Old Vs New\Complete Burnout

67 As of Tuesday, that is the approximate number of houses that we have seen. Well, actually, that I have seen. While Dylan and Mike saw most of those with me, there were a few open house days where Dylan and I went to a few stops before Mike was able to meet up with us post soccer and last weekend we had a sitter over to play with Dylan while we went and looked at a few places. But, for the most part, all 3 of us have trekked through 67 houses in two months. We made one offer (that we knew wouldn't be accepted) and have one house still in our heads that we're contemplating making an offer on. But, other than that, it has been 67 of it's "not our house."

Oh, and that 67 is approximate, meaning there were probably more. We didn't actually try and start counting them up until last weekend. It was then that we counted 54 listing sheets we had collected. We didn't have any of the listing sheets from our first weekend out of open houses, where we went to an ambitious 10 open houses. Then, we went to 3 more houses on Tuesday. I know there are other houses that we don't remember and don't have the listing sheet for so the number we've seen is likely more upwards in the 70s.

The house hunt started at the end of April, which means we've been at it for two months. Two months of seeing houses during my lunch break, seeing houses after work, seeing houses with 3 different agents in multiple towns, going to open houses on Saturday's and Sunday's and countless hours of Mike and I hunting separately and together on line.

At first, we knew exactly what we wanted. An old home with great curb appeal, character, preferably a turret (what I can say, we both think turrets are super cool), within walking distance to some sort of town center and that has been renovated or is priced well enough that we could renovate before moving in. As you probably know, we have spent A LOT of time, money and effort over the last six and a half years completely renovating our house. It's updated, it's modernized and it's to our taste. While we love the end result, our lives are a little different now. With a kiddo in our house and our free time limited, renovations are just not something we want to live through right now. So, we've been looking for that and what we've realized is that they're just not redone to our tastes. It's hard to have to pay top dollar for something "done" that we don't really like all that much.

After searching for the perfectly renovated older home needle in a haystack, we decided to broaden our horizons a bit and look at newer homes or (gasp) new builds. This was a HUGE turn in events for me. My opinion on new builds has always been soulless, generic, boring, blah! No offense to those out there with lovely new homes, it was just never floated my boat. But here's the deal. It's almost impossible to find a floor plan that will work with our family with our older home criteria being met. We haven't given up on that old home just yet, but we're starting to explore the idea of a new home but only if we're involved in the process early enough to be able to choose all the finishings in the place. I still haven't walked into a new home and got a "yeah, this is our house" feeling but I haven't walked into any older houses in the last 65 plus that we've seen and said that either. So, we're just trying to weigh all the options and figure out what we want to do for our family.

However, there's one little problem. I don't care anymore! I am SO incredibly burnt out on this process that I walk into every house and say "enh!" No excitement, no strong feelings about any house one way or another. Either my emotional response is totally broken, I'm not going to have an emotional response at all since my logical side has completely taken over, or the complete burn out has taken over leaving me to not really give a crap either way. My theory is that it's the last option so I'm taking some time off. Mike's still happy to go out and house hunt and we both have to like the house anyway, so I'm letting him take a first pass at any options on our plate. Since we decided that on Tuesday, Mike has gone out to see 2 houses. And, you know what? I'm not jealous at all.....I'm SO glad that I didn't have to go as well!

Hopefully this break from it all will last and I'll have the mind set to go out again and enjoy the hunt. It's kind of sad because house hunting has always been a hobby of mine and this has just taken all the joy out of it. I mean, I used to go to open houses for fun and 90% of what I watch is HGTV - house hunting and home decor is something I used to like having on my mind. Now, though, I want to have nothing to do with it. Sigh. We'll see how many days I'll successfully be able to take off from the search. In the meantime, though, I need to find something else to watch on TV because the only thing left on my tivo queue is House Hunters!