More Houses We've Seen (#8)

It's been so long since I posted, I can't remember which house photos I need to post so that you can live vicariously through our home search!

HOUSE #8 - "McCree's Mill"
On paper, the perfect house for us. Well, until Bob decided he wanted 40 acres. This house is on 14ish acres, has a barn plus a detached 2 car garage/workshop, lots of fencing and 4BR's. Notice I put the house part last b/c that's kind of how the tour went in terms of best-to-worst.

The setting is BEAUTIFUL!

I am NOT a talented photographer, so my pictures don't do it justice.

The Barn was really nice. It even had water in each stall! Not that we need that; Bob doesn't plan (FOR NOW) on getting horses. I can't see us putting cows in stalls, but I'm not a farmer-rancher, so what do I know?

The cat was so sweet!

Dog runs all ready for our.... two dogs.

The HOUSE, however, was less impressive. We have a high tolerance and even a preference for fixer uppers. But we weren't feeling this one. It felt VERY small and tight from the second you walked in the front door. Every room was tiny, too.

The front door is the sliver of white/light you see on the right.

The Den/Family Room. It stops just right of the fireplace.

No eating area. Just the peninsula there.

Stairs to the basement. We didn't even get to see the basement. They said there is a full apartment down there with a tenant living in it so we'd only be able to see down there on a second visit. I didn't like how it felt looking down the stairs, so who knows what it would be like down there! The mystery will remain.

Misc. Bedroom. Can't remember the layout. Probably the master.

 Another misc. bedroom

Kid bathroom

We love porches!

The balcony off the kitchen.

Back view. Could be cute and New-Orleans-y, but the quality in person was not good. Plus, what's with this tiny fenced-in brick area? Was there a pool they filled in?? I asked and the realtor didn't know.

The house definitely needed a lot more work than we want to do - major upgrades/updates inside PLUS an addition b/c it's so small and claustrophobic. The land, while pretty, was also claustrophobic. There is fencing criss-crossing the property. While that's nice to not have to put it in, it also left little land just to ENJOY for people's sake. This picture above was pretty much the yard (between the house and the black fence on the right, with the fence by the tree forming the other boundary).

The side yard from above.

Looking at more fencing from the front porch. 

MOVING ON!

Results of The Letter....

You see how this page is empty?? Those were the results.

Not discouraged - trusting God on this is easy. He knows what's best for us! And I still like the laziness of rental living.

Photo Dump

Don't mind me! Just dumping some photos here.

(posted this so that a builder could determine the viability of expanding the house)

 Sunroom, to be expanded to den

 Garage from screened porch

Screened porch looking toward the creek / 

side entrance from the sunroom towards the back of the walkway 

Sunroom windows/garage on left 

Wall just below sunroom

The Letter

We just put the letter in the mail. Today, Wednesday, May 20, 2pm.

The letter to the owner of the land we love. 

I wanted to write it right away, Bob wanted to wait "a week or two" to really think about what we want to say.

Grrrrr.

But I waited. And thankfully, God provided plenty of distractions. I really haven't thought about it much with my (FUN!) trip to New Hampshire and all the end of sports and school-year activities we've had.

But it's written. A read, and re-read. And printed. And signed. And SENT!

We're praying!

Dream House(s)

In doing all this home-building research and talking to builders, we've discovered that we love the historical home look. Big porches, wood siding and I love lacy corbels (those thingies that go out at a 45 degree angle from the top of the post to the ceiling).

Examples:

I FELL IN LOVE with THIS ONE, but I feel it's a little too fancy for me and I also think our house shouldn't look so big/impressive from the outside. I'd rather have it look warm, welcoming and homey. It can be "big" on the inside, but I don't want it to look like it.

Isn't it a beauty?

God might have just made a way...

We fell in love with a piece of land. The problem(s!!!)?

1) It's not for sale
2) It's 45 acres. We were shooting for 10-20 (can we manage that much?)
3) 45 acres x the $ per-acre rate in the area = 2x our budget for land

We have done multiple drive-bys and looked at the satellite views 100 times, but we haven't walked the property yet. We're thinking of writing a letter to the owner asking if he'd be willing to sell. And yes, we could ask him to parcel off a 10-20 acre piece for us. But it's so pretty we don't want to. How can you carve-up perfection?

Except for the budget part.

I have been tracking land sales and talked to a lot of people around here and everything I'm hearing is that it's creeping higher and higher. The 22-acre lot across the street is for sale for 50-100% more than we can pay per acre ($6K per acre more).

