So moving along as quickly as we could...we visited an 11 acres homestead. It was fine. That unfortunately was the extent of our emotion for this house. Not for us.
There was a fantastic house I loved. It was in Ragged Island (which bizarrely is not actually an island!). It had 4 bedrooms, three staircases, two wood stoves with stone walls, and all the furnishings included. It had character, beautiful woodwork and doors, but it was 40 minutes from any town, down a dirt road, in an area that had frequent power outages and nor'easters. So, great house, wrong location.
There was a anther great house with over 20 acres. Big kitchen, lots of fun renovations to do. But a few pointed questions led us to understand the 20 acres were mostly swamp land! Not very useful for the vegetables and animals that we want on our farm!When we were in Ontario we had done an extensive search through realtor.ca and had found a number of homes to look at. Many of them were disappointing. The pictures were so lovely, but in reality the homes went beyond doing some renos and required a complete overhaul. One such home almost made me cry. I felt so sad for this beautiful, old, majestic home that between the real estate photos and our visit had been trashed. Walls had been ripped out, windows had been broken, stoves and dishwashers were thrown outside and burned, broken glass was everywhere. The living room had been "converted" to a workshop and tools were scattered around. And to top it off, cigarette butts had been put out on the century old original floorboards.
Another one we had viewed from Ontario we knew was in very rough shape but we just happened to drive by it one day and Zoe recognized it so...appointment made we went through. It was fantastic. Again some beautiful old character, but totally gutted and it looked like the people who started the reno had no intention of maintaining any of the beauty of the age. The baseboards and doors were missing. Not just removed but no where on site at all. Still remaining was the spectacular (although very shaky) spiral staircase.
We almost settled on one property in Princedale. It had 21 acres and had not been lived in for 10 years by humans. The snakes, however, were making quite a home of the basement. It had such a unique layout that Zoe would have her own wing with four rooms! It was in a great location, great property, but no barn, and a kitchen that was spread out over three rooms - very strange layout! We went back for a second tour and decided it really was not the place for us - so back to the search we went.
The fun progressed through over 20 houses. Some with character, some with land, some with a barn, some with wood stoves, but nothing quite ticked all our boxes. We had found the area we felt a connection to, but not the house. I was starting to panic and began relooking at houses, trying to work out if we could make the changes necessary to "create" our dream home. Zoe was not ready to give up. She said she would not settle for anything less than we wanted. If we were uprooting ourselves and starting fresh, it would be on our terms with our dream house. She spent our precious little data looking at homes on kijiji. Hours later I hear:
"Call Val". (our real estate agent for the Annapolis Valley).
"I found our house".
Shan,
ReplyDeleteGreat description of the search! I enjoyed the build-up of tension as the frustration became evident during the search.
But really, 20 houses!
Dad
I was starting to feel badly every time I called Val to book more showings. But she was incredible and kind and always cheerful and happy to take us through more and more homes! And the number was probably over 20 all included from beginning to end!
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