The Day I Made my Decision

Back area of house/my front porch. This area had to be completely rebuilt due to termites and water damage.

The land, although overgrown and neglected, didn’t bother me at all. It fact it just looked like the land I knew in my youth. There were around 150 big old trees with exotic plants and flowers, and what we many times call weeds. I used to walk with my Dad and my siblings on land that looked like this. A land at rest, that didn’t get a lot of people pulling and changing it. So I saw nothing unusual about its dress. The house, however, was so different from what I knew. It was a total mess as far as I was concerned. Old, outdated and dull with no character. However, once I walked in the backyard and planted my feet on the dirt I could see nothing but its beauty. I also liked the fact that the house had two kitchens, one upstairs and one downstairs, which meant I could rent a portion of the house to bring in income. Plus, there were six detached buildings that would be fun to develop and make into useable structures. Of course little did I know at the time that these kitchens and the building would become a problem for me. Nor did I have a good understanding of the amount of work that the place needed.

I can still clearly remember the realtor’s response when I told her that this was it and I was willing to pay the full asking price.

“Are you sure? You never mentioned you wanted a fixer upper, an acre of land, to be on top of a hill with a view, a pool, four greenhouses, or a house with 3500 square feet.”

She was so right! Now it made perfect sense why I had looked at so many properties and worked with so many realtors. How could I ask someone to help me find something if I didn’t know what it was I was looking for myself? Of course I didn’t know it then, but it wasn’t a house I was really looking for, it was the space surrounding the house that I was in search of and I had now found it. I had no second thoughts regarding my decision. The only thing I was afraid of was someone else might also want this place and I didn’t want to lose it. After all this time I had finally found my home. In fact, thinking back now, I think I had been looking for this place ever since I moved to the West Coast.

Escrow closed December 1999.