeping Festival now involves clearing off a few inches of tomb (if there's even a tomb at all), Chinese people think about Tomb Sweeping Festival as if it were still like this:

It's a very Romantic kind of sentiment they have sometimes, and I suppose I fell for it too. I mean, isn't life better when old men toss flower petals (?) into the wind and you can enjoy a nice bowl of rice and tea with your deceased love one in private under a tree?

Here are a few pictures of the aforementioned mountain graves I saw in China. I also saw a really creepy Russian graveyard in the middle of the Dalian but I don't have any pictures. I'm not sure how I stumbled upon these--I was probably somewhere I wasn't supposed to be because I think there are weird superstitions about mountainside graves:

I think I said this about cabbage one time, but this concludes my much lacking post on death in China.

***Side note...清明 Qing Ming actually translates to "clear bright", which refers to the idea that the festival occurs in the beginning of spring when it's a good time to get some fresh air and get rid of any debris that has accumulated on your ancestors' tomb. Sorry, I have this urge to explain the Chinese language to the public, I don't know why.

DC kite festival

woohoo, the best day of the year is upon us, the dc kite festival!

well, actually, it already happened. but you can go next year!

there were a ton more people there than i had originally anticipated. well, i knew there would be a lot of people, but not so many that my sister and her family wouldn't be able to find street parking near the mall :(

after zach and i were finally were able to meet up with them, the kite festival was actually winding down, but we were able to slip my youngest niece, kaden, into an activity booth where she made a "wind sock". i have no pictures of kaden with her wind sock because she was overwhelmed by the crowd and wouldn't fly it at that time, but later after walking for miles around the monuments she finally found her courage and ran around with it. all of us were dead at that point and just watched her with glazed eyes.

kaden is a silly little girl, she cracks me up. apparently her favorite color is pink now but she has a very dark side to her. she likes to tell stories about the spooky woods which have a "dark smell" to them, and claims that she has seen big foot and other various monsters. she talks a big talk though because one time at the playground zach decided to go under the bridge she was crossing and pretend to be a troll. kaden was so scared she wouldn't go near him the rest of the day. i would be afraid of zach too if i were her, troll or not ;)

here is kaden jumping around at the fdr memorial:

then she sat down and wanted a picture taken of herself in this pose:

as i said, kaden is my youngest niece. there's also my other 2 nieces, jessie and becca, who aren't so little anymore. when i came back from china, both of them had suddenly grown 1000 inches and were taller than me. jessie is 14 and becca is 12. i don't think they always get along but they are really good kids, better than i was when i was that age, i think i was bad :) they're both really good with kaden and seem open about their thoughts. becca plays trombone in the school band and is the best little baker i have ever seen. jessie very clearly likes the band "one direction", that's all i can discern ;)

below is my older sister, gail, the mother of these lovely ladies. gail is about 12 years old than me but she looks so good you wouldn't know. or maybe i look wise beyond my years. i wish we could all see each other more but she is very busy, not only with the girls and their activities but she is actually my half sister and my dad and her mom are divorced and remarried, as well as her husband's parents. so that's 4 different sets of families to work around. ahhh, too much! but i was so happy we could meet up in dc.

violating fdr's dog. poor fdr, everyone was just lined up to take a picture with his dog, not him.

when it was time to leave we walked back towards where the kite festival had been. there was still a lone kite up there. thank you pikachu for closing out the day!