the lucky doorknobs

It's my philosophy that you should stock up on what you need before you need it, especially when it means getting a good deal. This makes me kind of a terrible packrat, but when it pays off, it really pays off. I was at the antiques store down the street looking for something completely unrelated, when I came across a set of white porcelain doorknobs. I'd just seen these mentioned in Remodelista and had been thinking how nicely they'd fit my vision for the house I don't yet own. So, even with no doors to put them in, I went ahead and bought them. I also picked up two cut glass knobs and one mercury glass knob, which the cashiers totally oohed and ahhed over.

I came home and decided to check eBay to see if the mercury glass knob was really all that, and whether I'd gotten a good deal in general. eBay led to Craigslist, where I found a huge lot of vintage doorknobs - some porcelain - selling for $25. I went to pick them up today and now I have enough doorknobs to replace all the generic knobs in the house. All in one weekend, for about $50!



The ones that look usable are on the right - two cut glass, eight white porcelain, six black porcelain, and the lone mercury glass knob. Of course, none of them are exactly pristine. The gentleman who sold me the lot told me his wife's father had been a carpenter and he'd found the bag of mismatched hardware in with his old tools. Most of them are rusted to some degree, and many have paint spots. Luckily, I found an awesome description of how to clean rust off old doorknobs and I'm very excited to see how much of the current "No" pile can be restored.

radiators!

We did a second walk-through of the house last night, to make sure I want it before throwing down money for the inspector, and discovered something we'd missed the first time through: the rooms have gas pipes for radiators. This is very interesting for two reasons. The first is that I prefer radiator heat to almost every other kind.

In Seattle, I loved the apartments I lived in. Seattle has tons of prewar apartment buildings with all the charm (right down to the milk doors) kept intact. One of the most disappointing things about moving to Austin was realizing that those basically don't exist here. Most of the places I rented in Seattle had radiators and I thought they provided the perfect amount of heat. Plus I find the sound comforting.

The second reason this is a big deal has to do with FHA loans. The house currently has no heating. The sellers, who've lived there 18 years, say they've never needed it and this isn't hard to believe since Austin only gets a few cold months. They've put in new windows that, even in what should be an exceptionally drafty old house, were keeping the temperature comfortable on 107° days with only three tiny window unit A/Cs for 1,900 square feet. But these are not facts the loan people care about. The loan people insist that a home must have a heater, and this home has none.

I was dreading spending $500 to install a wall-mounted heater to satisfy the loan requirements, because I knew I did not want that at all and when I'm spending a quarter of a million bucks, the last thing I want to do is waste any of it. I'm hoping that I can put in a radiator instead, making both myself and the bank happy (and making use of pipes that right now offer nothing except a place to stub your toe).

We finally got some pictures of the interior on this tour, too:


The front porch and the back yard.


Living room and dining room.


Entryway and master bath vanity (which is outside the bathroom - nice).


The kitchen and the addition off of it. I guess you call that a bonus room. If your definition of "bonus" is pretty loose.


The full bathroom in the hallway and the giant master bedroom.

where have you been all my life?

In a buyer's market, it's hard to believe you could spend five months looking for a house, but I have. I saw probably forty houses and made four offers. Today, I'm finally "under contract."



Is it a perfect house? No, not by any stretch of the imagination. It's down in a family neighborhood blocks from the lake, instead of up on the hill blocks from the clubs, where I wanted to be. Though it was built in 1900 almost all of its original character - save its high ceilings - has been remodeled over. It needs leveling, a new roof, appliances, bathrooms, a kitchen, central air & heat, electrical, plumbing.. And that's just to make it inhabitable. Once that's done, it needs the various linoleum and laminate substrates that have been layered over (hopefully) the original floors removed. It needs paint. It needs crown molding or something to make the high, featureless walls feel more stately and less institutional.

But it has good points, too. The lot is big, on a corner with alley access. It's four blocks from downtown and right around the corner from any number of bouncy castle outlets. The windows are new. There are three porches, two in the grand Southern style you'd expect in Texas. At 1,900 square feet, it's more than twice the size of my current apartment. And the price is $30,000 less than the appraised value. It may not be a perfect house, but it's a hell of an investment.

Being realistic, though, for the next year I expect it to be simply a Hell.

Five years or so ago in Seattle I was approved for a $600,000 mortgage. I was making less than I make now and my expenses were more, but that was the market then. The broker I met with explained all kinds of exotic loan options available for someone like me, who just woke up one morning and decided she wanted to buy a house she hadn't saved up for. You could get money at that point just for showing up. Now it's different.

My current broker advises me to be very cautious about how I even apply for home equity loans to fix up this house. He says almost no one is doing them in the first place. In the second place is what everyone already knows, that the market for those secondary loans is highly unstable right now. I'm lucky in that I have family who can act in a bank's stead, should I need that assistance. Still, few 30-year-olds want to borrow money from their folks if they don't have to, so I plan to investigate my options once the mortgage is in place and I don't have to worry about hits to my credit report from inquiries.

After all this searching, after offering and being turned down or told I'm too late, this feels both sudden and not. With very little to hope for in an inspection, I'm ready - even anxious - to get to the part where I pull my work gloves on and finally begin.