My husband and I were looking to buy a house.
We only had so much money to work with and we thought if we bought a fixer-upper, we could get more square footage.
We had been looking for a while, but there wasn’t much available, but then we got lucky. We found a large block home that had been empty for about five years. Vandals had broken the windows and had parties and some floors needed to be replaced, and the yard was terribly overgrown. It looked a lot worse than it was. The realtor informed us that the electrical wiring and the plumbing was in good shape. The place was a mess and there were leaks in the roof, but it had a fireplace. I had always wanted a fireplace. It’s hard to find a home with a fireplace in the subtropical area that we lived in and the fireplace appeared to be in good shape. We could fix the floors and the roof and replace the windows and clean up the mess, but we may not find another house in our budget that had a fireplace. So, we bought the house and spent a couple of months fixing it up before buying furniture and we put the couch right in front of the fireplace where I always imagined it would be. We used the fireplace a lot that first year, but now not so much. The fun and excitement of having a fireplace wore off as novel things tend to do. But we still use it when we have guests over in the winter.