Househunting, Part III

We found ourselves quite nervous about the inspection. In the days before it we'd chatted a lot about how well this house would work for us, and couldn't help but be a bit excited about the possibility. In the end, the inspection went pretty well.

There were the couple big things we expected and a couple big things we didn't know about. And the usual little things, about 30 items total on the inspection report. The deck got the okay from the inspector, and the water pressure was actually excellent, despite the line to the house being galvanized still and 80 years old (all the lines inside the house had been replaced).

We asked for the seller to do some of the big things and left some of the big stuff that can wait to ourselves (like replacing the galvanized water line and a retaining wall that's deteriorating). We got an estimate for the tuckpointing that came in way, way below what I'd anticipated. Good news there, leaving us hopeful the seller would agree to do it.

The next day we did our sewer scope. We brought the kids with us so they could see the house (and so we wouldn't be bugging friends for help with them two days in a row). Gareth loved everything about the house and while Mal was reticent at first, he definitely seemed to warm up to it after a bit. They had fun exploring and running around while Ryan checked to see if he could fit out of the window in the master bath (because we'd realized that bedroom and the basement room are non-conforming with no second legal egress and we really don't want to die in a fire) and I measured the downstairs bath space for a washer and dryer.

Ryan commented that the house suddenly seemed much smaller once the kids were there. We'll definitely have to invest in some area rugs to help dampen the noise of them running through the house. The sewer scope was a mix of news. A lot of the line had been replaced and all of that was looking good. Just a foot or two from the main the scope guy ran into a ball of roots (probably from the redwood tree in the back yard) that his camera couldn't get past. So that last little bit of line was an unknown. It could just be a matter of eliminating that ball and it'll be great (until the roots grow in again), or it could be that you eliminate that and see that the roots have decimated the line between there and the main. So we asked the seller to take care of checking the rest of the line in addition to the other items.

They took a few days to respond, but in the end essentially agreed to do everything we asked for. They gave us a credit for the tuckpointing and checked the rest of the sewer, which looked good. So now we needed to finalize our lender and insurance provider decisions.