solarbird | Don't Let it Get Me (Reply)

Gah. Maybe one minute after posting this, our agent calls and says that he just found out an offer had been made yesterday, and was accepted. Bleah. Still, this is the kind of thing we'd like to find.

A possible new house; pictures here, for the moment. It's currently a fourplex - two studios, one one-bedroom apartment, and one two- bedroom apartment. It was built as a duplex; we'd turn it into a triplex, I think. It's at 3842 Interlake Ave; that's a corner lot, Interlake and 39th. Mapquest shows it here, but puts the star half block or so too far south of the actual location.

There are two separate porches, one front, one back. They're both quite large. I mention this in case it's confusing. house1-2.jpg is the only picture of the back porch and back yard, insofar as it's a back yard.

Good points about the location:

Walking distance to useful and good things in Wallingford. (7 blocks.)

Walking distance to useful and good things in Fremont. (7 blocks.)

Walking distance to Gasworks Park (7 blocks, again) and Woodland Park (11 blocks), amoungst others.

Easy access to bus service - the same bus that stops outside our house now stops a block and a half away. (I am loving that part.)

Easy access to Burke-Gilman trail - similar to what we have now, only with a gentler hill on the way back. (Four blocks.)

It has a view of Lake Union from the upper floors, but I don't really care about that, honestly.

Planting strips. Which are, of course, gardenable. I would plant more trees, since that's what I kind of do.

Known BAD things about the location:

Four blocks north of the transfer station. I couldn't hear noise from it while I was there. I was listening for it. I also smelled nothing bad. But are there times when I could? I don't know.

Only one block east of Stone Way, which is busy, but since it's sharply uphill, it didn't seem to matter much from a noise standpoint.

It's cheap enough that we'd be able to pay people to do the kind of fixing up we'd want to have done, for once. (Yay!) Also, the houses around it are generally in better condition. But: what're the problems? It needs a lot of work, that's one obvious problem. In particular, if anybody knows anything bad about the location, I'd love to hear it.

Other good things:

1905 construction

Full-sized (and currently unused) basement

Unused attic space may be convertable, we don't know yet.

4788 square feet, according to King County, of which 3192 is currently built out; that's bigger across three units than what we have now in main house, pt. 8, and the Admiralty. Add in more - via, say, the basement or attic - and you're talking size.

Quiet street - at least, while we were there. LOTS of available street parking.

Other houses nearby are nicer.

Planting strips between the sidewalk and street

Lot and a half.

Other bad things:

NO parking on the lot right now, but we could probably build room for one or possibly two cars in back without it looking inappropriate. If it's not impossibly expensive, a basement parking spot should also be an option. It would be appropriately period, if done right - it'd probably go in where the street-facing basement door is now. But, again, it might be too expensive.

Some garden space, but not much. It's mostly in back, which is a good place to have it, but still - not much.

Neighbourhood has fewer trees than where we live now, which is mostly just going to be true no matter where I can find. :( ) This is not entirely mitigated by the presense of nearby treed parks.

Exteriour was "simplified" in the 50s, I think. (That stucco isn't original; lap siding was definitely involved at one time.) Also, I hate the colour.