The Stars and the Cookie Jar

So today we went to see a fantastic Arts and Crafts house, two blocks from the bus line, with built-ins galore and vintage light fixtures and all the modern appliances and enough room for our dining-room furniture of more than Oriental splendour. The back garden was massive -- three trees all of its own, a quince bush, enough space for a vegetable garden, and offstreet parking for both the cars, fenced in all around.

The upper floor had two bedrooms, which, fine. The advertisement had promised a 'family room', which we figured would lodge chaos_pockets in comfort. So I was a little puzzled when, after the beautiful living room, dining room, kitchen, and fantastically detailed bedrooms, we... ran out of rooms. The estate agent led us to the basement, and I think we all thought, okay, score! The family room is in the finished basement!!

It had unfinished whitewashed walls; you could tell that in the Nineteen-Teens, when the house was built, they had been packed-earth. The ceiling was bare lathe, and the light fixture was one bare bulb. The washer/dryer took up half the space, which was additionally crippled by the stairs from above, and the door to a storage space that the owner 'wasn't renting out'.

We tried to put a brave face on it, because we loved the upper part of the house, but this was what the advertisement had meant by a family room.

Argh. I want to kick something, because I want that house, and it's just. Not. Practical.

ETA: Oh, besides! No sign of mice, rats, snakes, or overt car theft (there was a BMW cheerfully parked across the street). Not a trace of roaches in the kitchen cabinets, and I looked. I practically yanked the taps off in the bathroom, trying to find some disappointment, some crucial murderous flaw in this house besides the unfortunate, but very vintage, salmon paint in the living room.