the lee of the stone

back in the dead of last winter, i decided to kill some time looking at properties for rent near the maine/nh border.  stowe, lovell, fryeburg, et al.  we were considering whether or not i would open a practice in north conway, but our devotion to vacationland meant that we were dead-set on remaining on this side of the state line.  naples was too far away, but i knew i wouldn’t necessarily have to move soon, so we’d have plenty of time to find a new place.

one of the the things you need to know about maine is that the farther afield you go, the harder it is to find, well, anything.  grocery stores, gas stations, and, it turns out, apartments.  rentals were few and far between, and what lurked about looked like a better place to buy drugs than to keep house.

and then i found a cute little place in stowe, but it wasn’t for rent; it was for sale.  and cheap.  so i got a crazy idea–what if we looked at buying a place?? intrigued, i drove out to see the house.  as nice as it sounded on paper, it turned out to be too far into the boonies on a street lined with dilapidated trailers and neglected farm houses. meh.  back to square one.

tons of crap cheap houses or great expensive houses.  nothing clicked.

and then, weeks later, i found the house.  our house.  i knew it in my bones.  i was surfing a real estate site, and just happened upon it.  a 1790s cape just a stone’s throw from new hampshire.  unlike the house in stowe though, it was expensive–too much for us.   i stewed on the idea for a while, dreaming of wood stoves and creaky old floors, but then eventually, in the day to day hustle and bustle of the birth center, the house slipped my mind.

and then i signed onto facebook one day (thanks invasive computer technology!), and lurking there in the ad margins was the house.  our house.  taunting me.  uhhhhg.  i visited the site often, looking through the rambling old rooms and dreaming of a time when we could muster that level of resources.

house, as seen from the backyard (that in the olden days used to be the front yard)

on april 22nd, just to torture myself, i decided to drive by the house.  maybe i’d hate it, i thought, and then i could stop stewing.  maybe the neighborhood would be awful, the roof would be old and rusted, the yard would be a mess.  better to know, i thought.

when i pulled up the long gravel drive, i knew i was doomed.  the yard, though suffering from short-term neglect, was beautifully landscaped in its bones.  2-3 of the 12 acres were open grass dotted with trees and the springtime skeletons of carefully placed perennials.  the house, though old at its core, seemed well maintained.  good paint.  good roof.

house in the summertime

i pulled further up the drive and noticed an electrician’s van parked in the muddy upper yard.  bingo!  i hopped out of the car and went over to the open door.  the electrician was finishing up some repairs and was happy to let me in.  i had about 5 minutes to wander the house while he packed up his tools and buttoned up his van.

and it. was. awesome.

the older part of the house consisted of the kitchen with wood stove, a catwalk above leading to a rambling loft bedroom, and a living room with two connected two bedrooms.  the newer portion of the house was a bathroom, dining room, sun room, and porch.  the loft was interesting in that the two access points were a ladder in the kitchen and a mildly scary staircase behind a door in the living room.  (i’m seeing a lot of ladder use in my future.)

the house felt like magic.  it felt like ours.  i could see herbs drying hanging on the rafters, big meals at a farm table.

the loft

when i got back to work, i contacted the real estate agent, not because i thought we’d have a snowball’s chance in hell of buying a house, but because i still wanted to know more.  there are a million things that can be wrong with old houses, and a tour from the real estate agent would surely reveal the cracks and put me off this lunacy.

five days later, stephen and i met the agent at the house.  new hot water heater, newish heating system, updated electrical, fully functional well. no leaks in the basement.  nothing to deter us.  i still couldn’t put the idea away. was the seller open to renting, we asked?  no, the agent said–the seller had had a bad previous experience with that.  oh well, worth the ask!

about two weeks after we saw the house, i had a conversation with a coworker about alternative plans for getting a home loan.  she recommended a program called community concepts, which specialized in rural development usda loans.  i made an appointment with someone at concepts.  too much student loan debt, she said.  i talked to another woman at concepts. yep, too much loan debt to qualify.  dead end.

time passes.

sometime around midsummer, i drove by the house just cuz.  the for sale sign was gone, and i was devastated.  back at the office, i checked the real estate site.  sale pending, it said.  goddamn.

