There is some small amounts of water (rot) damage to some of the trim on the outside of the house, and one window.

There appears to be some sort of small leak in the roof of the family room. The most likely explanation is that there is a leak somewhere around the vents on the ridge line of the roof. Since it’s been raining here very hard for some days now this probably is about as bad as it’s going to get.

The really good news is that the basement was completely dry, which after all the rain is a good thing, and more than can be said for the basement in the house where I’m staying. Since I sleep in the basement there inch or so of water around my bed is not a good thing !

The rest of the house looked great and in fine condition. So we’ll go forward and sign the purchase and sales agreement tomorrow (Monday) and close in mid-June.

There are some more photos on my flicker page.

26 Cabot St A well maintained older house, and in a great neighbourhood on a nice quiet street. Unfortunately some years ago (I would estimate 20-30 at least) the owners sold half their lot and a second house was built. That effectively removed the rear garden of this house and makes in unattractive for us.

4 Grove St A really nice old victorian house, with a surprisingly good interior layout and a nice yard. It’s one detraction is that it’s close to a rather busy junction and street. It’s also listed as having only 2550 sq. ft interior – although it felt larger.

1 Fernway We looked at a slightly more expensive house further ‘up the hill’ from this property last week – so this was a ‘comparison’ oppurtunity. This house however really doesn’t match up to the other property, it’s much closer to the main road and has a much smaller yard. Although the other house at 29 Mccall Road is more expensive it probably offers better value.

21 Blossom Hill Road This is a cape that has been quite well renovated both inside and out. However they’ve done little to fix the basic problems with the cape design – not enough space upstairs. There’s no master bathroom upstairs, just one shared bathroom with a second bedroom. The other two bedrooms are on the ground floor level.

4 Ravine Road At a little over 1.5 million this house is out of our budget but we had some time to kill between houses so we took a look anyway. But… eeeekkk ! What a dreadfully poorly designed house, whilst some parts are really spacious the bedrooms were tiny for such a large house. The indoor ‘spa pool’ seemed almost to be on top of the kitchen ! My suggestion to my realtor was to find out who the architect was and stay a long way away from anything they had designed !

14 Ardley Road This was a great house, and although a little expensive for the square footage in comparison to some it’s a great location and a really nice house ! The problems ? Well… the sellers are returning to Australia and want a late summer close – I’m not sure if we want to wait that long. Also the selling realtor is intimating that there’s a lot of interest and I’m not sure if we want to get involved in a bidding war.

I drove over to Newton this morning – it has a reasonable town center around the ‘T’ (commuter rail) station. It didn’t feel all that ‘great’ though – a bit too urban I think. Especially in comparison to towns like Concord. There are certainly some nice properties but they’re more expensive and I think the commute is probably a bit too long for the ‘value’ of the town.

After Newton I drove through Sudbury and looked at a few houses. Sudbury feels a lot like Lincoln, plenty of open space, but no real town center like Lincoln, it’s also small enough that it doesn’t have it’s own High School, in fact it shares it’s High School with Lincoln.

I then went on to look at open houses in Concord, Acton and Andover. More details below …

The first open house was in Concord at 33 Summit Drive a very nice house, however it’s about 3.5 miles from the Concord town center which is too far really.

Next was 24 Summer St Acton it’s a new house with probably 2 more months of construction (the agent gave what I think was an optimistic quote of 6 weeks). Acton, or more accurately West Acton has a small but nice little row of shops with a bit of an overabundance of Italian resturants (there were 3). The West Acton village center was less than 0.5 miles from the Summer St house. The house certainly sounds from the agents description as though it’s going to be very high quality with a very high level of fittings and finishes. There are photos of West Acton here.

I also looked at two houses on Nagog Hill Road in Acton, the first was at 226 Nagog Hill Road This was a really nice house – and I think very good value for the money, it had a nice yard and was very close to the Nagog Pond and the nearby trails. The house had had some upgrades done (mostly on the kitchen) but still needed an upgrade to the Master Bathroom (though the present one was serviceable). The basement was semi-finished but the house also had a library with office, so it didn’t seem like I’d need to put an office in the basement anyway. The only problem with this house (and even more with the next) is that it was a mile from the historic Acton Center and more than 3 miles from the West Acton Village which probably doesn’t make it a contender. The other house at 334 Nagog Hill Road was a classic example of 70s design and as such really just felt all wrong ! Not to mention that it’s even further out (1.75 miles from historic Acton Center). The countryside around both these houses is really nice though !

The last house was in Andover at Dawn Circle also a new house but more advanced that the Summer St Acton home. Again a nice design with a good level of finishes (nearly all of which were in place) included a jacuzzi tub in the master bath. The house had a huge great room (or family room) that was probably 400 square feet which I really liked (very high ceilings too). There was no real office but the basement opened out to the yard and could have been finished pretty easily and probably fairly cheaply too. This house however was about 2.5 miles from the Andover town center which again is probably too far. However the agent said she had another newly built house about to come on to the market which was closer to downtown (though she was vague about exactly where it was).

Reading does have a town center however it’s not really ‘cute’ or ‘quaint’ so again I think it’s probably not on our list of candidate towns. I’ll be checking out Andover and Newton at the weekend.

In other news: I’ve managed to fix 3 bugs today and one of them successfully passed the check-in-test rules Avid has in place to try and make sure that the code shared between so many engineers stays in good shape.

Concord is one of the oldest towns in Massachusetts and has a lot of history relating to Independence, The Minutemen and battles with the British. It’s as a fairly large town with a nice downtown and a reasonable selection of houses in our budget. The open house I went to however wasn’t attractive – frankly a little expensive for what it was and not to my taste It was an older house from 1937 I’d prefer to look at houses that are either really old (and in Concord that can actually mean 250 years old) or pretty recent (10-15 years). The stuff in the middle is often not to Michele or my tastes. However whilst Concord has a nice town center it doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of trails for running so it might not meet Michele’s criteria. There are more photos here. I went to second open house in Concord too – it was a much nicer house, larger, more to my taste and only 15 minutes walk from the town center. However it was expensive, had association fees of $400 per month and had next to zero yard. It also had one of the worst realtors showing it I’ve come across. She spent the entire 20 minutes I was there on the phone to someone else (I doubt a customer she was speaking French) and completely failed to attempt to engage me in any sort of sales dialogue ! Driving time from Concord to Boston is about 31 minutes and from Concord to Avid is 30 minutes

Unlike Concord, Lincoln has a lot of running trails – according to the (much nicer) realtor I spoke with there some 40% of the town is conservation land and has a large network of trails around the town and extending out to nearby Walden Pond. I would estimate there’s some 20-30 miles of trails. Unfortunately Lincoln has next to zero town center , just a handful of stores near the commuter rail station. The house I looked at was probably too small for our needs but had a nice level 1/2 acre lot. Newer houses in the town have a minimum of 2 acres according to town zoning laws. Driving times from Lincoln to Boston is 27 minutes and from Lincoln to Avid is 35 minutes.

It’s a little more expensive than other areas but probably still within reach. According to Google maps it’s a 27 minute drive to Avid and 23 minutes to downtown Boston.

Definately a candidate town but I’m not too sure that there’s a lot of ‘green spaces’ for Michele to go running.