We hit the ground running on the house hunt as soon as we got to town, which I'll share more about below. Since we had so much to do with the home search, we hardly spent any time looking around town. We drove through downtown Charleston at night, and it was more gorgeous than I could have imagined. The main historic streets were lined with every store you could ever want, from Louis Vuitton to a small hole in the wall cafe. There were palm trees lining all of the streets to make it even more beautiful. The people we met in Charleston were all very normal people, and it immediately started to feel like home. Sure, there were a few bad areas we drove through, but nothing compared to Savannah. I'm bummed we didn't get to spend some more time looking around at all the cool things Charleston has to offer, but since we'll be living there in a month I'm sure we'll have plenty of time to check things out and take lots of pictures!
We really spent our entire trip in Charleston driving around from neighborhood to neighborhood, touring houses, checking out beaches, and going out to eat. We had mexican food a couple of nights that we were there, because it's all three of our favorite food. Even though he was couped up in the car alot, he was a happy camper when he saw a bean buritto in front of him.
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| Bean buritto king! |
I noticed that at restaurants in the south, servers are so extremely nice to you, you almost think they're messing with you. It's not just in sit down restaurants though, it's like that in sub shops, at the coffee shop, in the grocery store, everywhere! I could get used to having good customer service when I go out places... I feel like that's something that is hard to find anymore in Minnesota. I could really get used to that southern hospitality.
A few other things that we noticed about the south were: There are pawn shops or title loan shops on every corner, seriously. There is no such thing as too much butter. There are Waffle Houses every mile or two. It seems as though alot of people don't work, and are wandering along the side of the highway in the middle of the day. Neighborhoods are very random, there are often million dollar homes set right next to falling apart trailer homes. The main grocery stores are called: Publix, Piggly Wiggly, Harris Teeter, and Bi-Lo. You can still smoke in some restaurants, yuck. You have to pump gas manually the entire time, there is no tab to push down so that you can let go of the handle and gas continues to pump, they've all been removed because of new laws on gas being pumped while unattended.
House Hunting:
Driving around Charleston, we noticed right away that some areas that sounded close to the downtown area or the ocean, actually aren't once you add in all the side roads you have to take, the stop lights, and the traffic. Tate really wanted to be close to both the ocean and the historic downtown Charleston area. His view was, if we have this great oppurtunity to temporarily relocate to the southeast with no expense to us, why wouldn't we make the most of it and live somewhere totally different and exciting? While I completely saw his point, I had to focus more on what the reality of our lives there would be. We wouldn't be going out on the town all the time, or to the beach several times per week... we are parents now and although I'm sure we'll do those things once in a while once we meet people in the area to babysit, but it's not going to be something that happens weekly. I didn't mind being a 20-30 minute drive from the "happening" part of town, especially when it's more safe in certain suburbs. Safety is a big concern when I will be alone with Jace several days in a row each week while Tate travels. We searched desperately for days to find the "perfect" neighborhood that fit both of our needs, convenience and safety.
Tate joked that he was going to start calling me Katrina "restaurant" Paul because everytime we were looking at a house, I always got excited to see which restaurants were nearby. "Oh my gosh, there's a Ruby Tuesday right across the road!" "Look, there's a Taco Bell and Pizza Hut drive thru combination, right next to a Chick-Fil-A!" "Oooh, look La Hacienda mexican restaurant was around the corner." Tate focused more on historical things. I swear I wasn't trying to only focus on restaurants, I guess I just like to see what things are conveniently located nearby for dinner!
It was hard to have only three days in a town you've never been to trying to weigh your options and make a decision you won't question afterwards. We went back and forth hourly on whether we would live in the city or the suburbs. Exhausted, I would say "Ok, lets just rent that expensive brick house in that
The first house we toured was a little house in Folly Beach. It was literally a block from the ocean, a BLOCK! We could walk to one of the most gorgeous beaches in the south in a matter of 2 minutes. The neighborhood was filled with huge multi-million dollar homes that you'd see in the movies, but there were also these little beach shacks that added character to the area. We pulled up in front of this house noticing it had a real estate sign out front and called the realtor to see what the rental asking price was. He lived two minutes away and said he'd just come show it to us and discuss it then. He told us the rent amount and it was actually barely over our budget. We thought, well it IS by the ocean... maybe we could stretch our budget a little?? The home was so cute inside, Tate fell in love with it instantly. It had a ton of personality... three bedrooms, an old fashioned yet updated kitchen, a screened in porch with a fireplace right off the back. This house just smelled like the ocean. Unfortunately there were some pretty big downfalls. There was a waste management company right across the street, so all day we would be watching garbage trucks come and dump garbage there. Pew. But, the bigger downfall was that the house would remain on the market while we rented, and could be sold at any time, meaning we would have to pack up and move with a 60 day notice, and they already had someone interested in the house that was trying to sell his current home first. That was the ultimate deal breaker for me, if we are only guaranteed two months in this beach house, and those two months are January and February, it no longer seemed very appealing.
