a place to call my own, in the sun, etc

Back to ME ME ME and the house purchasing.  I instructed a Builder and a Lawyer today, which surely must be about as grown up a thing as it is possible to do outside major life events (babies, moving in with your partner etc).  One of my new professionals is inspecting the possible house, one is inspecting the papers.  It’s blowing my mind.  This time tomorrow, I could have bought a house (but not settled on the purchase. See? I know how it works now!).  Certainly this time tomorrow I’ll owe some people several hundred dollars for their professional services.  The last time I spent that much money on anything I sweated for weeks over the sheer EXTRAVAGANCE and now here I am, blithely throwing money around in the face of a seriously large mortgage. 

Of course, the odds that we’ll be successful at auction seem perishingly slim.  It’s very hard to gauge how much interest there is in the house.  I know at least one other prospective purchaser has had a building inspection; the agent seems to think that others have dragged their builders through.  Who knows?  They could have been massively turned off by its state of repair.  Sadly, I’ve fallen in love with the idea of it, even though:

• It has at least two layers of peeling wallpaper;
• There are visible signs of bora in some of the floorboards;
• The window on the third bedroom doesn't close, due to it, um, what's the technical term? Falling apart;
• There is SO. MUCH. GROSS. linoleum on the kitchen/bathroom/laundry floors;
• No insulation or heating as far as I'm aware;
• It's heinously expensive for a do-up; and
• If we do buy it, we can't really afford to do it up.  So yeah, there's that.

BUT I LOVES IT, I DO.  I look at the pictures and for the first time in my young (cough) life I am possessed with desire to landscape.  Peel wallpaper.  Paint.  INSTALL SHELVING.  I want to move my furniture in there straight away (Um, I own two beds and a set of drawers.  Not exactly a houseload.  We’ll be squatting on the floor in the living room if we’re successful, believe you me). 

This is not 20s-me.  She was scornful of this sort of behaviour.  (She also wanted a cat though, we share that in common at the least.) 

AND - if we’re unsuccessful at our first auction, we do know this other great little place in Freeman’s Bay….

If I wasn’t property-obsessed before, I certainly am now.