House Hunting

I saw 5 houses today in the hopes of putting a few on a short list to look at once Archer returns.  Oh, I didn't mention that he left to go do research for the week?  Yes, that's right.  We sold our house on Saturday, and on Monday, he left the country to go photograph some sites and do a bit of archival work.  I dealt with mortgage stuff all day yesterday, and today I looked at houses.  Shall I say yuck, yuck, and yuck?  One was actually lovely.  It needed some work, but nothing horrific.  Nothing that we haven't done to our current home.  I was thinking it was a real contender, and then I went into the basement.  The house was built in the 1890s, and it still has the original cast iron sewer pipe, which doesn't look to be in great shape.  Yes, my agent took one look at that and said, "M, we're done with this one."  The sellers aren't likely to fix it before finalizing a sale, as it will cost somewhere in the ballpark of $15 to $18,000 to remove and update.  If it leaks at any point--and it looked like it was about to burst while I stood there--it would cause major damage to the entire left wall of the house.  So that one is off the list.  The others I saw were just ok.  Nothing to write about.  The one with the plumbing issues, though, makes me sad.  Not only did it have lots of lovely original details (including stained glass), but it was an older home that had been updated really well.  Plus you could stand on the front porch and see one of the three schools we're interested in.  Seriously.  I could stand on the front porch, drinking coffee, and watch my children walk to school.  I will stop now before I start figuring out how to fix the plumbing problems.