No tarantulas today!

After church, we grabbed a quick bite and headed over to Sanger to meet our realtor. We went through three houses in Sanger, all of which were just suffocatingly small. First up was the one I liked the most, which happens to be across the street from the municipal pool and city park. The interior was clean but cramped, with little to no storage space. It did have a wonderful backyard, however, with several big trees and plenty of room.




Next was what I will call The Cave. It had impeccable landscaping and a very nice work building in the back yard, but it had the smallest kitchen I've ever seen outside of an efficiency apartment:





I was unaware that there were any working avocado-green appliances anywhere on the continent anymore. I'm pretty sure that's the same fridge we had in our trailer house in Oklahoma when I was growing up in the 1970s.

Anyhow, a kitchen that small is a deal breaker for me. I must have room to work. If the asking price were about ten grand less and we had abundant money to spend on the place, I'd rip it out and start from scratch. But it just wasn't that good of a house to begin with. I called it a Cave because it was fully paneled with few windows. Yecch!

Moving right along, we went to a third house in Sanger that was so unremarkable that I didn't even feel like taking pictures of it.

Next, we stopped to fill up with gas and our realtor bought us drinks. Wasn't that just the nicest thing?

In the actual Town of Valley View, we visited a 3-2 ranch that looks like it has some potential.





The kitchen is large and empty, meaning I can pimp it out the way I want it (starting by removing those ghastly birdhouse stick-ons). The yard is unkempt, but has a terrific privacy fence around the back. It's kind-of a blank slate, really, which could be fun. Plus it's a block from the school and extremely close to I-35 access.

The last one was my favorite, but there are some serious questions about whether we can get a loan for it or whether it's a wise move financially... because it's a double-wide. But it had by far the most interior space and is in stellar condition, with little or no fix-it stuff to do.











It's also by far the most remote location of anything we saw. But I love the lot, I love the quiet, I love the TREES, and I love the ROOM. They had built on a huge covered front porch as well as the side deck you saw above, and everything was immaculately maintained. They even had built in an outdoor smoker (you can see it next to the trampoline in that last photo). There was a large concrete pad which the owners had parked their RV on. The fence around the front was unfinished, but it wouldn't be difficult to string some chain link around it to keep Bijou hemmed in.

I realize, yes, there are inherent issues with a manufactured home, but they're not insurmountable, and the property could potentially meet our needs better than anything else we saw today.

Second choice is the "blank slate" one that's close to the school. I think I can safely say "no" to all the ones in Sanger we saw.