Breaking and Entering

Gary and I went to a few Open Houses last Sunday to scope out some ideas, some do’s and don’t’s for our house addition.  Let me tell you, it is so nice that the kids are now at an age that he and I can spontaneously hop in the car, well, yeah, it is still a stinky minivan, but hey, we can go do something on our own without dragging the breast pump, the diaper bag, the unenthused kids.  It’s nice and feels like it has been a long time coming.  I think the kids are enjoying it, just being left on their own.  I know we’re enjoying it. 

Maybe getting a little too crazy with it. 

Engaging in criminal behavior, in fact. 

I had a list of addresses for ten Open Houses we could hit in a three hour span.  That sounds plenty generous but you know, real life always manages to creep in. 

Unfortunately, between getting called to return back home to settle with the roofing business and me being the navigator (read: gets confused at times and does not chose most efficient routes of travel), we did not have a full three hours to look at houses.  We made it to three and a quarter houses, I think, in the first two hours.  The quarter being when we had gotten in the front door and saw basically two rooms of the house before being summoned home to see the roofing guy.

We went into a couple others, one new construction and the other a typical, like every other subdivision house built around here.  I did learn its interesting (aka bad) lot is called a flag lot.  Longish driveway with the main part of the lot on the backside of the lots in front of it. In other words, your front yard is the neighbors’ back yards.  I didn’t like that at all, but they had a huge in-ground pool, so I probably could have just stayed there forever.  Well, until swimming season was over.  Then I would’ve remembered the horrible lot and said I’m outta there.  

We drove out of town a few miles to get the chance to see the fanciest of the ones listed, it’s on the golf course, but of course when we pulled up at 3:01, the open house had ended at 3:00.  That was annoying.

There were three others that were going until 4:00 so we headed towards those.  I, being navigator still, met some confusion at finding just the right address but coincidentally, this newish neighborhood had multiple open houses that day, not just the one on my list, judging by the balloons and signs.  We parked and walked up to the door.  It was locked, even though it had all this realty signage and balloons going on.  We figured maybe one realtor was manning the multiple open houses since they were all within one block and s/he’d just probably walk us through them all. 

We walked up to the next house with balloons in the yard, approached the front porch while commenting on its notable stonework, and walked on in.  Again, no realtor there so s/he must be at the next one.  This seemed like a nice house, very personal with many family photos but done so tastefully.  It had the most interesting fireplace we’d ever seen.  It was two-sided and totally see-through from inside the living room to the deck.  (If you click the fireplace link, also click the little pics on the link so you can see the whole effect.)  Cool.

Besides the funky fireplace, I noticed there were a few ladies’ purses sitting right there on the kitchen island.  A little risky I thought, considering anyone could walk right in since it was an open house. 

Hmm, weird, though.  No other people were there. 

That is, until  two ladies came in and said,  “This is NOT an Open House!” 

OMG, we had walked right into someone’s house and was looking all over.   I felt so horrible; I got sick to my stomach immediately.  We apologized profusely in the few seconds it took for us to bolt out the front door.  I did throw in a quick “We loved your fireplace!”  Not sure if that helped at all.