It was a glorious day out today. 84 degrees, in mid-March. Sheesh. Since Gimpfoot here is still unable to go bike riding, we took the good weather to go out and look at some houses.

We’re putting an offer in one tonight, but since there’s already another offer pending, I suspect our odds to be no better than 50%. Still, here’s hoping.

Overall, the best day yet. Saw some good houses. This one place, though…

It appeared to be the home of a do-it-yourselfer with more enthusiasm than sense. The backyard was all deck. I mean, all deck. Nearly every square inch of a sizeable back yard had been lumbered over, leaving a thin rind of green at the edges. You could have used it for a dance floor. The side yards were concreted, or stepping stoned, so that at no point, ever, would one be forced to come in contact with the ground. I began to suspect terraphobics, or perhaps one of those sects that don’t want to walk on the ground for fear of killing things (although they’d sprayed for bees, which probably lets that theory out.)

Inside, mirrors. Floor to ceiling, in half the rooms. Light switches set in mirrored plates, set into mirrored walls. Vents placed in peculiar places, like the dead center of rooms. Bathroom opening directly off the living room. A closet, also in the living room, that had mirrored doors, but when opened revealed another window, and a door opening back into the living room. A faux garage, with garage door on the outside and wall on the inside, which had housed a large dog. (Original dog-carpeting intact. It would have to be burned, and perhaps exorcised.) Three seperate attic accesses, including a door set into the top side of a stairwell (the last time I saw one of these, it was in my parent’s church, where it was apparently used to service organ pipes. They call it “God’s door.”) There had originally been a pass-through window from the kitchen, but they had seen fit to put cupboards over half of it…without doing anything to the other side, so one’s view from the living room was a nicely framed window gazing directly into plywood. A pipe covered in a wooden box, sticking in the middle of the wall, like a birdhouse for stray indoor fowl. A skylight, cut haphazardly into the kitchen, where it bathed the fridge in a holy aura.

The sheer scope of weird alterations was rather impressive. Ultimately, however, while I like freaky, I prefer freaky that doesn’t fall on my head, and I strongly suspect half of it was an addition that was not up to code. But I feel a pang anyway, since who doesn’t want to live in a mini-suburban Winchester House, anyway?

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