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Saturday morning, as I was doing the exercises given to me by my physical therapist(s), Fred came out of the computer room.
“There’s a new one for sale!” he said excitedly.
Ever since we decided that it wouldn’t hurt to start looking for a house out in the country now instead of waiting ’til we put our house up for sale, he’s been stalking ValleyMLS, sending me links to houses, and just generally driving me crazy.
“Oh yeah?” I said. “Where?”
“Smallville,” he said. “That’s not far from here!” (Smallville, of course, is not the actual name of the town, but it’s a very small town and I don’t want to give stalkers any hints on where to find us. Therefore, we’ll be referring to it as Smallville.) “Plus, we’ll be about five minutes from the river, which will be good for kayaking!”
“Well,” I said. “Call and find out more about it, and when I’m done with these exercises and have eaten, we can go drive by it.”
We drove out into Athens – past Athens, really – a couple of weeks ago to look at a house, and just seeing the exterior of the house was enough to put us off. Plus, the drive kinda sucked; it was further out than we wanted to go.
He called and talked to the realtor who was listing the house, found out where it was, and by the time I was done eating breakfast, he was practically hopping in place, he was so excited to get on the road. I decided to take my shower later, and we left.
It took us some doing to find the place, because one road turns into another road, and we hadn’t seen any signs indicating the road name change. Fred stopped and asked for directions (YES, he asks for directions! He’s no stereotypical “I don’t need to ask no directions!” man.), and found that we were on the right road, we just needed to keep going.
We found the house and drove by it, turned around, and drove by it again. We both tried to put a positive spin on it, but honestly, neither of us cared for it. Not to mention that it was 1500 square feet, and our current house is (I think) 2400 square feet. Yes, we could live in 1500 square feet, but did we want to?
“I… well, maybe we should just call Joe (the realtor who sold us this house) and see if we can go through it,” I said, but I could already tell that Fred wasn’t into that idea.
“Yeah, I guess so,” he said reluctantly.
So we headed back toward home, and almost as an afterthought I pointed out the “for sale by owner” house we’d passed on the way. “We should write down the phone number and call them,” I said.
“Yeah, that’s a cute little house,” Fred said. He turned around and we looked it over again. “I don’t see heat or air conditioning units, though. Do you see any window units?”
More important to us than space is central heat and air. You can’t live in Alabama without it. Well, you could, but I wouldn’t want to.
I didn’t see any window units, and I didn’t see heat and air units, but I wrote down the number anyway.
When we got home, I went upstairs to take a shower, and Fred ate breakfast and came up to talk to me. I don’t remember what we talked about – I think I got pissy with him, though, whatever it was – and I said “Did you call about that ‘for sale by owner’ house?”
“Not yet,” he said.
“Why don’t you?” I suggested, knowing that it was pointless. It was going to be too small, not have central heat and air, or not be on enough land, I could just feel it.
He came back upstairs a while later while I was blow-drying my hair.
“The bad news is,” he said, holding up a piece of paper, “it’s only on 4 1/2 acres of land.” We’ve been talking about 5 acres or more. “It’s 4 bedrooms, 2 1/2 baths, about 2200 square feet, has heat and air conditioning units in the back – that’s why we didn’t see them – and they’ve redone the electrical and the plumbing completely. It was built in 1935 and had the same owner until 2000, when the woman went into a nursing home. The current owners bought it from the estate a few years later, and now they’re ready to sell.”
“DAMN!” I said, my eyes big as saucers. “We should go see the inside!”
“She’s going to email me some pictures of the inside,” Fred said. “She’s out driving around right now.”
He checked his email repeatedly until we left an hour later, but by the time we left the house, we’d received no pictures.
When we got home close to 8:00, the pictures had arrived. And each picture was better than the last, at least to me. We analyzed every inch of every picture, Fred forwarded them to his Dad for an opinion. Then he tried to call the owner to set up a time when we could walk through the house.
