Sunday, May 31, 2015

No Longer Adventures in Parenting, but also Adventures in Home-Owning!


Outside our polling station for the 2014 elections stood a Friend and long-time community member.  Our sons mostly knew him as a donut-maker for the local fire company from the summer fair.  In addition to a donut, he asked the wife and I if we were looking to buy a house.  I'm always looking, I told him.  W knew I was always thinking about buying a house and she indulged me a bit (she's never looking!).  I asked about the backyard, he said it was a 1.6 acre parcel!  W and I went inside to vote (WW, now 5, also "voted").  As we walked out of the polling station, Friend asked if we wanted to come see it and we told him we would think about it as we began walking away.

Barely 100 yards from the polling station, W turned to me said (words I will never forget), "I'd buy that house in a heartbeat!"  And thus began our crazy adventure.  We looked through our finances and budget and decided it was worth looking into a bit more.  I contacted a friend of mine who I knew was a realtor.  She was fabulous and awesome.  She got us in touch with a broker she commonly uses to see how much we get pre-approved for.  After doing some basic research online, W and I had a figure in mind and we were able to get pre-approved for a bit more.  Hooray!

Next step was looking at the house.  The house is a stone house built in 1939 by a man named Carroll Brown who was a long-time English teacher and faculty member of Westtown.  The wife of the family currently living in the house was his niece.  Being an English teacher, it only made sense that this is the living room:



W and I were in love!

To make a long story short - we bought the house!