It was a very tight two horse race in the end...
Initially we emailed our agent that we wanted to pursue an offer on the
Tidd's Lane property. The house was done - move in ready, James really like the feel of the village and the area, the gardens are nicely pretty, as a number of people pointed out - it really had all the appearances of being the practical choice. However, we weren't really prepared to pay full asking price, and they weren't really prepared to budge much on their price. Fair enough.
So we talked, and lo - the more we talked the more we realized that really neither of us actually wanted the Tidd's Lane property. Oh it's a lovely property in many many ways, it is the more practical and sensible choice.
Yeah exactly.... when have James and I
*ever* done something practical and sensible?
The truth was that to make the house work for us, we'd have to do this thing, and that thing and the other thing and.... wait a minute, it doesn't really fit as well as we want. We were busy talking ourselves into it, because we both felt like it was the house we should want. We went to bed Sunday evening feeling vaguely ill - neither of us felt like we'd made the right choice, but rather the choice that was expected of us.
What we really wanted was the
Corberries house.
Big, old, dated, it's gonna be a ton of work in the end, it
could well be Harbour Main all over again - BUT it's livable! Harbour Main was 4000 sq ft of must be restored to be livable. Corberries is what we said we were looking for "my grandmother's old country house", it has acreage (16), it has privacy (it might be on the road, but there are almost NO neighbours, and it's a VERY quiet road, it's not in the village) it has space (2400 sq ft), it has 2 garages, it has 'the room at the top of the stairs', and keeping the cats and dogs separated for their own safety will be much easier. The only thing it doesn't have is water access for the dogs, well frankly at $20,000 less than Tidd's Lane - that'll build us a heck of a pond - heck that'll buy us a heck of a tractor to dig our own pond! Once again we actually feel excited and pleased and looking forward to the house, we're yammering at each other about it's potential. We said we wouldn't pay for someone else's renovations and that's exactly what Tidd's Lane would have been. It sounds tempting to move into a house that's already done, but all the potential had already been maximized, there was little for a couple of creative types to dream and play with. We may be tired of home renos right now, but we will never stop tinkering on properties - and Tidd's Lane didn't afford that opportunity.
Initially we thought Tidd's Lane was the better location, with it's pretty fishing village and set up in behind the road on 4.66 acres. We thought that Corberries was a long thin 16 acres, going all the way back into the woods and needing clearing. HOWEVER, Tidd's Lane is in the village, 4.66 acres still has neighbours. Corberries is right on the road, but it's set back far enough to line the property with fences and hedges and 'screen it in' and the only neighbour is one house (also for sale) right across the road, and it turns out that the 16 acres is over 1300 ft of road frontage, going back 525 ft back - so the majority of the land has largely been cleared, but there's still enough of a woodlot to keep us in firewood for a long time to come.
In the end, it came down to our 'guts', we were looking for the right house to spend the rest of our lives in, the next 40+ years. We were looking for our 'Arthcwtch'. Our guts told us that Tidd's Lane is a perfectly nice home for someone, but it's not the sort of house that demands a name of it's own; it's not us. Corberries ... Corberries will be a money pit, it'll be an aggrevation and a pita, and banging our heads on the wall, but it has personality, it has charm, it will have elegance - this is the house we can turn into the show piece that is
OUR personality, Corberries would bear the name
Arthcwtch proudly! Yes, we're completely mad... we're gonna buy the house that is my Land Rover of homes.
So we put in an offer, $90,000 and conditional on a satisfactory structural engineer's report. We're fine with the whole home inspection thing - James does a better inspection than random home inspector dude anyway, and the only issues we'd be unwilling to tackle would be structural integrity - and James did have a concern or two about that - although on second look at the photos, less so. We'll have an engineer look at it, we may be nuts, but we're not crazy.
In the meantime, we've also managed to snag ourselves a camper. A nicely running
1980 23' Shamrock. It's not fancy inside, but, it is clean and neat and I don't have to worry and fuss over the dogs tracking mud in.
We're down to 3 weeks to deadline! We've got most of our ducks in a row, and the logistics organized, but OH MY WORD! There's a lot of packing and cleaning and grunt work still to be done! This morning we took care of a few critical errands while the agent was in to do the water test - arrange the U-haul stuff, insurance for the camper, another few odd bits and pieces from Home Depot. Now we've gotta get some actual work done!
It's almost 9pm, and no response from the sellers, they have until 4pm ADT tomorrow, so we just gotta sit tight and wait. And if this doesn't work, there is still
East Baccaro, which was also a very nice house with potential AND most of the things we asked for :)
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