The Search Continues

One thing I'm learning about myself is that I give up too easily. Being the realist that I am, I see negatives and difficulties very clearly and tend to shut myself down as a result. I'm trying to overcome that tendency.

Just when I was starting to re-examine all the difficulties of selling the house, downsizing, and sacrificing for this crazy dream we have, and wondering if we should just stick in out in Nashville until the kids are grown, Kevin and Norm from This Old House were on a talk show on NPR. Some guy called in to say that he and his wife had built their dream-home from scratch, debt-free, buying supplies with any extra money they had after paying the bills and feeding themselves. He credited TOH with giving him some of the confidence he had to tackle such an endeavor. I was re-inspired. As Bob the Builder says: "Can we do it? YES WE CAN!"

So last Wednesday, we drove down toward Chapel Hill to look at a piece of property that Chris had seen online and was obsessed with. It was a forty acre property with a house, a trailer, and some storage buildings not pictured on the listing. This turned out to be another one that looked a lot better online than in reality... The house was a natural fun-house with sloping floors, a maze-like layout, ridiculous paint colors, and the terrible smell of mildew. The trailer wasn't in much better shape. The walls of the barn had lost most of its boards. The previous owners had deposited large piles of trash throughout the property. Thirty of the forty acres was tremendously rocky; and not much can grow on a rock.

But it was beautiful. The wooded acres were beautiful. Moss on the rocks were bright and beautiful. The leaves were changing. I could see potential in the grown-up pasture.

I found myself looking at the falling-down barn, and imagined re-locating the solid, round cedar posts into the house we would build back from the road and salvaging the barn boards for weathered looking cabinets. The hardwood floors in the house could be re-used. The mounds of trash could be hauled away...

So although we (thankfully) aren't scrambling to sell this house to snatch up this particular piece of land, it would be a possibility if the time and price was right... I can't wait to see what happens when the time is right.