Big News
Posted By Andrew on June 21, 2010
We’re moving. A week ago we thought that a move wouldn’t come for another two to five years, and today we have our new home under contract. Whew! We had recently concluded that our growing family would eventually need a larger house and more land, and we had also agreed that a third addition to our current house was out of the question, but we hadn’t even planned to start looking yet.
We’ve made several small investments in real estate in the past year, and assumed that when we sold those rental properties, we’d be ready to start looking for our next house. Well, last Wednesday the 16th we closed on one of those properties, selling it to our good friends and renters, the Demrovskis. On the way home from the closing, I suddenly remembered that just the evening before, I had seen a new property show up on a foreclosure listings app that I have on my iPhone. Since the property was only a few hundred feet off our route home, we stopped in briefly to see it and evaluate whether it was another potential rental investment.
It was love at first sight. Just a few hundred feet off the state highway, but completely hidden from it by a strip of forest, it seemed to have both the convenient location and the privacy we wanted. At nearly four acres, the lot size was more than twice our current property. There were mature shade trees, and some respectable attempts at landscaping, both of which are rare and valuable in this neighborhood. A lovely porch ran along the entire front of the house, a feature Elizabeth and I always said we’d put in any house we built. There was a large screened-in back porch, a small fenced play area in the back yard, a big oak tree that invites growing boys to build a tree house, and several sturdy outbuildings in good condition.
I contacted the realtor almost immediately, and we met her the next day for a tour of the premises. As we stepped through the front door for the first time, I had a curious and overwhelming sense of deja vu, of coming home to a familiar place. I immediately spotted several more features that we always said we’d build into our dream house, including a great room with a cathedral ceiling, a stone fireplace, lots of natural light from large windows and dormers, and a master bed/bath on the main floor. The more we explored, the more we liked it, and at the end of the tour we made our offer. There was a bit more dickering back and forth, but on Monday the 21st, five days after our first glimpse of the place, the realtor informed us that we had a deal and we could close on it by July 2.
Yes, our heads are spinning a bit, but we’re still young and adventurous and we welcome this challenge. Compared to the last few properties we bought, the repairs and remodeling required on this one are very minor, and we could move within weeks, although we’ll probably take a little longer just to keep it all easy and free of stress. At this point we don’t know whether we’ll rent or sell our current home, but are confident God will send someone who will appreciate and benefit from the thousands of hours of work we’ve invested here.
We don’t yet have the key to the house, so we can’t post pics from inside, but here are a few snapshots we took this evening as we were going out to dinner to celebrate the occasion.
The porch where we’ll sit and drink lemonade, sweet tea, yerba mate, coffee, or apple juice (organic of course), depending who is visiting that day. You know which one you’ll get, don’t you?
View from the side. Dining area inside the bay window, screened porch on the back.
Garage/workshop on left, while the right side will probably become my office. A lean-to runs along the entire rear, so we’ll finally have a place for the lawnmowers, tillers, trailer, garden tools, etc.
When we bought our first SC property in 2001, it had a few pines and scrub oaks, but no attractive shade trees. This one has two beautiful maples right in front of the house, plus a large live oak that conceals the house from the county road at the end of the lane, plus another maple and a very large oak in the back. I still can’t believe it…
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You guys are like………CRAZY! That’s why we all love you so much I guess! Wow! Screened in back porch…are you SURE this wasn’t supposed to be OUR house?!!? It looks wonderful. Sam & Kate are still finishing their remodeling, Ralph and Hannah just beginning theirs, and the “old folks”…welll…….we’re supposing relocating beginnings are around the corner…………maybe we could all talk to each other occasionally on the phone in between projects!?!?!? Maybe we’re ALL crazy!?!?!? Hmmmm….sort of a package deal!!!!!!! Happy for you!
It looks like a dream come true. I am glad for you all.
very very nice. Happy for you… we know how much fun it is to find “your place” . Looks wonderful!
I have to agree with he first comment. The house is lovely and I love the sky-lights inside. The porch is beautiful. There are seasons like this of sweet respite - we are in one right now. Just curious, do you all envision overseas missionas as part of your lives again in he future?
To Brent, I can easily picture life both ways–raising a family here and/or making another move overseas. At present it seems that an overseas move is not imminent, although we’re certainly willing and we try to stay flexible so we could move quickly if doors opened. Since we had acquired several properties that can now be sold, we don’t incur any long term financial commitments with this purchase, and I think the flexibility remains. At the moment, our primary involvement in overseas work is the managing of a business operated primarily for the benefit of people in ministry, including missionaries. Different than we had envisioned, but tremendously rewarding in its own way.