We are actually buying a house

And…we are under contract! I bet you thought we were just going to look forever.

In case you’re confused, this house is in Albuquerque, where we plan to stay for a little while longer.

It’s a modest house, and if I wasn’t used to New Mexico, I’d think it was a funny looking house, but this architectural style is quite common in Albuquerque. Plus, it looks pink to me, but that color stucco is everywhere here.

A gated front courtyard is also common here, like down in Mexico. However, I don’t like the cage-like look of the full height gate. We’ll take that metal gate down right away.

Initially we’ll probably leave it without any kind of gate. It’ll be a nice spot for potted plants and will be sheltered from the wind.

Eventually we’ll probably either install a lower gate, or expand the courtyard. The windows to the right (in the picture below) are the master bedroom, and I don’t like the bedroom window facing the street. An expanded front courtyard would add privacy and value to the home because front courtyards really are part of the culture here. They are especially common in Santa Fe, where often they are built all the way up to the street, like in Mexico. Albuquerque city code probably requires set-backs from the street, but I’m pretty sure we would still have enough room to put something additional there in front of the house. Luckily, there is no HOA to worry about.

The house was built in 1979, but the interior has recently been redone, which is nice. We didn’t want a huge remodel project. I’m not a fan of carpet and it’s unfortunately throughout the house, even in the dining room. But it’s brand new, so we’ll just leave it.

There are two living rooms right next to each other with a wall between them. The listing calls them a “living room” and a “family room”. We don’t need two adjacent living rooms, but we do need an office. A lot of newer homes I’ve seen recently have an office near the front entry, separated from the entry by a set of french doors. So I’d like to add French doors and make the first living room into an office. The French doors would go in the open doorway you see near the front door in this photo:

That would leave the “family room” to become the living room. It is adjacent to the kitchen, providing a more modern “great room”, that looks out to the backyard.

It has a “gas assist” wood burning fireplace. The gas is just used right at first to light the wood. That’s crazy, what’s the point of that? But maybe we could convert it to a gas fireplace fairly easily. We’ve made that conversion twice before in different houses, but in those cases there wasn’t already already gas piped to the fireplace. So maybe it would be easier since there’s already gas to the fireplace.

There’s a breakfast nook between the living room and the kitchen, with a sliding glass door to a generous sized backyard. The ceilings are low and there’s no vaulting, which is a disappointment, but it gets good light. And the backyard looks very nice out the windows.

The kitchen has been updated and has a gas stove. We’ll need to buy a refrigerator.

There’s just two bathrooms. The master bathroom is small, but upgraded. The hall bathroom has a tub.

There are also two guest bedrooms, for a total of three bedrooms. The rooms and the closet space is small, due to it being an older house. We will be pressed for storage space and will need to get rid of stuff and get really organized.

It has forced air heat, which is by far the most common in moderately priced houses in Albuquerque. It’s not my favorite because it’s very drying, and the air in New Mexico is already extremely dry. My townhome in Santa Fe has radiant heat in the floor, which means I can run a humidifier and the air will actually hold some of the humidity. So I will miss that. It has evaporative cooling, also the standard for most modest homes in the region.

It has a good sized backyard. A lot of backyards in New Mexico aren’t landscaped because the weather is harsh and it’s a desert. So it’s nice to have one that is at least partially landscaped, and the solid patio roof will be great. I’ll put a table out there because I love to eat outside.

Unfortunately there’s a house on the hill above, just behind the backyard, that looks down into the backyard. This is a major pet peeve of mine. It’s hard to see the neighboring house in these marketing photos, because obviously they wouldn’t want to advertise that flaw, so they did not take a picture of the overlooking house. And I didn’t take any pictures myself when I was out there. You can sort of see the overlooking house in the top left of this next photo:

From this angle the trees mostly obscure it, but from the other part of the yard the house is RIGHT THERE looking right down on top of you. I’m already plotting to remove the juniper bush, which isn’t tall enough to screen it and to plant more trees, and install some sort of pergola or gazebo on that far side of the yard to help shield the yard from the looming house above.

However, there is a major advantage of having a depressed yard like this – it is sheltered from the wind. Wind is a huge problem in New Mexico and one of the biggest issues with our house on the hill in Placitas. My backyard in Santa Fe also has a hillside behind it, and it limits the wind considerably and makes the backyard much more useable. In Santa Fe, the houses up on the hill behind the townhome are screened with numerous trees, so they aren’t bothersome.

There are generously sized side yards on both sides of the house. The side you see in the distance in the previous photo we’ll make into a large dog run. (I don’t have a good picture of it, but the side yard for the dogs is nearly as large as my entire backyard in Santa Fe.) We’ll have to do a little bit of work to get the dog run set up. The wall is too low on that side, so we’ll have to add a couple rows of cement blocks. Also it needs a bit of fencing and a gate between it and the rest of the backyard. There is a garden patch that is currently just bare dirt. I’ll plant a small lawn there for the dogs to do their duties.

I know lawns are not politically correct in the desert, but even if we put gravel in the dog run, we’d still have to water it because otherwise the pee smell just reeks after awhile. We don’t get enough natural rain to wash it through the soil. I need some sort of nitrogen fixing ground cover or lawn or something out there, and it will need regularly watered to keep the smell down, even if it’s just rocks. So I figure if I’m going to have to water rocks, I might as well water a lawn.

The other side of the house has a large access gate and cement pad where we can park the boat and the van. John is happy about that.

You can almost see the mountains in the distance from the street, but from the house and the yard there is no view at all. I’d be pretty worried about buying a house with no view at all, after the stunning views in Placitas. But we’ve discovered that we really like the “cozy” feel of our Santa Fe townhome, and don’t really miss the views.

I hope we don’t end up regretting selling the house Placitas. It’s such an impractical house, and we’ve been so frustrated with it these past 12 years. But we also have a lot of history with it, and have put a lot of time and money and effort into it and are attached to it. I suppose we will occasionally come across pictures of the astounding views and ask ourselves, “Why did we sell that house?”

Well in case I forget, here’s why:

https://youtu.be/LKOTkwDDunE

That’s not clouds in the air, by the way, that’s dirt.