Our realtor added this house at the last minute as it had just come onto the market. We were the first people to see it. One look at the porch and I was pretty much sold. E wanted us to go inside first, so I aquiesed and visited the interior before actively committing. (Does jumping up and down on the sidewalk before walking in saying "I LOVE IT!" count as committing?) Anyway, there were a few minor things we wanted to change about the place, but overall it was perfect for us and for our planned (and now very real) two children. We made an offer (along with 3 couples who saw the house after us), ended up winning (yay!), and now live here.
As with any house, ours had issues that we didn't immediately identify in our half-hour walk through. Perhaps the most prominent and oustanding of these are our neighbors to the right. When you're looking at our house, as you are in the photo above, our master bathroom is on the ground floor on the right hand side. See the big window? There's another one like that on the side of the house. Those are over our master bath spa tub (used approximately 3 times). Directly adjacent to those windows but technically on our next-door-negihbor's property is our neighbor's front porch.
Our neighbors are very nice people. They are very friendly and have never been anything but super duper nice to us. I honestly really like them and they're very easy to talk to. But not easy enough apparently, because there are some things I'd really like to ask them to stop doing, but have not found the cojones to bring up in our conversations at the mailbox.
Our neighbors like to make excellent use of their very nice porch. Who can blame them? It's really nice. They sit on it a lot. And they are smokers, it seems. And drinkers. I have no qualms with smokers and drinkers. I personally really don't like smoke. It gives me a headache and makes my eyes water, but if you want to do it, knock yourself (or your lungs) out. That said, please don't toss your cigarette butts into the yard. They're often landing our our side of the yard and it looks trashy. Plus I'm rightfully concerned you're going to catch something on fire. We're in a drought you know.
I don't want to sound like a nagging Nancy, and I'm cool with your drinking. It's whatever. But do you mind please keeping your empties on your porch? Or better yet, toss them in the recycling bin. Seriously. I'll even give you one to keep out there on your awesome porch to put them in. I'm not a huge fan of finding beer cans blown into my garden. I'm not a particularly good gardener anyway, and somehow I feel like the debris is making it worse.
One final request... If you're going to have a knock-down drag-out fight with your husband/daughter/son/whomever, can I recommend you do it inside your house? Seriously, my bathroom window backs up directly to your porch. If you're yelling at each other on your porch, I'm totally pulling a Mrs. Kravitz on you and standing in my bathtub peeking through the blinds to see what the heck is going on. You can't blame a girl for that.
I can't figure these people out. And I lack the cojones to talk to them about it.
