I had a fun, and stressful, weekend.
How about you?
Tyler bought our house in 2006, while we were dating. He, and his family, proceeded to completely gut and renovate almost the entire interior of the house. We got married in 2007, and since then finished the back room and the two bedrooms upstairs. We now have to put up a ceiling in our living room, put in six more windows, paint our front porch and rebuild our back porch (small thing, not that hard to do) and then we are DONE.
We've put a lot of backbreaking effort into making this house into our home, a beautiful home.
However, there is one small problem.
We only have a 1/2 acre of land. It's a nice half acre, but it's only a half acre. We won't be able to have a barn, or animals, which is what we'd LOVE to do. Both of us were raised on small family farms, grew up around animals, did chores when we were young and we both agree that it is close to our heart and we want to raise our kids with that.
So, we went to look at a house on the weekend.
This house.
It is very dilapidated. It needs a LOT of work, just like our house did in the beginning. It sits on 3 acres of land, so that's a bonus. But it has a gigantic bank barn that is falling over and will need to be torn down, which is a minus. It also needs extensive repairs to the brick and to the roof, which is not good. It needs to be completely renovated inside, especially the kitchen, which is not cheap or easy.
The farmer who owns the land is severing it off from a field, and he is asking WAY too much. Which is bad.
It's been for sale for over a year, which is both bad and good. Bad because it's obvious there are a lot of things that need to be repaired, which the average person is not willing to do, but good because perhaps the farmer will be willing to sell it for less because he just wants to get rid of it.
We don't know. We're not sure if we're even willing to sell our beautifully renovated house and move into another fixer-upper. We definitely are NOT willing to pay the price he's asking, so we might have to wait another six months to a year and see if it's still for sale, and then offer a low-ball price and see what Mr. Farmer says.
It's all very unsure, and I hate being unsure. I'm the type that likes structure and order and organization and knowing A to B to C to D in advance. Being in limbo sucks.
We're in no hurry to move, since our child is only 11 months old. Five, six, maybe even seven years from now I'll be more eager to get some land and start having animals, since D-man will be big enough by then to start doing chores. For now, he has Brady and Lucy to help take care of. ;)
I don't know. I wish I did know.
We'll definitely be praying and considering our options very carefully over the next year. We're in a good position now, so we're not going to be stupid and pay too much for a property that we will never be able to get our money out of in the future.
We'll see! And I'll keep you posted.