So we've been praying. Asking God to PLEASE let us have this property.... but if it's not Your will for us, then please help us to accept it. AND PLEASE make the land You have for us be just as pretty. Strangely, I haven't obsessed much over this property. I think b/c it's so out of OUR realm of possibility that it has to be a God thing. Kind of like when we hadn't found a rental house oh... a MONTH before we moved here, and I really wasn't that stressed about it because there was literally nothing I could do. It was beyond my ability to plan/control things b/c the date was so close. It HAD to be God. And He provided a house better than we could have ever imagined. Seriously, we should show you some of the ones we were considering. ;))

God may be doing it again. This beyond-our-wildest dreams thing. Because this land might actually be exactly the amount we had budgeted for land. Really. Exactly.

I talked to Brian from the tax assessor's office about this piece of land. I've called him about a thousand times about different properties and the county's development plans for the future, etc. He grew up here and knows everyone ("I went to high school with his son and they have moved to Florida so they might be selling soon,", etc.) He didn't know about the owner of this property, but he did talk about land values. While I already knew this, I didn't know the actual dollar amounts were this different for large vs small acreage. These aren't the real prices but this will give you a picture:

10-20 acre parcels of land = $1600/acre
40-50 acre parcels of land = $650/acre

THESE ARE NOT THE REAL VALUES BUT it does show you the big difference in the higher # and the lower. So I was thinking it would be $1600 x 45 ($72,000) when it's more like $650 x 45 ($29,250). So the real value is less than half of what I thought it was! God might be making a way!

And remind me to tell  you about the Stone Story.

UGH. Are we going to BUILD??

We've kept our eye on the real estate market constantly. We get email alerts and check for sale by owner sites and Craigslist. But there's nothing available right now that we like. We haven't found "the one". So we've decided to start considering building. There haven't been any pieces of land we've seen online that we like, either. They're either too wooded (see below; the brown are trees, too) or too far away from things.

So I've been looking at tax maps (satellite view) of our desired area of the county. None of these houses were for sale; we thought we could always write a letter to see if they were interested in selling (giving a sweet, convincing story in the letter about why they should sell their house to us). I drove by one of these properties - you couldn't see much of it from the road, but it looked pretty. A few mailboxes down I noticed a neighbor outside and asked him if he knew of anyone who might want to sell their land/be selling soon. He said no, but that he found his property by driving around and seeing a for sale sign. So I did that. And at the end of the street, a piece of land was for sale.

I drove by - it looked promising!I really don't want to build a house. While Bob and I are alike in many ways and have the same goals in life.... we vary greatly when it comes to home improvement. I want more, he wants less/none. I see possibilities, he doesn't see them or he can see them but it blinded/distracted by the dollar signs he sees dancing in front of them. I don't see this as a fun time for us (unless he gives me complete control and then it would be awesome). And while I LOVE to give opinions/make decisions, I almost feel like building a house would make my brain explode.

Have you ever walked into a store and just been overwhelmed by whatever is around you? I remember that first happening to me when I went into a fabric store. SO.MUCH.FABRIC. Rows and rows and rows. How do you ever pick? I've also felt this in those small boutique stores with cute little trinkets. Because of all the trinkets. You walk in and immediately have to stop. And take a step every thirty seconds as your heads goes up and down while scanning the shelves on the left and right. The last time this happened to me was three weeks ago. In Hobby Lobby. CRAFTS GALORE. Felt, glitter, picture framing, woodworking, painting, sewing, knitting, stickers, puffy crafty ball thingys, foam shapes, scrap booking (and more!) plus tons of (cute) decorating things. But still - too much! That's kind of how I feel with building a house. It would be a DREAM of mine, but also somewhere I'm not sure I want to go.


LAND #1
This piece of land is 22 acres, divided into two 11-acre lots. The cost of one of the lots is what we were hoping to pay TOTAL for land, but the way these are divided, I don't think we'd want to only buy one. It's near the intersection of two roads, one of which is a "kind of" busy country road. We'd put the pasture land along the busier road and the house in the back so there would be "buffers". These two streets are two of my favorite streets in the county. So how perfect would that be?

The yellow lines above show the division of the land and the pasture/tree areas/ One of the lots is just pasture - no trees (the one on the south/bottom) . But the other has pretty trees toward the back - perfect for a house, since I don't love the house-in-the-middle-of-the-field look. It already has fencing, too, so Bob would love that!

View towards the road (from where the house might be)

View towards the road (from where the house might be)

View towards the back. That big oak tree is AWESOME. 

