House Hunting

MK and I are, have been, looking at houses. It started last summer, kind of an off shoot of my tendency to read the real estate section of the Sunday paper. There were some open houses and we started going. But the thing is, with MK, you can't just look and get ideas, you have to act at some point. Me, I'd drift along like all of that garbage caught in the Pacific gyre. Slowly degrading, strangling turtles, mutating the plankton.
So, I think we've found a place, in total need of remodeling, in Ben Avon Heights. Great yard, fireplace (two of my criteria so that I can garden and let the dog run loose, and have a fire), and the taxes are doable. Of course the house is owned by old people, so nothing's been done to update, let alone upgrade, since the 70s. You know, I'd rather deal with 50s crap than 70s crap. Anything pre-shag carpet is preferable to the post shag era.
MK has talked to the realtor a few times and the old woman who owns it is willing to deal on price. I have some mixed feelings though, about all of the work this place needs. I tend to do as much work on a house myself as what I am capable of doing. Electrical is beyond my means, and major plumbing is too, but that leaves a whole lot of other work that I can do. So I ask myself, do I want to do this? Go from fixing up one house to another? Basically I just want one house that I'll stay in and that's it. Let someone complain fifty years from now when they buy it from our estate about how it needs to be updated because of the old ladies that lived there.
We'll see what happens. MK has her house on the southside of Pgh and I've got this fossil of a house in Zelienople. We're planning on living with each other full-time after my youngest finishes his first year of college (just so that I can keep an eagle on him - he's smart, but lazy). I'm more than willing to move to MK's place. It's spacious, beautiful, and in the heart of the southside. Her moving to my house is out of the question because it's too far from her work, although I love Zelie. I always have, ever since I was a kid and my mom would take my sister and me to the A&P with her. That smell of freshly ground coffee...
Anyway, yea or nay, we'll probably be making a decision soon about whether this is where we're moving or not. MK is nesting mode, because of the dog, and being in Ben Avon is closer to Zelie than she is now, so Bela and I would down there more often.