He ended up getting the husband of the woman he’d talked to earlier, and when Fred suggested late Sunday morning, the guy said something along the lines of “We prefer not to do business on The Sabbath.”
They settled on Monday afternoon, the guy told Fred he’d have his wife call him to settle on an exact time, and then Fred emailed the woman to let her know we were interested in seeing the house.
So Monday at 3:30 – 3:45ish was decided, and we spent every minute of the rest of the weekend staring at the pictures she’d sent, discussing what we’d do where. We talked it to DEATH, because while Fred was cautious about the house and whether we’d like it, I was unequivocal in my love for the house. I was IN LOVE, I knew it, I was practically ready to make an offer for it sight unseen.
Monday morning Fred called. “I don’t want to bum you out,” he said.
“Whaaaaaaaaaaaaat?” I moaned. Sometimes – most of the time – I wish he’d just come out and say it rather than pussyfooting around what he’s going to say.
“I just talked to the owner, and she said someone dropped off a contract yesterday.”
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” I said.
“She said she didn’t think they were going to take it, so maybe we’ve still got a shot.”
I spent the rest of the day stressing out about it, because I LOVED THIS HOUSE. Which is when I decided to ask y’all to send generic good thoughts my way – sorry if I worried any of you, I tried not to! – and when we set off for the house, I felt surprisingly optimistic.
To cut a way-too-long story short, we LOVED the house. It has a huge front porch – which I’ve always wanted – it has lots of room (it seems, really, like it has MORE room than our current house; I’m wondering if 2200 square feet is an accurate measure of it), it has a nice big kitchen (room for an island or a butcher block in the middle), it has a window over the kitchen sink (which I’ve always wanted), and the amount of land is AWESOME.
When we were done looking at the house and the land, I was so worried that the owners would take the other offer that I was fairly vibrating with excitement and worry and love for the house. Fred asked the owner what they wanted for the house – he hates to haggle – and she named a figure, and we went out back and pretended to talk about it, then went back in for one more look at the house.
And we made the offer, and Fred discussed the closing costs with her husband (via cellphone), and the next thing we knew – the offer had been accepted!
Last night, Fred and the realtor – the guy who sold us this house, who agreed to usher us all through this process – drew up the contract, took it out to the house, and everyone signed. And assuming that nothing goes wrong with the house inspection (Thursday morning) or the appraisal – and we’ve already been approved for the mortgage – on September 29th, we’ll be closing on our dream house.
It needs a lot – A LOT – of cosmetic work inside, and lots of work on the land, but since we won’t be moving in ’til next Spring (we have to stay in Madison so the spud can graduate from her high school; we had hoped we could go ahead and move in and she could drive to school in Madison from Smallville (only a 20 minute drive). But Fred talked to the superintendent yesterday, who said that there was nothing in place to deal with something like that, so no. We’re not going to yank the kid out of her high school a month into her Senior year; she’s been going to this school district for 7 years now.), we have lots of time to work on the inside of the house and the land.
I think I know what we’ll be doing with our nights and weekends for the foreseeable future…
And what kind of journaler would I be if I didn’t have a house tour up and ready to go?
Here you go.
Emu. We refer to all emus as “Bill Phillips”, because the man looks strikingly like an emu. Disturbingly so. See for yourself. I mean that comparison in the nicest possible way, of course.
Someone on one of the message boards Fred visits on a regular basis made this out of one of Fred’s emu pictures, and it makes me laugh ’til I wheeze.
As Fred termed it (and I adopted it), a melange of tigers. That’s Doc on the left. Doesn’t he LOOK like he’d like to take a chunk out of your ass?
“I’m mean! Yes I am!”
“I consider this sibling conquered. What ever shall I do next?”
He swore there was no tongue involved.
This dog – the “babysitter”, Sue called him – did not HESITATE to mix it up with the cubs.
All of today’s uploaded pictures can be seen here.