After the "Near Miss," We Scored a Hit!

The search for a new home had been spanning four months, (see the previous two entries) and now we were taking a break that nearly was disastrous, but fortunately averted.

The arrival in Ellensburg was several hours later than planned, after attempting to find a welder who could make some repairs to the RV hitch, but it just couldn't get done.

Kitchen is updated and easy to use.

Everyone was pretty glad to see us, realizing after hearing the story of the angelic guy who stopped us, how close we had come to a different scenario for the day.

After the party, we returned to the Vantage campsite (almost the same one we were at five months prior) and started reviewing properties in the local area, more as entertainment than anything else. One popped up as being a "For Sale By Owner" in Moses Lake. Only an hour from Vantage, Wayne suggested we just go for a drive and see the area the next day. We made plans with his son-in-law, Wayne Smith, to meet up in Ephrata, also near by.

Living room as seen from the kitchen. master bedroom is
seen to right down the hall.

So on Friday morning, Oct. 5, we drove to the property and the owners were outside working on the yard. We asked if we could walk around and they invited us inside, showed us everything, and we were surprised both at the size and the cleanliness of everything. After looking, we said we had some other places to visit and we drove off to view them. But after less than an hour, we were back, wanting to talk to the owners again about accepting an offer.

Master bedroom has an east-facing window.

Second bath, updated, too.

To shorten the story, here we are just a week later with a signed offer all the way around, the home inspection is tomorrow, we have preliminary loan approval and everyone is hoping for a closing mid-November.

One of the three bedrooms ...

Plenty of yard for Wayne's gardening...

Property is just under an acre of good soil.

An added bonus is a back shed for art or storage.

It started to rain so the house doesn't look its best here, but
its got three bedrooms, two baths and two bays of garage.

Back side of the house; porches both front and back.

We are pretty excited to have found a place that meets all our wants and needs, and all the children are relieved to know their dad will be living closer. We spent several days exploring Moses Lake, finding stores, getting the well tested, and enjoying some of the restaurants here. We will have square dance connections and know where we can ballroom dance once a week.

Moving to this area also means that our long-distance RV trips can get started more effectively without having to drive three hours off the Olympic Peninsula. Moses Lake is an hour and a half from Spokane, also from Yakima, an hour from Wenatchee and Ellensburg, and about three hours from Seattle.

While we will miss our friends in Sequim, Gardiner, Port Angeles, Quilcene, Forks and other places on the Peninsula, we can still visit them and they are more than welcome to come and visit us. We are just off I-90 and we have guest rooms!

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.