2471 Sage Dr, Campo

I've been waiting weeks to tell you all about this little cabin.  There were things (good things) that I had to deal with before this that took all my energy and time, but now I finally have some space to tell you!

As much as I hate to pigeonhole myself, it's simply true that I (and Chris, it seems) am/are more taken with cabin-like homes.  As you may remember, I'm not personally taken with wooden walls, but wood ceilings, especially those that are vaulted, fireplaces, less so wood stoves though there are some very nice ones, a woodsy smell...  Well, it all works for me in a way that makes me want to live.

I saw this little cabin on the site Melissa put up for us.  It was small, cute, and at a price we could really afford ($299.9K)  I think it had been up a day, which here means you really do have to move.  We arranged to see it the next day.

The home wasn't amazing from the outside but pretty enough, with snapdragons planted in the front, of which I heartily approved.

The main door walked into a living area with a beautiful set in wood stove.  There were built in shelves along the walls that were also half window.  It's a good thing because storage space was at a premium here.

It's true that some dingbat had painted the beautiful wood beam ceiling, as well as the wood cross beams on the walls, though presumably the walls weren't done with nice wood.  The floor seemed to be some kind of laminate, though it looked right convincing as wood.

The two doors leading out behind the main living space led to one of the cutest and most well laid out bathrooms for the space I've seen, and a bedroom through a kitchen that had clearly been an afterthought of someone who preferred to eat out or cook over a live flame provided by her pet dragon.

Objects in the picture are smaller and closer together than they appear

The microwave was sans glass front. I'm not sure why it bothered me so much.  We do have our own microwave, and Chris assured me it wasn't the glass that keeps us all from being irradiated.  I was not into having no glass.

Through this hallwa  uh-kitchen, there was a small bedroom with odd stanchions that were made into closet-like space.  The bed here is a double and we couldn't imagine how the room could support anything larger than that (we have a queen).

The bathroom was oddly one of the rooms I liked best in this home, though I liked all of it well enough.  It was largely wood and had a surprisingly high shower head for such a small space.  This is an important consideration for Chris's comfort.

The drawer pulls looked quite like penises.  When I'm going to learn to take actual pictures of these things, I don't know.  I can't even find a picture online.  They were hanging drawer pulls where a round piece of metal rod had been curled into a spiral, then came up to form a bulbous peak (think mild Taj Mahal), then back down to form the same spiral on the other side.  Melissa was either too polite or too professional to immediately grasp what I was raising my eyebrows about, but then, we can't all live in the odd world of body parts in which I live.

The tub and toilet are on the other side of the space separated from each other by a stanchion

There was one last room to this cabin that they were touting as a second bedroom.  In reality, it was a porch that had been covered over, but darn, it did function fairly well as a bedroom.  We considered in the days that followed whether it would be better to be our bedroom, or the room that was clearly meant to be such.

One of the few things I actively disliked about this home was the odd dropped ceilings that were decked out with those presumably-not asbestos containing acoustic absorbing drop ceiling tiles that are $0.60 a square foot at Lowes.  I did peak above one in this room and found some wires and more sadly painted wood.  I imagine that much of that wood might have needed replacing because why would someone opt for the ceiling of their elementary school if they didn't have to?

The outside boasted a shed that we couldn't get into and a garage that truly wouldn't have been easy to utilize as such.  It was behind the house to the left, while the driveway was on the right side of the house and there was a gate between the two that you'd have to get out of the car to go unlock.  However, the garage had a nice laundry space (as far as laundry spaces go) and would make a brilliant workshop for Chris if the boxes of our residual stuff didn't take up too much of the room.

...because the house was smaller than the 1 bedroom we rented when we first got here!

We well and truly like this small place, but what really did it for us is the large yard that's completely fenced in.  Not that our dog couldn't get over it if he chose and it would do nothing for the cats, but the fact that we could at least let the dog go out and romp around on his own without too much worry was great. 

The neighbors had chickens and tiny yapping dogs.

Melissa was concerned we might not be able to deal with the yapping but we explained that presumably the dogs would get used to us at some point and it was no worse than the 7 children under the age of 7 that currently surround us.

Although it wasn't super authentic, I definitely liked this home's southwest feel.  I miss stucco New Mexican homes.

We had some concerns (like the trees that grew right up into wires) and questions that largely Melissa came up with due to her extensive experience (like how the yard sloped slightly towards the house and were there drains to make sure we didn't get flooded the 3 times a year that it rains).  But while we posited the questions to Melissa to ask, now is not the market to be asking useful nor important questions.

We discussed the home as we drove away.  It was cute, and the dog would be happy.  It was tiny.  The person who staged the home really did a great job, but there was near to no other way to arrange any furniture than the way that person had.  We certainly had no room for our table, any of our kitchen anything, our bed would be an issue, our clothing... There certainly wasn't room for an art space for me... But as a "for now" home, the price would let us save enough monthly that we might be able to finally pay rent without having to dip into savings, and the dog could do dog things in the yard.  There was a lot of room for improvements too.  We could probably get a permit to expand the main room, and the yard just begged for some structure; a deck perhaps, some landscaping.

So we asked Melissa to make an offer.  But the days of the reasonable price of $299.9K were over.  They already had multiple offers over that.  While I get that this is the market right now, I was right irritated.  A home that we could actually afford despite it not fitting most of our stuff and it being over an hour drive from Chris's work, and people were already bidding it up.  We offered $310K.

They counter offered at $330K with a number of stipulations, some of which were whatever and some of which were just odd.  Like that they didn't have to service the septic at all, and making the inspection period 10 days instead of 12 or 15.  I must say, the fact that they were happy to ask for $299.9K and were now asking $330K really torqued my twinkie.  Yes, it's how capitalism works, but it felt greedy and in poor taste.  

We agreed to a number of the less odd stipulations and offered $320K, a number that would still keep us saving some monthly but with which I was far less comfortable for the tiny space it is.

They went with someone else who basically agreed to everything they wanted.  So much the better for them as it sounds like they'll all get what they want.  As for us, back to the internet searching.