GJS
Senior Member
I'm over the friggin moon to announce that closing on my wife and my new home is scheduled for this Friday!
It's been a long and ridiculous trip home. All this started in 2012 (!!?!?!??). I moved back to the USA from Montreal and rented a 625 sq ft cabin next to my land in Stafford, CT. The idea was to live in the cabin (potentially buy it) and build on my land over the coming years however, after a rotten 75' maple tree fell on my 2014 Ram 2500 and my landlord went nuts and clear cut the land, I left the cabin and moved in with my now wife.
She owned a small cape in East Hartford, CT. No garage, no basement. A nice enough and solid little home with a nice back yard but really, no room to do anything.
We decided to start planning the build on my land back in Stafford but with the existing mortgage of her home, we wouldn't be able to finance the build. We put her house on the market in September of 2016 and moved into a storage unit while we couch surfed till the place sold in December of that same year.
We then took a small two bedroom, half the size of the house with our three dogs and our cat. Shortly after we realized that building would not be an option. We just couldn't get the price into a reasonable range so we started shopping in about April of this year.
As real estate can be, esp in this market, we lost many houses. Then my lady spotted this place: a rather large cape, built in '78. The main house and garage were actually in great shape. The lot is a nicely situated 3.06 acres with a nice strong slope to the west and crazy crazy landscaping (most of which is pretty overgrown at this point) and an inground pool (not working at this time, but there). The place had been on the market forever so while she was very very into it .. I was a little skeptical. Through all it's issue though, once I saw it, I changed my tune rather quickly.
The biggest issue is that the foundation on the sunroom addition (built around '87) was done with that fabulous pyrrhotite packed concrete that has DESTROYED so many homes and lives in our area. The upside of that (in our case) was that the sunroom was built in the same way one builds a deck off the back of their home and I was able to draw up a way to use 6 techno posts and a carrier beam to support the entirety of the sunroom. I brought all this to the town building guy who was surprisingly and thankfully very reasonable about it. He made his adjustments to my plan, signed off and I passed it onto my contractor.
The following months have been real hard. We had to leave our apartment two weeks ago and move all our stuff into the garage at the new house having not even closed while living between our parents places and hotels. All that not even being sure that the closing would happen!
All things considered, we bought well and have a home that we can fit and grow into for once... Friday night I will collapse on the floor in that house and sleep with a pizza next to my head.
AND it matches Beverly. Win win!
It's been a long and ridiculous trip home. All this started in 2012 (!!?!?!??). I moved back to the USA from Montreal and rented a 625 sq ft cabin next to my land in Stafford, CT. The idea was to live in the cabin (potentially buy it) and build on my land over the coming years however, after a rotten 75' maple tree fell on my 2014 Ram 2500 and my landlord went nuts and clear cut the land, I left the cabin and moved in with my now wife.
She owned a small cape in East Hartford, CT. No garage, no basement. A nice enough and solid little home with a nice back yard but really, no room to do anything.
We decided to start planning the build on my land back in Stafford but with the existing mortgage of her home, we wouldn't be able to finance the build. We put her house on the market in September of 2016 and moved into a storage unit while we couch surfed till the place sold in December of that same year.
We then took a small two bedroom, half the size of the house with our three dogs and our cat. Shortly after we realized that building would not be an option. We just couldn't get the price into a reasonable range so we started shopping in about April of this year.
As real estate can be, esp in this market, we lost many houses. Then my lady spotted this place: a rather large cape, built in '78. The main house and garage were actually in great shape. The lot is a nicely situated 3.06 acres with a nice strong slope to the west and crazy crazy landscaping (most of which is pretty overgrown at this point) and an inground pool (not working at this time, but there). The place had been on the market forever so while she was very very into it .. I was a little skeptical. Through all it's issue though, once I saw it, I changed my tune rather quickly.
The biggest issue is that the foundation on the sunroom addition (built around '87) was done with that fabulous pyrrhotite packed concrete that has DESTROYED so many homes and lives in our area. The upside of that (in our case) was that the sunroom was built in the same way one builds a deck off the back of their home and I was able to draw up a way to use 6 techno posts and a carrier beam to support the entirety of the sunroom. I brought all this to the town building guy who was surprisingly and thankfully very reasonable about it. He made his adjustments to my plan, signed off and I passed it onto my contractor.
The following months have been real hard. We had to leave our apartment two weeks ago and move all our stuff into the garage at the new house having not even closed while living between our parents places and hotels. All that not even being sure that the closing would happen!
All things considered, we bought well and have a home that we can fit and grow into for once... Friday night I will collapse on the floor in that house and sleep with a pizza next to my head.
AND it matches Beverly. Win win!
