Well, fancy kitchen house was a bust.
The kitchen was just as nice as pictured. Nicer, in fact, but not enough to balance out everything else.
The square footage was overstated. The listing agent threw in the second floor of the garage into the calculations, evidently.
The garage, while big enough to accommodate the Mack diesel tow truck that was parked in there, was closer to a six-bay than an eight. It was a bit run down, and full of glaring code violations. And then there was the question of the hydraulics in the floor. Too much of a risk. Here's the data plate, FWIW:
The house, outside of the kitchen, was pretty much builder-grade, but solidly done, and the two bedrooms were smaller than anticipated.
The basement had a re-poured concrete floor with French drains, redundant wiring still snaking through the joists, and when we uncovered the pumpless sump, the inserted hose was going at a good trickle down the hole ... to where?
The second house that we looked at on the same day, the one in the woods, was a let down.
Firstly, the neighbor: evidently, pond scum. It's one thing to be a ridgerunner. Hell, I'm one. But it's another to let your shit go ramshackle and refuse to part with any vehicle that you've ever bought. Too close.
The house could have been nice enough, but the owner cheap-Johned the repairs and did a lot of completely unprofessional work himself to the detriment of its value. The in-law suite would have been better for a workshop. It had all the charm of a cheap, third-rate motel within a drunken drive of a roadhouse for a third-rate rendezvous. The rain gutters were stuffed with leaves, and there was a general state of neglect.
The back yard was small and overwhelmed by a raised deck on the one corner, although the property line went a ways back and significantly to the right on an L-shaped lot. The slope wasn't insurmountable behind the house, but they had called it quits on removing the half-a-VW sized boulders going up the incline as soon as there was enough space to wedge the house in.
So, on we go. One that's come up is on over ten acres going up a ridge, heavily wooded, and the lot is shaped so that I could set up a range easily, knocking down enough trees. Not sure about the construction. It's got some Shangri-la factors going on, including its elevation, relative remoteness, and setback from the road, but the area is notorious for white supremacist activity. That, unfortunately, is a given in this neck of the woods, and I'd just as soon be behind the wheel of an F-150, instead of behind its cargo bed.