Browsing Posts From: Miscellaneous

We recently came home from a family vacation in Island Park, Idaho.  We had a great time as a family.  However, I couldn’t help but laugh at some of the work done in the cabin.  For $450/night, this is what we encountered. The cabin itself was a series of several addons.  I estimated that there were probably four separate times the home was ‘amended’.  And don’t be fooled by the faux log exterior.  Those are just milled sheets of log-looking wood to tie all the various addons together. Structural supports […]

Shopping for homes with my clients is often an adventure.  Here are some memories you will enjoy: When an immovable object meets an irresistible force. Which came first?  The tree?  Or the garage?   When you rent your home to the Incredible Hulk.   This has lazy written all over it.  Too lazy to texture the sheetrock seams so they just nailed up trim strips to cover them.  Then too lazy to tape off the trim so they just sprayed popcorn texture all over it.  Ugh!   Now that is […]

We live in a 108 year old home and have been working steadily on improving and restoring our home to its former splendor.  We have recently repainted much of our home in historic colors and one of the last things we have left to do is restore the wood casings and baseboards. Until now, it  has been a bit of a mystery to us on how to bring the trim work back to life.  Our casings are made of Douglas fir and the wood is rather soft.  We have been […]

While working with some buyers recently we found a home that they like which had recently been renovated.  When we viewed the home, there were various tools scattered about the residence and we knew that they weren’t completely done with the work.  We wrote an offer and asked the seller to make some final repairs to the building.  We thought that the seller had hired crews that came in periodically to do the work. Well, it turns out we were wrong.  The “crews” actually lived on site.  Not in the […]

While viewing many homes so far this year, I have seen a lot of interesting things.  I think you will find a few of them interesting too.   This is a view of a rental unit after a tenant moved out.  At least this tenant left their trash organized in a pile on one side of the room.  It was also thoughtful of them to leave the window open to air out the space…in March…with the furnace turned all the way up…for a week. For a St. Patrick’s Day celebration, […]

Our home was built in 1908 and is a fantastic example of Arts & Crafts era architecture.  The Arts & Crafts design movement, also known as Craftsman, began as a counter-culture movement against the gaudy mass-produced opulence of Victorian Era design.  Rather than over-the-top finials, curves, and infinite minute details, the Arts & Crafts architects designed homes that were square, simple, and geometric.  The genre also favored a recognition of nature. When our home was built, it came with only one full bathroom and a weird sink placed in a […]

While my clients and I hunt for homes, we get to giggle a little along the way.  Here are the latest scenes to tickle our funny bone: NOTE TO THE CLEANING CREW:  Don’t forget the ceiling fan!   “Don’t mind this basement bedroom. Just think of it as artistically textured.”   Has your bedroom door ever had that gnawing feeling?   The sellers are trying to ‘stimulate’ a sale.   This home also comes with a servant that feeds you grapes while you bathe.   Wow!  Funky oven-in-the-face makes me […]

  One of the fastest ways to derail a real estate transaction is to have the appraisal come in lower than the contract sale price for a property.  We like to think of the real estate market as the bastion of the free market.  Buyers and sellers can transact freely and negotiate terms that are acceptable to each of them.  However, given that mortgage lending is required for the majority of real estate transactions, there can be some hang ups when a lender gets involved.   Mortgage lenders are educated […]

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I recently had the opportunity to travel to Seattle for a conference.  Whenever I travel to these conferences, I like to get out and take a look around town.  This usually includes catching a ride on the local, sometimes gritty, public mass transit system to really get a flavor for what is happening. For this trip I hopped on the Sound Transit light rail train at the SeaTac Airport and rode into downtown Seattle for a stay at the Sheraton across from the Washington State Convention Center. The city had […]