One of the characteristics of a Myers-Briggs "IN" (introversion-intuitive) archetype is having a high degree of motivation and energy when starting brand-new, never-been-attempted before projects, but becoming bored and dissatisfied once the novelty has worn off. Having experienced that with both projects at work and home, I've finally had "enough" of my foray into computer case painting.

Does the case look kick-ass? You bet (or you can be the judge of that yourself). Is the paint job perfect? Hell no, not even close. But considering it was my first attempt and I attempted a rather difficult and complex paint scheme, I think it came out quite nicely. Can there be improvements? Of course, but after touching it up and fixing as many blemishes and imperfections as I could stand, I finally call my case 'done'. In my eyes, it will never be perfect, but my energy is spent and my motivation has waned.

Without further ado, I present Phatty:

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As far as the house inspection went, the inspection went pretty good but I don't think we're going to pursue this house any further. The inspector pretty much told us he woudln't touch it with a 10' pole. For one, even though the sellers list it at 2400 sq ft, by the inspector's measurements, it only comes out to about 2080 sq ft. And for the price they are asking, there is no way in hell he (or we, for that matter) would pay that much.

The other big thing is that he thinks since the house was built outside the city, they had no building codes they had to adhere to, and it looked like when they upgraded the house, they had a non-professional do the wiring. So he was very very skeptical about other stuff that might be 'wrong' with it that he wouldn't be able to see. And that was just looking at the outside of the house for 45 min. Who knows what he might have found inside.

He was basically telling us that not including the property, he could build a basic, brand-new house for about $60/sq ft. Also the crawlspace under the house is literally only 2 ft high. He says there's no way anyone could really get under there to make repairs. So taking his advice, we walked away.

We're also thinking about dumping the realtor too who's actually a husband/wife team. We dealt with the husband the first time today. They've been really reluctant to run comparables for us (basically a list of houses in the same area that's sold in the last 6 months). You're supposed to do that to find out if the asking price is "fair". So you know the sellers aren't trying to rip you off. And he didn't seem too happy when our inspector was telling us the stuff that was 'wrong' with the house. I mean, I know he is looking to make a commission, but it looks like he's wanting to do it quickly & take advantage of us rather than work for our best interest.

And then we went back to his office for him to pull up some listings and when I told him one area of town I wanted to consider he kept trying to talk us out of it because he thought the traffic was bad in that area around rush hour. So what. Anyway, he seemed like he just really wanted us to make an offer as soon as possible. I could almost hear him computing how much he was losing an hour for the time he spent with us. Some realtors just really suck ass.

So it looks like we're pretty much back to square one but at least we're back to square one with more knowledge, less naivety, and more confidence in knowing what we want. In addition to looking for a house, it appears we're in the market for a realtor as well.

One year ago today: Moving Brain Syndrome (TM)