Perfect shape - just like the Connecticut quarter

Looking north towards the property boundary

From the "back" looking towards the road, but there's a little knoll so you can't see the road from back there (privacy!)

Back property line along the trees

So as you can see by all the pictures, we saw the land. Walked it with the owner and asked a lot of questions. We figured out how to make it work price-wise. But.

It just didn't feel right. We weren't as in-love or in-awe as we wanted to be.  So - moving on.

More Houses we've looked at (#6 & #7)

*We're looking for 10-30 acres - land or with a house. Bob wants as move-in-ready as possible, Sarah wants to do some work. And of course, a low purchase price. Bob thinks a low purchase price means he has to pay less money. Sarah think it means there will be more money in the renovation budget. Timing - we just renewed our lease til June 2016, so if we will be building a new home we need to start NOW. If we're buying an existing home and doing renovations, Sarah won't start panicking until August. Which is three months away. Pantpantpant(minipanic)!! Too close to not have a house/plan yet! ;))

HOUSE 6 - "Two Pond"
Remember the house we made an offer on but didn't get? I realized that the reason I loved the house was because of the field across the street. 100 ACRES. Much more than we need, but God's plans might say otherwise. SO I wrote a letter to the owner in St. Simon's and asked them if they'd be interested in selling it. They said no - maybe one day to a home builder (great). But they mentioned that they have a house on the other side of that field that we might be interested in (not on the market yet). 19 acres, 2000+ sf with a walkout basement, a pool and TWO PONDS. Not sure I even want one pond... but TWO? But it's off a somewhat busy country road - several pastures/rural properties on the road but this road is one of the main back roads people take to get to the high school. So it wouldn't be as private/quiet as we imagined. But maybe we could add a row of trees along the road to at least take care of one of those problems.

I started getting excited, thinking - "this house is only 3 minutes from the high school!" The owner said I could stop by and walk around it anytime (they don't live there full-time). I dropped by on a Thursday and we scheduled a tour of the inside for Monday. I only took exterior photos (and wish I had taken more, but I was going to be back, right?)

Cute windows, pretty front porch

 Crepe myrtles and oaks lining the driveway

The lower pond was closer to the house than I'd want (20-25 ft? Remember - I can't estimate distance)

 The lower pond. A pretty setting. The upper pond is where that little grassy hill is on the upper right side of the photo. That's a path across both ponds, and there was a pipe sticking out of it for water to flow into the lower pond. I considered draining the lower to make it more like a creek and to give us more side yard. Bob said I am crazy. HEY - I think in terms of possibilities! ;))

(Looking through the windows.... - I had permission!) It looked nice on the inside - a little outdated but very well maintained, so it probably wouldn't need too much work.

So the lady called back on Friday and said her husband had a doctor's appointment and she had to cancel the Monday tour. We said we'd try to reschedule another time. I called one week later and left a message. Then two weeks. Then the last message about three weeks later. Never heard back from her (and I had the correct # b/c I saved it in my phone when we talked). I really wasn't that disappointed b/c God closed the door pretty clearly on this one.

HOUSE 7 - "Peck Circle"
SOOOOOOOOOOO close to perfect. It would need updates and an addition, but 23 acres, with the BIGGEST BARNS YOU'VE EVER SEEN. Seven chicken barns. They were in terrible shape and the owner would have them removed, but I tried to convince Bob that we should keep one of them- you should have seen all the space (the roof was a little low though so not sure it could serve as my indoor sports recreation area for kids). I was asked to estimate how long it was.... I'm really bad at estimating distances past 10 feet, but comparing it to a football field (of course), I guessed 50 yards (150 feet). Bob said it was more like 200-300 feet. I want to keep one!!!!

 LOVELOVELOVE the lacy corbels and the stone front under the porch

Front yard

Front yard

Den

Kitchen

Breakfast area

Master bedroom

Master bath 1

Master bath 2

Sunroom/breezeway to garage

Back deck

Back deck

Back yard (all the pasture land is in front and on the sides... no pics of that or of the barns)

Basement (looks EXACTLY like our N.H. basement before we finished it - same color posts and everything! ;))

(old) Wood burning blower-type thing in the basement (Bob would be in heaven)

Wood chopping station in the basement, right next to the fireplace.... Bob would be in heaven, part 2, and Sarah would send him there if he ever did this inside the house

 Bob said this house was too far away. And it was. About 15-20 minutes from the schools. Siiiiiiiiiiigh. More waiting.