We almost bought a house. A 1930s fixer house on a 2.5-acre lot was listed on the market, we fell in love (with the land, not necessarily the fixer house) and by some miracle, our offer was accepted. Long story short, we were the only one of 12 offers that said we wanted to keep the house and fix it up and that spoke to the heart of the trustee. My dad flew up here last minute to check out the house and be here during the property inspection. Luckily, he flew in the day before the inspections and suggested that we go look at the property that night because he found 100+ issues with the house and we were able to cancel all of the inspections before they happened so we didn’t lose any money. The largest of the many issues is that the house doesn’t have a foundation. We thought the foundation might be cracked or otherwise damaged but it never occurred to us that there might not be a foundation at all! We looked through the crawl space and saw that the house is literally sitting on top of cinder blocks. Although we dreamed about living on that beautiful property in the country with nice dog-walking neighbors and had glorious plans for completely renovating the house…. it all worked out for the best. The house is so far gone that it is more of a liability than an asset and we are not currently in a position (with time, emotional energy or money) to be able to plow it down and build from scratch.
I’m posting this story here because I never want to forget it. Life changes so much every day and I am trying to keep better track of the paths we’ve almost gone down so I can be more grateful for the paths we actually travel through. I may have cried when I first saw the lack of foundation but now feel relieved and even more excited about the future than I was before.
We’ve stopped looking for a house and I’m focusing on planning another international trip. Iceland or Thailand? Maybe both?? Only time will tell.
This is us eating our feelings at Cold Stone.
I took the day off of work to be at the property with my dad for all of the inspections but since we canceled them we drove around the city, saw the best view in town, and ate yummy food.
