1900 Farmhouse

Beginning in 2001, David and I began to take steps to make our dream of owning an old farmhouse a reality....we spent 2001 - Dec 2003 searching the area where we now live. Although we saw many abandoned farmhouses, in the end we placed two offers before we actually found the house meant to be ours.....the first offer was placed on a house built in 1900.

Although our three year plan still had 18 months left to go (target being Dallas' graduation from high school) we began to realize that the real estate market was changing; house prices were rising rapidly and interest in renovating old houses was on the rise as well. Although the rise in house prices was good for us in selling our house, there was a possibility that we would be priced out of the market for an old farmhouse. So after Christmas 2002, we stepped up the pace............

In January of 2003, we began to drop into the Real Estate Offices in the area we were hoping to buy and putting them to work for us. One day we stopped at a huge steel building used to house farming equipment that also housed a tiny little office of a local agent. We had a nice little chat with him....but he didn't seem too interested in finding us a house and spent most of our "visit" talking more about his race cars then he did about real estate; he did eventually mention that he had sold his grandmother's 6 bedroom farmhouse on 10 acres for $80,000 last year (2002 - and this was a comment inserted into a dissertation on where he garaged his race cars~ )......David and I both inwardly groaned and then as we nodded and smiled at the agent through our disappointment, he eventually stopped talking about driving his race cars and got around to talking about an old house just down the road. The house was in foreclosure and might be available.....we asked him to take us to see it but instead of driving us there, he just gave us directions...!

Luckily, they were good directions....the drive took us past pastures with horses and cows, scenic fields with lovely ponds and several old farmhouses; the area was perfect for us...exactly what we were looking for. And when we finally caught a glimpse of the 1900 farmhouse we couldn't believe our eyes- standing in a field all by itself, the red metal roof was the first thing that caught your eye, then the third story came into view and slowly a little more of the house became visible, until suddenly, the whole thing was right there....and it was beautiful.

Unable to locate the photos of the house we took in Jan 2003, David and I drove by this house today to snap some new ones....the house has been totally renovated - new roof (not metal -sighing as I write this), the original white siding painted, windows repaired and/or replaced - and the owners are now living in the house...

The three story farmhouse came with a detached concrete garage and a shed; it was surrounded by fields and majestic palm trees lined the drive...it sat on just under an acre. That acre was all that remained of the original 80 that the original owner's had farmed. An old barn sat to the right rear of the property but we later learned it was no longer part of the deal....we were to find that this was the case in every farmhouse we looked at save one. When the original farmers became too old to farm their cropland, they sold off the acreage to younger farmers and included in the deal any outbuildings pertinent to the farming operation.

We knew the asking price was only $114,000 which would leave us a great deal of breathing space for renovating the house; this was a deal we could make...easily. The upper level windows were mostly missing or broken and boards were covering them; we could see that the electrical system would need to be addressed.....

While we couldn't get in the house to see the upper levels, we were able to see in all of the lower windows and through the windowed front door which opened onto a wide hallway with a staircase and a view straight out the back door! Four rooms were downstairs and each had a fireplace including the kitchen....which was basically a square room with no cabinets, no stove or fridge and the sink was actually on a wheeled cabinet base. I was excited to think about designing that kitchen....imagine being able to begin with a blank slate.....

The 1900 house was in really sad shape but we wanted it and we wanted it badly - we knew that we would be "camping" in that old house for a few months as we repaired/replaced windows and built a working kitchen but we were prepared to do that....so in the truck we get and drive back to the agent's office...where he says.......

" well, I don't know what bank has it! When you get home you can look on the computer and try to find that out"....

do I need to tell you that THAT agent was crossed off of our list of agents to work with? On the drive home, we're already planning the marketing of our house so we can get out of it and buy the 1900 house.....Dallas could finish out his senior year living with his aunt Karen (David's sister) and then move down in the summer.....arriving home, the first thing I did was get on the computer, find the bank that had the house and then tried to contact the account executive....who'd already left for the day.

The next morning at 9 a.m., David called the bank and we learned that the house had a contract on it already....the 6th contract in 12 months! The executive was very interested in us as potential buyers and took our name and number and a verbal back up offer. She made it clear she had her doubts regarding that contract as the buyers had already been denied once already.............Those ten days were some of the longest we'd ever experienced and in the end, the contract went through and the house was sold.

We later learned that the buyers were direct descendants of the original owners and that took some of the sting out of not being able to buy it ourselves - especially for me as a genealogist....I would love to be able to buy the home of one of my ancestor's ...the family that now lives in that old house realized that dream for themselves and worked very hard to be able to do so.

David and I still drive by that old house from time to time and wonder what life would have been like had we been able to buy it and fix it up ourselves......

The search went on.......... 1890 Cracker House = Haunted House