We've Been Searching...

After Wayne and I got married in May, we moved into my 1,100 square foot, two bedroom, two bath, mobile home in the Lazy Acres park and although he took over the little 10 x 14 shed out back, we still found ourselves needing more space both inside and outside.

Wayne is a big, tall man, with a history of being outdoors in massive timber country and my tiny backyard garden, although a challenge at first, soon seemed like a fish bowl for a salmon. I like to garden, too, and there just wasn't enough dirt for both of us.

Gardening is necessary for Wayne's life.

At first we thought we should look for a place to park the RV off the Olympic Peninsula so that we could have both a retreat and a place to launch ourselves on various journeys. As we looked, it soon became clear that any place we would be leaving the RV just wasn't secure enough to be several hours away for weeks at a time. And we kept finding places that had, curiously enough, too many trees.

"What will I do when we are here?" Wayne asked. He wanted to continue his farming life with sunny land and places for dahlias, roses, blueberries and raspberries to flourish.

We started talking about finding some land we might build on, or have a small house on, but then we realized we would be paying large sums of money each month for something that wasn't really an improvement over where we are now.

In July we redirected our focus toward buying a house with at least a half an acre, some sunny space, and close enough to civilization that I could make contact with other artists and quilting/sewing types.

We were drawn to Shelton in Mason County because of all the water near by. But we quickly learned that most homes with water views were far out of our price range, so we began to adjust our vision to include access to water within a short walk or drive. And we found a place.

House in Shelton we almost bought but then we didn't.

It seemed at first as if it was just what we wanted. But it didn't have everything on our list and more particularly, Wayne was adamant that the property boundaries were clearly defined. As we got further into the purchase process (inspection, appraisal, etc.) we discovered that the Seller, through no fault of his own, was using Mason County title information that was flat wrong. They were defining the property based on a lot that no longer existed and the Seller had built a fence along a lot line that was probably two or three feet off the real line, meaning we as Buyers would lose over 250 or 300 square feet of land before we even got started.

We bailed on the deal. And it was a loss, emotionally as well as financially, because of what we had invested in time (driving, gas, meals, etc.) as well as the costs of pre-purchase requirements. But it was the only choice because to go ahead would mean even more costs in trying to get the boundaries clarified.

And after a week of feeling discouraged, we were back on the Realtor.com site looking... and it seemed like every house we liked enough to visit was snapped up by other buyers before we could even make an offer. There was one that was just about to go to auction, a big house, but when we went to see it, it was clear there was foundation damage, roof damage, squatter damage and it smelled of too many unpleasant things to list. But it looked so appealing in the photos!

This is the first house Wayne lived in with his grandfather.
He would have bought that one if the owner was willing to
sell it, but that was not an option. Sometimes hard to compete
against memories like this.

 It didn't take us too long to begin to recognize phrases like "Needs some work," really means, "Take out your check book and plan to spend a year bringing this place into shape." Or "Has wonderful water views..." meant that the view was the ONLY thing to recommend it.

But each time we toured a house or drove by we got a clearer idea of what we really could not tolerate and what we must have. There was one in Hoodsport we loved, but there seemed to be some strange thing going on with the Seller and his Agent about actually accepting an offer. And another one near a lake we put an offer on but were immediately put in back-up position (if that offer fell through, they would consider ours... as the weeks would roll by...) and so it went.

There were some fun aspects of looking. We would text or email MLS numbers for the other one to look at, and then we'd take a day and drive two hours away to see if the house in reality was anything like the pictures. We talked, we argued, we sulked, we cajoled, we laughed and finally after so much action and no results, we took a break for a week - no Internet searches at all.

TO BE CONTINUED....

Lazy Acres garden was a challenge, but not
for long. Less than half of what he once had,
he made the most of it, but Wayne wanted
more space and more sunlight.