Louisville Magazine

MAY 2012

Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.

Issue link: https://loumag.epubxp.com/i/62230

Contents of this Issue

Navigation

Page 8 of 108

[ Editor's Letter ] House Hunters T here are two types of people in this world: 1) parents and non- parents and 2) homeowners and non-homeowners. In each case, unless you've been through it, you can't begin to under- stand. I've yet to meet a homebuyer who doesn't have a few war stories. We who have signed on the dotted line what seems like a thousand times at closing (does anyone actually read those documents first?) can relate. My wife and I have bought four houses now, and I can assure you that it doesn't get any easier, especially in these post-bubble days. My go-to war story of late involves our move from Little Rock to Lou- isville last spring. Te new job brought me to town a few months before my wife and daughter with instructions to scout houses, narrow choices and have a list of likely dream homes at the ready when the girls arrived. No problem. I found two extraordinarily patient realtors, working as a team, who filled my weekends with lots of 3BR, 2.5BA, 2,200SF, eat-in kitch, fplc, yard w/deck viewings. I whittled a list of dozens down to three — in St. Matthews, Reidlonn and the Highlands — certain that one of the three would be Te One. When the time came for the official showings, my wife Fran walked into the first house — my favorite — looked around and said, "Huh." Tat was it. Huh. Turns out that having the one-sink master bath not in the bedroom but the common hall was a big deal. Who would have guessed? And how was I to know that washer-dryer hookups in a dank, spidery, unfinished basement down rickety wooden steps would be an issue? Te other two houses rated not even a "huh," instead serving merely as backdrop for Fran to explain what she really wanted. (By this time, both realtors had turned full attention to Fran, understanding that the alpha dog had arrived.) Te next day, while I took the kid to the zoo, my wife and the realtors found our house. It turned out to be hiding in the Woods of St. Tomas. See how easy that was? We moved in two months later, and I love the place — though I never in a squillion years would have found it on my own. One good house story deserves another four, so I asked the editorial staff at Louisville Magazine, homeowners all, to share their real-estate roller-coaster rides: Craters to convey I'm lying when I tell people that my wife and I looked at 60 homes in the Highlands during our house hunt because the number was prob- ably closer to 75. One-hundred percent my fault. I'd been living off Bardstown Road for more than two years and was stubborn and picky, determined to stay in the neighborhood … preferably within a 100- yard (fine, 10-yard) radius of my apartment. An offer we made on some Grandma-ish place on Deer Lane was accepted. We shelled out a couple hundred bucks for the inspection, which uncovered a red flag known informally as craters in the foun- dation. I wanted the neighborhood so bad that I was still willing to buy if the homeowner would agree to pay for a process that included words like "hydraulic jacks." Te seller said nothing was wrong with [6] LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 5.12 B Y KANE WEBB the foundation (I'm sure the dump has since imploded and crumbled into hell) and we backed out. By house 75, I'd finally realized that our modest budget in the Highlands would get us the housing equivalent of Mickey Rourke's face. Bri convinced me to look at a house in Crescent Hill. Te first one we saw — a three-bedroom bungalow — was the one we bought. It's 90 years old but doesn't need a ton of work. We've painted every room, installed a chair rail in the upstairs hallway, re-carpeted our screened- in patio. Just last night, actually, I learned to use something called a "grout float" as we put up a backsplash in the kitchen. Tese are proj- ects I do because I want to, not because I have to. — Josh Moss Match game I went through two different realtors before finding the "the one." A friend who knew I was having realtor trouble set us up. I was looking for someone who was honest and trustworthy, someone who would listen to me and validate my feelings — even when I walked into a house and said, "Tis just doesn't feel right." I wanted someone who was attentive but not stalking me to constantly look at houses. It turned out the third time was the charm. Guess the saying is true: You have to kiss a few frogs…. — Melissa Duley Lentini's and mantes Back in 1979, before my future wife and I moved to a very village-like, restaurant-less Crescent Hill, we chose a little bungalow on Edgeland Avenue in the Highlands. We'd come from Boston, where I was a hotel bellhop and she worked on the sports desk of the Globe. She was re- cruited away by the then Louisville Times, and when we came here we knew nothing about this city other than Churchill Downs. We arrived in the midst of a scorching summer heat wave. Te first day we stepped onto our new front porch, though, there to greet us was a four-inch-long praying mantis on the doorstep — sign of good fortune! Any elation died quickly, though, when the moving company informed us that our furnishings would be a week or more late in getting there, during which time we would be provided with a dining stipend and could snuggle up at night on a rug. Oh joy. My girlfriend reported immediately to work, taking the car, while I, jobless and adrift in a strange neighborhood rendered people-light by 95-degree heat, bided my time between restaurant meals at the only place I could find open for lunch in the days before the dining surge began — Lentini's on Bardstown Road. Don't get me wrong — the minestrone there was OK, as were the fried scallops, over and over. But it was no way to spend your first week in a town that will be your home for the next 32 years. — Jack Welch Cave-free living I had my first house appraised by a former sniper in the U.S. military who was a friend in the construction business. He looked around, grunted a little, then said, "Should be fine unless you fall in a cave." Te wiring might be 100 years old. Te roof might be bowing. Te basement floods once a year. But I have yet to fall in a cave. — Suki Anderson

Articles in this issue

Archives of this issue

view archives of Louisville Magazine - MAY 2012