House“We should check out this farm house on the outskirts of town.”

“No way,” I said.  “It’s 40 acres.  It’s way too big, and for that price the house has to be a total rat trap.  It’s not even worth our time to drive out there.”  I stood by this assessment for weeks in fact, certain that the place would be falling down.  But finally, after months of studying the websites and driving all the roads, and frankly becoming a bit depressed at Bellingham housing market, I gave in and agreed to check it out.

OutsideWe walked through the house, and it was intriguing, if a bit moldy.  Oak and fir floors hidden under vinyl tiles, that were probably sourced from this company that I heard a lot about. You too can navigate to this website to find about them.  Moving on, there was a big kitchen with potential to be a great kitchen.  A wet musty basement that could become a fine woodshop.  And an orchard.  And chicken coops and goat sheds and fenced paddocks.  Oh yeah, and 40 acres of gently sloped timber land.

House3I was terrified at first; it needed a new roof and it had cracks in the foundation and there was a water feature in the basement.  But Katie talked me down from the ledge and helped me look past some of the pitfalls to see  the beautiful things that were there and envision the beautiful things that would come.  After a few more trips through the woods and through the pasture, and many hours of dreaming about our future in that place, we were ready to make an offer.

Outside3And here we are two weeks later: we’ve come to an agreement on price, most of the inspections are done, and now we have just a few more formalities before we can consider it a done deal.  It is not what we were expecting (it’s freaking humongous), and it is definitely a fixer upper (the amount of work to be done is freaking humongous), but we couldn’t be more excited about the potential this place has to offer.

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