House Hunting

House hunting....er...um.....it is interesting. As most of you know Scott and I took the kids with us to Ohio this past weekend (well actually Thursday-Sunday) to look at the central Ohio area and to begin "getting our feet wet" in the whole house hunting venture. Anyone who has ever bought a house knows that it is both exciting and a pain in the neck at the same time. I thought for today's blog that I would share some of the more interesting parts of our house hunting adventure.

On Thursday afternoon we met with the head/owner of a fairly large real estate group. He was a very nice older gentleman. He personally drove us around to several houses in the Springfield area. Scott had asked him how we ended up with the privilege of having the boss take a personal interest in us, instead of handing us over to one of his many employees? He said that I had emailed him personally (which I did from his website) and that he was intrigued by my email address. (He proceeded to tell us about the Gibson girls of the turn of the last century--which I already knew, but found it interesting that HE knew about them....turns out he is somewhat of a history buff.) So anyway, that got him interested and then once he met us he took a personal interest in our family. During our drives around the Ohio countryside, he would have us stop and tell us some history about the area. (the cedar bogs, the price of farmland during the Great Depression, the limestone basin that is situated under Clark County etc.etc.) We really liked him and think he will be the one that will find us our house. The first two houses he took us too were farmhouses. Fairly normal...but a little small. I have found out that farmhouses at the turn of last century had small rooms and even smaller closets, if any at all. (I guess women didn't have 10,000 outfits and 50,000 pairs of shoes back then.) The area around Springfield is beautiful. So, after seeing these houses we headed north toward Urbana, Ohio, in Champaign County. Another beautiful area...but the house we went to was another story. Now, the realtor had never personally shown this house before, so he had no idea.... Picture this: A dark brown house situated down a gravel driveway in the deep woods. On the way in was a dilapidated log cabin, and an old fishing boat. I didn't think this boded well for us--it didn't present well to say the least. Turns out that this house was originally built by the owner many years ago. He had since passed away and his wife was elderly and moved into town. She wanted to sell the house....... This advertised as a 4 BR, 3 full bath house. The living room was beautiful with a lodge feel to it, soaring ceilings, a fireplace and a new kitchen nook area. Okay, that was the good stuff, from there it was all downhill. The funniest part was that this man had made bathrooms in the eaves of the house. Now this is no lie...I opened the miniature door and peeked in. ( I felt like Alice in Wonderland) He had crammed in a miniature sized tub, a little sink and toilet up under the eaves. Unless you stand 3 and a half feet tall you couldn't fit in there. You'd have to take a shower on your knees, and then hunch over the sink to wash your hands....don't even get me started on the toilet area. Now, I stand at just under 5'7",to sit on that toilet I would have had to do some sort of funky yoga move and wrap my knees up over the sink. I don't know about you but I don't think this would be conducive to good bathroom time. After looking at the munchkin bathrooms I ventured into the connector that ran from the house to the garage. It reminded me of a treehouse. I knew it wasn't good when I took a misstep and my foot almost went through some rotting floor boards. Scary. Long drop down from the skywalk. I thought it might be traumatic for the family if they saw my body splatted on the driveway below. Okay, I'm ready to get out of here!

On Friday we looked at 6 houses. Most of them were nice houses, but small once again. I enjoyed looking at the barns too. I'm into the history of the homes and the barns have a lot of history too. Some of the barns were in better condition then others. It has always made me sad when I'm driving through the country and I see an old dilapidated barn.....I don't know why....I guess it just makes me think of the passing of time and how so many of those barns are unused now, leftovers from a past era. I hate to see them gone so that some developer can buy up the land and slap up a subdivision of McMansions and make lots of money. There was one house that the Dayton realtor (different from our Springfield realtor) took us to in Germantown. (a section of Montgomery County) This house was normal looking enough. Another older farmhouse. As we are looking around Scott and I notice a huge metal hook hanging from the ceiling in the large master bedroom. Now, if you are anything like us you are thinking to yourself, "What in the world??". I'm silently praying that some serial killer has not lived in this house and hung the bodies from the ceiling on a big hook. I'm having flashbacks from watching "A Haunting" on the Discovery Channel about houses that have gone "bad". You can imagine my relief when the realtor informs us that the man is into exercising and the hook was to hang his punching bag on. Thank the good Lord, he wasn't a satanic serial killer. The barn at this house gave me bad vibes. It was scary. I didn't like it at all. Now, I'm no barn aficionado but, I know creepy when I see it. No thank you on this house either. The kids have made me promise that I will do a background check on any house we decide to buy. They don't want any old house that someone has died in, or some awful thing had occurred there, no ghosts or turn of last century spirits roaming around. They don't want to be on the next episode of "A Haunting". I told them we'd check it out!

All in all it was an enjoyable weekend. Scott and I learned a lot about the area, what we are actually looking for in a house and property, and what we would like in a community and church. We also met some very nice people along the way. Continue to pray for us as we search for where God would have us live. We realize that this is a journey. At this point we are not sure where we will be, or even how we are going to work out all the details, but we know we need to go where the Lord would lead us. It is not always easy trusting Him...especially, when faced with moving to a new area. It is both scary and exciting all at the same time. I know from personal experience that God has always been faithful and He will be again. I believe that as a family we will look back on this experience one day and realize that God's plan is always perfect and it was always just our job to follow Him.