House Hunters International

House Hunters International is one of my favourite US TV programmes.  In fact I’m addicted to it – it’s a brilliant show featuring hapless couples and families who wish to move overseas and have  decided to allow a TV company to find them a home. Mostly it features couples from Minnesota or Canada who wish to escape 8 months of winter and purchase a place in the sun in Costa Rica or Aruba, but occasionally the show does follow brave souls who wish to venture into Europe where they express horror at the mere thought of having to share bathrooms with each other let alone their offspring, as well as putting up with the close proximity of their next door neighbours.

An American friend once commented to me that the secret of her successful 20 year marriage was the fact that she had never shared a bank account or a bathroom with her husband. Well I’ve been married for the same amount of time and have always shared both, but even I have been seduced by this American dream of having his and her sinks and a separate room for the teenager’s lengthy ablutions.

In Europe the size of the rooms is always an issue with US couples – tight, tiny and is this a bedroom or a closet? are the usual comments.  So how would we as pseudo Americans fare as we travelled back to the UK to spend a week house hunting in preparation for our return this summer?

Whilst the husband is off to the desert to make sure all the pipes and tanks he has purchased for his oil refinery now fit together like a giant set of mecano, the teenager and I will be heading back in England.  

House hunting was always going to be interesting as he was looking for something rather grand to justify the blood sweat and tears of the last 3 years whilst I preferred something small and cosy for our ever decreasing family.  My comment of “a bit too big” for the first prospective house rather worryingly provoked a reply of “Too big? It wasn’t big enough”, confirming my fears that our search would be fraught with difficulties.  Where’s Kirstie Allsop when you need her?

In the US TV show the families are only shown three homes and always end up buying one, although careful editing ensures there are enough negative comments to leave you totally baffled as to which house they will actually choose.  Whether careful editing also means that it is actually house number 43 that is chosen I’m not sure as I find it hard to believe that the participants would be willing to view only three homes before making a decision to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars - unless of course they receive a huge financial incentive when they do, or face legal action if they don’t.

Anyhow, house number 6 finally came up trumps for us, spotted the day before we were due to fly home. Deceptively small – it goes up rather than outwards – this particular home had numerous bathrooms – one each and even a spare for guests so definitely no need to share and cross contaminate each other, and the walk-in closet totally clinched the deal. You can’t expect to live amongst these people for two and a half years and not have some of their mentality  rub off on you!

PS In case anyone is wondering the house in the photo is not mine, but is one of Pasadena’s historic gems  - the home of Mr Gamble of Proctor & Gamble washing powder fame.  The house was donated to the city of Pasadena by Mr Gamble’s descendents who decided not to sell this fine example of Arts & Crafts architecture after a potential purchaser's wife remarked how dark and gloomy all the wood paneling made the interior seem and it would take a good few coats of magnolia to cover it all up! When I toured the house these were my exact same thoughts. Oops!