Made for Victorian

Let me say this; I am so blessed and in turn so grateful! Life has been very kind to me and I make sure to be double thankful for all the good that comes my way. I have been given so many opportunities to experience new things and it makes me hungry for more. I want to explore it all.

On that note, I've found a new obsession. Or maybe a new ideal. The Lover and I currently live in a gorgeous downtown loft. It's not your typical loft, I would call it a luxury loft if I had to describe it. I say this because it contains 2,300 sq. feet of living space and that is enormous for what most people consider a loft. It has two bedrooms with one being a very spacey master suite. It even has a deck! I feel so spoiled to be calling this home but trust me, we are paying for it!!

We have decided to lease because we snagged this when The Lover discovered he was being relocated for work. We barely knew the area and didn't want to lock into a mortgage without knowing if we were going to stay here for a while or what! And while I love the loft and the downtown living I miss a few things about actually having a home but now that we've been spoiled with such a gorgeous place we don't want to settle in just any ol' place.

While living in this town we discovered that property values are significantly lower than say, Charleston. I believe it is due to the average salary of this place though I can't tell you how many beemers, mercedes, porsches, lexus I've seen driving around here! Moving on, knowing that property value are actually affordable here we've wandered around some of the nicer neighborhoods trying to find something comparable to this amazing loft.

The other day we just happened to find it! It is a few blocks away from downtown and even the loft we reside in currently! It's a historic district with amazing old Victorian style homes. These homes are at least 4,000 sq. feet with amazing porches, bay windows, old brick, great backyards, wide streets, old trees, and lots of style. We looked at one that is currently for sale just on a whim. It was beautiful with hardwood floors, nice open rooms, tall ceilings, and roughly thirty different rooms! We called the owner just to see what the asking price was and they wanted 96k for it!! We couldn't believe it! It did look like it needed some tlc but we weren't afraid of a little work if the price was right.

So later in the week we met with our construction friend who could look at the house with a trained eye and tell us what the real figures were to get this house back up to par! It is currently split into four apartment with four kitchens and four bathrooms, because it's been empty for 5 years and in a historic district it had to be changed back into a single family home, ok with us!

After some further review our friend discovered some major issues. Apparently there was a fire that did some considerable damage to the roof and the previous owner just covered it up instead of really fixing it. There was also a lot of wood rotting due to a leaky roof. So our friend called his roof guy to see what the cost would be just to replace the roof. He told us it would be close to $30,000 just to get the roof back in order. Holy smokes!

We walked away from it. After some serious consideration we decided that was too much effort for too little gain. However, in the place of walking away we came to the conclusion that we would like to move into that neighborhood when our lease is up in Feb. of 2011. So now we are making plans to save everything we can while keeping an eye on the homes in that area. How lovely it would be to have an old style Victorian with great big rooms ready to keep several guests, perfect for the holidays! A home with many windows and many more nooks and crannies to huddle up and read a book! A place with great fireplaces and great wrap around porches! We discovered another home with exactly this, already done up and ready to move in! I am crossing my fingers that this home will still be on the market when our time here is up.... though I'm doubtful!

Crossing my fingers now....!