Tanya’s side
Hello world!
Some time has passed since our last post. I believe my husband had Just returned home when we last posted. That was November 2018. It is now October 2019.
I guess it’s safe to say that life got in the way. It tends to do that sometimes. Things get pushed aside and then forgotten about most of the time.
Well I am happy to report that we did NOT forget about our dreams. We have made quite a bit of progress! Let’s fill you in…
Around August of this year we were still browsing properties online as normal. Just seeing what was out there. I came across a listing that I thought was perfect for us. So, I began to talk to my husband about really doing this. I tried to express to him that he needed to “poop or get off the pot”, and “just do it”.
Again, my thoughts were that he wants to retire and start a farm in 3 years. Ok, well, we have zero experience farming. We have zero guarantee that if we start a farm it will produce adequate income for us to survive on. That situation leaves a lot of room for things to not go as planned. Remember: being poor is not an option for me.
So, why not start small scale now? Buy a property where he can still stay in the Army and hobby farm. That way he can get a feel for it, see how the business aspect is going to go, and if this is a venture that (come the three year mark) we decide to go large scale and he can retire from the Army. Should we decide not to go large scale then we still have our forever home, with land, and he can decide then if he wants to stay in the Army or go a different route.
So, I told him it was time, we are not getting any younger. You never know until you try, so stop all this planning and JUST DO IT!
We did just that. We contacted the realtor and set a date to go look at some properties! So exciting. We’re really doing this!!!! Woohoo!
2 months later: house shopping is not exciting. I lied.
The 1st house that I saw turned out not to be something we wanted to pursue. House #2 had perfect land (20acres) and a cute house but I didn’t like the house at first. Dad loved everything about it, but I just didn’t love it, it wasn’t what I saw as our forever home. It seemed smaller than our house now. The kids did not love the house either. We dubbed it the “tiny house”. That aggravated Dad. Dad wanted to go back for a second visit to that property, which we scheduled for the next week. We also scheduled the realtor to come over the day before that to officially list our house for sale. Waiting till the following week gave me time to think about the house and I had a change of heart. This was for my husband after all, it was his dream, and he was obviously super excited about this property, it was perfect for our farm. So, I told him to go for it. The realtor was on her way to our house and we were going to officially list our house for sale and in the same day put in an offer for a new house!
She got a call on the way here, that someone beat us to it and put in an offer on the house. They were not accepting other offers. WHAT! You have got to be kidding me! This house had been on the market for over a year and nothing! The DAY we want to put in an offer and poof… it’s gone. So aggravating! I felt so bad for Dad. He loved this place and was so excited about it. In the end we decided that our only option was to accept that it just wasn’t meant to be.
On to the next one though! The Barn House. This house was AMAZING. It was an 1800’s log cabin on 6 acres that someone flipped, like on the TV shows. It was so beautiful inside. I was in love! I just can’t describe how stunning this place was. However, it was only on 6 acres and it wasn’t flat land either. We (we being my husband as I was already trying to talk him into being an accountant instead of farmer in order to get this house) decided not to move on this house (much to my despair) due to the land not being the best for farming. We thought of it as our back up house if we couldn’t find anything else.
We looked at many others and seemed to hit the same brick wall. If I liked the house, the land wasn’t right. If he liked the land, I didn’t like the house. So frustrating!
Also, I will add here, that for the price of the homes we were looking at, I expected big, beautiful, glorious, homes. (Remember, southern girl here, used to cheaper house prices.) Instead we were getting $300,000+ fixer uppers with dirt basements. I just wasn’t prepared for this. If we went with less land, we could get the house types I wanted but not the land for Dad. If we got the land, the house was not the best of shape and needed work.
We were not having any luck and we were already getting burnt out. We would get excited over a place online and then get there to discover it was not what we thought. On top of that we had lots of showings on our home. This was good, except that it was a pain to interrupt my sons cyber school day, having to clean the house so it was spotless, and get the pets out of the house on time. While we had many showings, only one was interested and that did not work out. I caught Dad saying, “maybe we moved too fast”, “maybe we should just wait and save up money”. I had to remind him that it had only been two months. Patience is a virtue.
We decided maybe we should make an offer on the Barn House as while it wasn’t perfect, we could make the land work since we were not finding anything else. This excited me to no end, and I was super happy. Our realtor had been keeping an eye on it for us because she knew I loved it. My realtor looks into putting in an offer and finds out that there is already an offer on the house! UGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
Which must have happened in the last day or so as it was still listed as active. Come to find out, it was an active under contract listing which means they do have an offer but if we make a better offer, they would consider it. Long story short, I’m all over that! Bid full price! I want that house! No luck though, it did not work out for us. I was upset to say the least. Oh well, “it wasn’t meant to be”, time to keep looking and move on.
Finally, we found a house that had 12 acres, and a decent house that looked nice online. Had pastures and barns. We go to look at it. Dad is sold (practically before we ever got there). I was a tad hesitant because there was some work that need to be done to it, however, it was only cosmetic issues nothing major. Dad advised the realtor he wanted to make an offer on it before we ever left the property. I was a little shocked by this, I thought we needed to talk more about it. I think Dad was concerned that every house we wanted had gotten away from us and he didn’t want to waste time and lose this one too. That possibility was very real.
We did talk once we left the property. My main concern was that while there was nothing major wrong with it there was a lot of little things that needed to be done. The whole place had carpet which needed taken out and replaced, the kitchen did not have a dishwasher and needed to be expanded if possible as it was super tiny, the bathrooms needed updating, the basement needed a ceiling and updating, just lots of cosmetic things that were not a “have to” in order to move in. Problem is…. I have lived in a fixer upper for the past 15 years. Things that are not a “have to” often get pushed back and forgotten about. For instance, the time it took 2 years to finish the stairwell wall, or the 10 years it took to finish the bedroom. I know how these things go. We had the same mindset when we bought this house. To buy it and fix it up. While we did do a lot to this place, it was not nearly what we wanted to (or planned to do) and it took all of those 15 years to get that done. A fixer upper was exactly what we didn’t want. But here we were, faced with the decision to keep looking an lose this place too or go for it.
So, we went for it. Dad was very concerned that if we didn’t go for it, we would lose it and not find anything else. I was still hesitant about the work that needed to be done but Dad & I made the deal we would just have to get in there and tackle one room at a time and get things done!
We can do this!
We’re going for it!!!