The Hunt has ended!

We have found our house!  I really wish I had pictures to show off, but I don't.  But trust me when I say this was honestly beyond my imagination.  I'm still a little blown away by how it all fell into place.

It started with The Monkey House.  I had tried to do a drive by before going to see the house and couldn't.  It was a little confusing getting out to it and I realized being discreet about it would have been impossible. But I had a pretty good idea of how to get to it.

Monday, we set out to look at houses. We had decided against seeing Boot Lick and The Guest House accepted an offer the day before so we only had The Other Log Cabin and The Monkey House. The Other Log Cabin was a definite No.  So we headed to The Monkey House. We were following our realtor and she turned down a road with a real estate sign, but I was 99% sure she made a wrong turn.  But we followed her anyway. I was right. We got turned around and made it to The Monkey House finally.

The house was OK.  Not perfect. The deck needed to be replaced and it was super high towards the back of the house. I'm a bad judge of distance but it had to have been about 15 feet high.  It made me really nervous. The acreage was mostly wooded and not particularly pretty.

So we were talking with the agent and Bill wanted me to look up a couple of houses we passed on our way, including the one down the Wrong Turn Road. The second he heard about that house, he wanted to see it. All he needed to hear were the first two words in the description. ... "10 acres".

Our agent tried to get us in to see it Monday but they wanted more notice. So we arranged to see it Tuesday.

I wasn't feeling good about it. That's a lot of land. And it was a mobile home. I'm not opposed to mobile homes, but if I'm buying one, I want it to be new, you know?  They don't usually hold up over the years like a house.  And the reason we hadn't found it on our searches was that it was $30k more than I was comfortable with.

I was so nervous all day Tuesday. I had no doubt Bill would fall in love with this place. And I didn't want to crush his hopes.  I ran some numbers through a mortgage calculator and after discovering how minimal the taxes were on the property, it seemed like it was actually in our price range payment - wise. I didn't get a chance to verify it with our mortgage lady though, so it was only slightly comforting.

We got there Tuesday and the realtor wad running late. We wanted around the yard a bit and a woman came out of the house. The owner was there. I wasn't sure how to feel about that but she was very nice. She is in her 60s and moving back home to England. She does remodeling and interior design for a living so the inside of the house was amazing. If I hadn't been told it was a mobile home, I would never have guessed.  And it was a triple - wide so it was enormous.

They raised horses and miniature donkeys so there are barns and pastures and an arena. Gorgeous. Absolutely beautiful. There wasn't a single thing we could come up with that was even iffy.  Bill, who nit picked every took tiny aspect of every other house had nothing negative at all. In fact, I can't remember the last time I saw him look so happy.

The owner was just hilarious. We talked to her for way too long. Don't think that she was some sweet British granny.  She was firey.  Bright artificial red hair, snappy and sarcastic. I loved her.

So we left. I promised Bill I would call the mortgage lady as soon as I got home. I did and my calculations were pretty accurate. We really could afford it and it was within our approved amount, so I called up our realtor and told her we were ready to make an offer.

Two excruciatingly long days later, they have accepted!  We asked for them to leave the really nice fridge (French doors, drawer freezer) and their gorgeous dining room set, making sure they knew it wasn't a deal breaker if they didn't want to, but they agreed. Then they negotiated a later closing date in return for also leaving us their top of the line front load washer and dryer. Plus they are putting in a new stove (because the oven handle is broken... their decision, not our request).

I feel like we won the lottery! We won't close until July but that's fine. I get a beautiful house that is bigger and nicer than I had hoped for and Bill has room to put cows in the future. This is what we hoped to be able to have SOMEDAY, but never thought we could have NOW. All because our real estate agent made a wrong turn.

I am so excited!  I can't wait to show off our new home!