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Fair warning, this is going to be a
long one, so grab a cup of coffee, a Dr Pepper, shot of whisky, whatever, if
you want to read all this.
I am sure both people who read this
blog know this story, but I wanted to write it all out for posterity sakes anyway.
The year of change (2019) somewhat
started last year (2018). A number of things led up to my beloved leaving
her job of many many years. So for awhile she was not employed. I
am not going to say she didnt work because since M was a senior in high school,
and a football player, and still trying to find a college he liked, she was
always running around doing something for the school, the football team, the
coaches, him, etc. But late in the year she found out about a job
opportunity and after a few conversations back and forth they came to an
agreement and poof she had a job (and she now carries a badge, but thats
another story)
Now I know you are saying,
so what, new job, roll with it. Well the hitch in this new job was it was
about an hour and a half away from our humble abode in the mound. 3 hours
(or more) in the car every day was not going to work. We decided that in
the beginning we would look for a vacation rental and start there, make sure
the job was going to work out, etc. We did end up finding a great place,
not too far from the new office and very nice owners. We called it the
casita because it was a separate building at the end of the driveway and was
completely self sufficient
Time passed of course and
the decision was made that yes, this job was a good job and she wanted to stay
there. Well the AirBnB place was not a long term solution. With M
being a senior we had talked about selling our house and moving away from the
city anyway, so this just gave us reason, a location, and a timeframe.
Off D goes and we start looking at houses.
Now to back up for a minute,
we have purchased (3) pieces of property over the years, all of those
properties we knew they were the one when we walked in. There was never a
question, we both knew, that place was the one the moment we saw it.
With the help of our realtor friends
we started looking. We looked at a number of places over a few weeks, but
hadnt gotten that feeling yet. One day D is out driving after work doing
what we called drive bys on property. You see we would do searches on
MLS, find a series of properties and do drive bys. We would decide on those drive bys if the property was worth seeing the inside of. Makes
the time with the realtor much more productive.
So back to that evening, D calls me, its
still winter so its dark, she is headed towards a drive by of a house she had
really liked the listing of. This is country living so most of the roads
are not paved, or not paved well. It has also been raining a lot lately. She tells me the road she is driving down is bad but she is
ok. Then, she isnt. She is stuck. Cant go forward, cant go
backwards. Its dark, she cant see any lights and she is stuck. Did
I mention she is about 2 hours from me at this time?
Well luckily with
her new job she knows people in this county and she makes a phone call and soon
there are 2 very nice men pulling up to her in a tractor, they chain up to her
and pull her out. (as she is talking to people on the phone, she is
telling them what road she is on, and they are saying "oh that road is
bad, there is a sign that says impassible when wet"
ANYWAY, she is rescued, the
people that help her tell her they cut hay for someone in the county with our
same last name (hmmm). I knew of course at this point, this was the
house. Because if we bought this house this would be the story we would
tell for forever and not to tip the pitch or anything but…..
So to backup a bit, since we knew we were moving south of town, one
problem we had was the Hanger Property.
It was north of our current house by about 45 minutes, so moving 2 hours
south and having that property be 3 hours away wasn’t going to work out, so we
started planning on getting that piece of property on the market. We spent time out there cleaning and
straightening the property up to make sure it was presentable to go on the
market.
This story is going to be
kind of like a Tarentino film where we jump around a lot. Back to the new house in the country. My beloved ends up going to see the house that she got stuck trying to see. This time in the daylight, down a better
road, and with the realtor this time. and
yes, she loves it. We make an offer, the
seller accepts and we schedule a inspection.
Day of the inspection is the first time I saw it, and of course, I also
loved it. We went through all the usual
BS and ended up signing our life away for the 4th time in our life
and bought the place. Enter the Bonner
Homestead.
Now right about that same time, we put the Hanger property on the
market. Listed it with barely any info,
had a sign out front, hadn’t even taken pics yet.
We thought there would be interested because
of people moving that way and more land being turned into housing and such, but
we still expected the hanger to sit on the market for a few months before we
found the right buyer. We ended up
getting 4 offers the first weekend. All of them good offers, yes we made a deal
with one and then came the big problem.
What is the problem you say?
Well the hanger was my shop, where I had tools and stuff, and I have a lot of tools. And when I say I have a lot of tools, what I
mean is, I own a LOT of tools.
I mean seriously, there are small countries than have less tools than I do....
On top of that, it was also storage
of cool things we had found over the years, so moving out in a short amount of
time was not going to be easy.
First though, D was going to move to the Homestead so she could be close
to work and we wouldn’t be paying for the airBnB (because we had 3 mortgages
now…) First move was just a “what does D
need to live”. Let me tell you, this was
glorified camping. Yes she had a bed,
yes she had a chair (the no no bad
chair) a midget table, clothes, and a
few odds and ends for the kitchen.
Previous owners had left the fridge so that helped. So now she spent the week at the Homestead
while M and I stayed in the mound.
Now back to the, I have a lot of crap.
We now had 4 weeks to empty out the hanger and storage containers. Did I mention the hanger was 60x60 with a
20x60 second floor and (2) 40’ storage containers? Luckily there was plenty of room to bring all
this stuff to the new house.
And by plenty of room I mean a
30x30 metal building…….
So 15 runs back and forth with a Uhaul truck, (2) runs with car hauler
trailer, (1) run for a tandem axle roll off truck to move heavy machinery, lots
of bad weather, 2 vehicles stuck in the mud, many, many late nights, and
countless runs with trucks and trailers (and I mean countless) we moved the
last of the crap 2 days before we closed on selling the property.
So now we only had 2 mortgages, I had proved how good I am at Tetris to
make everything fit in a building less than 1/4th of the size of the
old one, and we were tired. But of
course we were done now right?
We could now sit down and drink some beer and watch some baseball and just chill out?
Umm, no. Stayed tuned for Part 2 to learn, the rest of
the story
(why part 2? because I'm tired again just writing all this out....)
DD
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