And Then I Bought a House

No. Not property to build my Hillside Cottage on, but an actual house. A 150 year old brick farmhouse, to be exact. With one bigass barn, a falling-down garage, and another perfect little barn for some donkeys.

Did you just fall out of your chair? Because I did.

I’d like to tell you what just happened here, but I’m not even sure myself. I woke up 24 hours ago with the intention of meeting with a guy about some property to build my cottage on. Which I did, realizing it wouldn’t work out almost immediately. And then, since I was out and about I did a little more driving around and found an old brick farm-house up for auction with 6 acres of property (the perfect amount) and all kinds of barns.

Like this one…

And this one…

And this monster…

And here’s what happened: I drove into the driveway, and I felt like I was home.

I’ve probably spent 7 hours a week for the last month driving around in my car trying to find “the place.” The place I was supposed to build my garage from scratch, and later build my house. There’s actually a post in my drafts folder right now called “Feels like home?” with pictures of the dozens of properties I’ve looked at and rejected that I could never quite bring myself to post.

And then on a whim I ended up here:

At a house that was 5 hours away from being sold at an online auction. MY house.

So, after two hours of intense bidding (thank you, Katy from the Turtle House for being my text-buddy through the whole ordeal), I’m officially the high bidder on this house.

And I haven’t even been inside it. How’s that for crazy?

I have no idea how the next week is going to play out with financing and finding out all the fun things that are wrong with this place, but I have to tell you that right now, I don’t care. I found my home. If I have to rebuild the damn thing brick for brick, right now I feel like I made the right decision. And you never know… the inside might be so bad that I have to build the Hillside Cottage in the back while I renovate all 3000 square feet of house.

Or I may just live in one of my extraordinary barns for a while.

Either way, it’s going to be an adventure.

UPDATED: I can’t even begin to tell you the miles of red tape I’m going to need to untangle in the next forty-eight hours to actually be in a position to close on this house, but it’s going to be epic. EPIC. If you have any good-house vibes to spare, send them this way!

72 Responses

  1. I read this post when I first discovered your blog. I’ve been reading from the beginning, and am only about 15 months behind you. I knew this was coming, but now I know why it was such a big deal.
    You’ve captured the imagination of so many people, all of whom obviously give a damn about you. Reading their responses was twice the fun of reading the blog itself.
    I hope this place does the trick. For some reason we all want you to be happy.
    May it be a home filled with blessings and the fondest of memory.

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