The trouble with buying a place

Lately, Finnur and I have been looking at houses/townhouses/row-houses to buy. To do so, we’ve been watching fasteignir.is, which is the main real-estate website, and lamenting how very primitive it is.

For example: They do not offer a map-view of all the properties for sale (check out redfin.com and zillow.com for a good example, we used to live in zip: 94043), nor do they actually list the number of the property, only the street-name. I guess this is for ‘privacy’, but then anybody at all can ‘send in a request’ and get emailed a ‘sales-sheet’ which lists ALL the information. I would argue that all this stuff should be on the website. It sure would save me a lot of trouble!

Also, there is no way to look up what other properties in the same neighborhood have recently sold for.  And we’ve been told that the asking prices are in some cases totally insane, but gauging just how insane is hard.  This is partly because many of the larger real estate deals these days are ‘swaps’, because financing is hard to come by, and during a ‘swap’ it is beneficial for all parties to significantly inflate the prices of both properties.

Anyway, leaving aside the map-handicap, and the price-handicap, Finnur and I have now looked at enough properties to get a small sense of another problem we face.  Ourselves.  As in: We’re lazy, so we’d like to buy something that doesn’t need a lot of work. The big question is: How much work is too much work?!

For example, if a kitchen is in pretty good shape, but the doors are ugly, and we’d like to get new ones, is that ok?  What about replacing an old kitchen, particularly if the layout of the place is perfect, just old?  How crazy is putting in a new kitchen?  And just how expensive?!

Bathrooms are another headache. We looked at a place where the main bathroom looked really nice, and was probably only slightly over 5 years old. The problem was that the owner was a ‘bath’ person, so the bath was under the large window, while the shower was tiny, smelly, cramped, dark, still wet from usage from floor to ceiling, and in an inside corner – aka utterly unusable.

In that case, the rest of the house was pretty ok, so the bathroom would be the only thing to go, but is it defensible to rip out a perfectly functioning bathroom just because one would like the shower in a different spot?

Making things ever worse, in my mind anyway, is the fact that I know that I have really really crappy ‘taste’.  Well, let’s put it this way: I like things to be rainbow-colored.  Like our plates for example.  I think they’re very pretty plates, and just the sight of them makes me happy.  Happy colors = Happy Hrefna.  The trouble is that rainbow colors translate very poorly into room design, which these days is all monochromatic, dull and duller.

Which is all a long winded way of saying that I don’t trust myself to ‘design’ or even just ‘decide’ on designs of others.  Well, that’s not true.  I know I would make decisions (I’m good at doing that), but I fear that in the grand scheme of things, they would add up to crazy cacophony.

Now, perhaps I’m wrong, but I’m starting to suspect that this may be a renter’s affliction.  As in, we’ve always rented, and therefore have never really had any say what so ever in the look of our housing, just the furnishings.  (The only exception was our first five years living together, where we were free to paint the walls, and did so with really quite atrocious results in some cases.  Perhaps I’m still damaged from that!)

So yes, finding the ‘perfect’ place will be neigh impossible I fear.  And boy oh boy will the two of us have to brush up on our communication skills if we’re ever going to get through this without grievous injury!

Finally, some progress!

Bjarki woke up in a right foul mood this morning, but at least it was a very energetic foul mood, which was a relief after all his lethargy yesterday. He also did not have a fever at all. Yay for antibiotics! 🙂

As the day wore on, he steadily became more and more energetic, so much so that he didn’t even manage to fall asleep after lunchtime, and his mood improved too. Bottom line is that unless something drastic happens tonight, he’s going to daycare tomorrow.

As planned yesterday, when we realized that both kids would be out of school for a second day, Anna got picked up by grandma Anna around 11am, and they spent the day together. They apparently had a good time, and Anna (free of fever) returned shortly before dinner. She is also slated to go to school tomorrow, and not a day too soon since she’s “Student of the Week” in her class this week!

Finnur finally felt significantly better today, after being miserable since Friday. After having little luck in with watching Everton play Arsenal tonight online, he even mustered up the energy to drive to the ‘Everton-pub’ at half-time. This marks the first time he leaves the house for about five days!

As for me, I decided to cancel my class this morning, since I neither had the time, nor the energy to prepare a lecture with everybody being sick. This will come back to bite me though since I’ve scheduled a make-up class next week, so that will be three lectures in one week. Sigh.

On the health front I’m doing ok, although I noticed this afternoon that I was slightly dizzy as I walked to my class in the Education Department. Yes, there’s still some phlegm, and a raspy voice, but hopefully these are just lingering issues that will go away soon.

Here’s hoping for continued health improvements! 🙂

… aaaand we have penicillin!

So Monday started up bright and early, well, at 7am. I held down the fort for a couple of hours (both kids measured at 37.4°C, yay! heading in the right direction) before a-still-very-sick-and-lethargic Finnur kindly crawled out into the living room to supervise dvd-viewing while I napped.

Fast-forward to lunchtime. I managed to persuade the sick-lings to put a handful of bites into their gobs, and then it was rest-time. Before everyone went down temps got taken again (we really want those kids to go to school soon!) and were 37.8 (Anna) and 38.0 (Bjarki). Erm, not good.

Bjarki collapsed into bed with Finnur, while Anna stubbornly refused to sleep. I ended up taking her on a grocery run, which these days means loading up on Gatorade. Yup, Gatorade is apparently the medically approved drink of choice for sick ones that refuse to eat, or eat very little, and is supposedly better to stave off dehydration than just plain old water.

Later that afternoon Bjarki started wailing while trying to wake up, and eventually I decided it was time to have him checked out again. It just didn’t look like he was getting any better like Anna appeared to be. Being late in the day, I opted to haul him to the neighborhood health clinic (Heilsugæslustöð) where they have an ‘after-hours’ program where you can show up between 4-6 pm and wait in line to see a doctor.

So we showed up around 5pm, got signed in, and sat down. It soon became apparent that Bjarki was supremely lethargic, and he basically lounged/slept on my lap for the next hour and a half as we waited. Yup, it was a long long wait (no reordering on a basis of ‘who is sickest’, and apparently Mondays are usually bad) but in the end we got in to see the doctor.

She took a good listen to his lungs, and said that they didn’t sound phlegm-y, only uneven/unequal, which could be a sign of pneumonia, or the beginning of one. That combined with his general demeanor suggested to her that penicillin was probably needed, and we emerged (quasi-victorious) with a prescription entered into the general database. (Yup, Iceland now has a central database for prescriptions, so patients can go to ANY pharmacy, and they can look them up. No papers needed, no official transfers between pharmacies.)

With that we headed to the pharmacy, which is conveniently located next to a large grocery store, and since it was late I went there to grab some grilled chicken (yup, from under the heat-lamps) and gave Finnur a call, who agreed to put some rice up, although it sounded like it could very well be the end of him!

So with that we went home, ate dinner, and got Bjarki to bed. When it was Anna’s turn to go to bed, I took her temperature, and curses, it was up to 38°C, meaning no school for her tomorrow either. Perhaps not surprisingly, I’ve already cancelled tomorrow-morning’s class… and now we wait and see what tomorrow brings….