After leaving the house a little bit heartbroken we headed over to the beach and walked around. Folly Beach has the most gorgeous white sand beach, it definitely topped Tybee Beach in Georgia. Even though I knew we wouldn't be living within walking distance, I knew that we'd be a short drive away and that was good enough for me.
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| Folly Beach, SC. |
During that time we eliminated Folly Beach from our list of areas to live, we also eliminated James Island, Mount Pleasant, John's Island, and downtown Charleston. We had narrowed our list down to the suburb of Summerville, or the West Ashley neighborhood of Charleston. We were leaning more towards West Ashley, because of it's close proximity to the town and the beach. We set up appointments with our realtor to see a few houses in the area. All of the houses had something that wouldn't work for us, except one.
The West Ashley house that we liked was an old brick one story house in a mature neighborhood. It didn't have much aesthetic appeal from the outside, some of the bricks were discolored, there was an old chain link fence, and the garage was in the backyard meaning we would have to drive over grass to get to it (something apparently pretty common in the south). Our hopes weren't high going in to the house, but we were pleasantly surprised. The house had been taken great care of and there was alot of character. The entire house had nice wood floors, white trim and newer neutral paint throughout. There were two seperate living areas, a large dining area, large laundry room, and an updated open kitchen equiped with all the appliances and a breakfast bar. (A breakfast bar is something that really appeals to me. Call me crazy but we spend so much time in the kitchen preparing meals, it's nice to be able to cook and converse with someone sitting on a stool at the breakfast bar.) There were archways leading from one room to the next. This house was great because it was in a safe neighborhood, but only 4 miles from downtown Charleston. It had 3 bedrooms and 1.5 baths. The full bath was fine, but the half bath was the size of a small closet, with just a toilet and a sink crammed in. It also had super small closets, and relatively no storage space. I wasn't sure if I would be able to stand only having one shower and small closets. The house was also on the upwards end of our price range, making it even less appealing.
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| The West Ashley house |
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| The Summerville house |
The Summerville house we ended up liking the most was actually the most inexpensive house on our list. ($200 less per month than the West Ashley one mentioned above.) Even though there were several nice houses in Summerville, this one came down to location. This house was right on the edge of Summerville, right off of the interstate, giving it easier access to all that downtown Charleston and the coast have to offer. The majority of the nice neighborhoods in Summerville were 15-20 minutes further into the suburb, and for that reason were crossed off of our list. We thought this house was cute from the outside when we drove by, but didn't realize until we walked in that pictures hadn't done it justice. It was a small house, only one story, and built in 2007. There were 3 large bedrooms, two that had walk in closets, and 2 full baths. The ceilings were vaulted in the main living areas, and there was a fireplace in the living room. The kitchen was up to date and... wait for it... had a breakfast bar! There were alot of storage closets and the garage was attached and had potential for more storage space if Tate built some storage into it. The neighborhood was all newer houses, with palm trees in several yards. This house had a palm tree right out front. There was a neighborhood pool around the corner as well. The downfalls of this house were that it lacked a fridge and washer/dryer, meaning that we would need to purchase our own. The other downfall was that it did not have a fence in the yard. A fence was pretty important to me, for convenience with chasing Jace around outside, but since this house was set on a slow street without any traffic nearby, it was a little less important than it had been in the busier city areas. Another downfall of this house was that the previous tenants had some creative painting choices. The entry was painted red, which lead to the living room which was painted green with one red wall, and then the kitchen was green again. The master bedroom was turquiose paint that was given a slight stripe effect by doing rows of matte paint and rows on gloss paint, the last wall was never completed and was all gloss paint. Strange. Jace's room would also need painting since it was painted pink. I don't mind painting, I think it's fun to decorate a space and make it your own... but, when it's painted something crazy you have to change all the paint right away and it's never fun to paint an entire house. :)
Alright, well we did make a decision. But, because it was so last minute, we didn't get to meet with the property management company that owned the house and all the paperwork had to be sent to them. We got in contact with them and it looks like we won't hear anything for up to a week once they receive everything and process the application. We have no idea if there has already been another application done on the house. This is a little bit stressful, since we are moving in less than a month now and would like to start planning everything. Since we don't know yet if we will get the house before someone else... I've decided not to tell you yet which one we picked. Can you guess which one we picked? The one in West Ashley or the one in Summerville?
2 comments:
Your post screams Summerville! ;)
YUM publix subs!!!
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