Chapter 6: Kate and Mr. Kate disagree

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Kate in the Valley is an optimist -- she’s still looking for a house, her blog looks better than ever, and she’s still writing a house-hunting diary for us. Her latest entry:

‘High home prices are not the only barrier to this house hunt. The other big barrier is Mr. Kate; he is a terrible house hunter. Yes. He. Is. If not for me, Mr. Kate would buy a house that was right on Sepulveda, sandwiched between two apartment buildings and backed by an alley. He really would so long as the house was more than 1,700 square feet, South of the 101, in move-in condition, and was 10% or 15% below our budget.

‘I, on the other hand, will not even look at a house if there is an apartment building on the same block. Give me a pretty street and a good-sized lot, and it almost doesn’t matter what the house looks like; I think I can fix it. In fact, I really want to fix it. I will fall in love with the bones of a house and go home to do a three-dimensional schematic with some CAD software I have. I will immerse myself in magazines and catalogs looking for the right range top and the right shower fixtures; I have an embarrassing volume of paint chip catalogs. Alas, Mr. Kate bristles at the thought of any remodeling, big or small. He simply dreads it.

‘At one point, I took to flat out lying to Mr. Kate about the time required to remodel so that he would agree to bid on a house. ‘Add 10 feet to the back of the house? Oh, they can have that done in a few weeks. Did I say a few? I meant a couple. It’ll be done before we move in! Don’t worry!’ Mr. Kate was not fooled. As a result of my, well, let’s call them ‘optimistic estimates,’ he now automatically adds four weeks to any remodeling time frame I give him. Seriously, he suspects it will take two days -- and four weeks -- to paint a living room.

‘You’d think that after watching hundreds of episodes of HGTV shows with me, he would warm up to fix-it projects a bit. Yeah, as it turns out, not so much. After all that HGTV watching, the only things that changed are: (1) he now hides the remote from me; and (2) he ‘accidentally’ deletes an awful lot of my shows from our TiVo. But I suppose our very different house-hunting criteria will work out for the best. I would probably get myself in too deep with a big remodel project, and he would have us living in the only house ever constructed on a freeway median.’

Thanks, Kate. Thoughts? Comments? As always, be respectful. This is a family blog. Read Kate’s blog here.