fast-forward to august 10th.  i still couldn’t forget the house, so i looked it up again.  not only was it back on the market (the sale hadn’t gone through) but the price had dropped by $20k.  on a whim, i emailed the realtor to enquire about the house’s status and to make a sincere plea for our case as rent-to-owners.

the realtor emailed back saying he’d ask the seller.  i heard nothing back for weeks.  another dead end.

until randomly, 5 weeks later, there was a short and sweet reply in my inbox.  “the seller will consider renting.  contact me.”  the next two weeks were a stressful and surreal blur of figuring out how on earth we’d actually rent the house, how we could prove that we were serious about buying later, how long we could rent before buying, whether or not the rent would be so high as to make it a foregone conclusion anyway…

my coworker who had sent me to community concepts earlier in the year recommended a stellar loan agent, and as per the seller’s requirements for even considering letting us rent, i gathered up every piece of paper containing any relevant information about my and my husband, and i went to see the loan agent.  we had to get a (terrifying) real view of our loan eligibility.

on sept 23, i contacted the agent, letting her know that we’d have to have her seal of approval before the seller would move forward.  he earliest available appointment was october 2.

so. much. waiting.

on oct 2, i met with emma and found out two very important pieces of information.  1) yes, our student loan debt was quite limiting and  2) we apparently have extraterrestrial credit, which meant that underwriters *could potentially* look past our wild debt/income ratio.

after the meeting with the lender, a million things that were completely out of my hands had to happen.  she had to send our info to the underwriters for a verdict, the seller had to decide what she needed from us (just a solidly endorsed plan? actual loan approval?), we had to figure out if we could get out of our lease in a timely manner.  the two weeks following nearly drove me to drinking.  i don’t do well with protracted periods of uncertainty.

and add to this mix that i had to leave for a week-long conference with in-face board meeting in albuquerque.

holy mother.

on oct 13, i got the message that we were a go for the house (!!!!).  18 month rental agreement with option to buy afterward.  on oct 14, we gave notice at our current apartment and i left for albuquerque.

skin. of. my. teeth.

when i got home from alq on the 22nd, efforts started in earnest to get things rolling–the most pressing of which was that (after finally having found it on such late notice) we were having 3 cords of wood delivered to the house a week before moving day.

it’s interesting how much we take our creature comforts for granted.  hot? push a button (in the south, anyway) and there’s a/c.  cold?  push another button and heat happens.  the only work that goes into the whole process in either case is the work that you put in earning the money that would eventually go to the power company.  we were facing the reality of moving into a house that, while it did have propane, was set up to run pretty efficiently off of wood heat.  but man at the process.

find wood.  buy wood (whoa buddy!). wood arrives in trucks and is dumped into your yard.  you stack the wood.  then you tote the wood in and use it to build fire after fire after fire in hopes that the propane won’t kick on.  there’s dirt, bugs, ashes, strategery, waking up at 3am to load more wood into a stove.  as complicated and unfamiliar as it all sounded, part of me couldn’t wait.

our wood stove, a month later, in action

anyway, so our wood was going to be delivered a week before move-in day, and we were incredibly lucky to have an amazing crew lined up to help us stack it.

so. much. wood.

(and then on the 6th, night-before tequila happened.  but everything was fine–it just meant that a few of us were a little slow on the draw, and one of us was ghost-white and couldn’t much stomach the grab-pivot-pass motion of the firewood bucket brigade.  but the deed was done anyhow with much revelry and ALL the wood jokes.)

wood for DAYS

an interesting occurrence of wood-stacking day was that the realtor showed up with clients who wanted to see the house.  because our lease wasn’t signed yet (because the owner had been sick and had just put it in the mail to us), the house was teeeeeechnically still on the market, but i was a little riled at this show of bad faith.  the realtor explained to the viewers that the house was about to be leased for 18 months.  the realtor explained to me that, until there was a signed lease, it was his job to show the house.  so there we were, hucking wood.  and there they were, touring our house, waving through the windows, and giving us hoots of “good job!!” with a terrible masshole screech.   they meant well.

territorial momma-bear almost came out that day.

the following week was a massive scramble to finish packing and set up the power, internet, propane, yaddayadda.

but we did it!

moving day was actually a hoot and a half.  friends beth, tyler, madeleine, shane, rob, griffin, and holly came to help out, and between the 9 of us, we made short work of hauling the contents of the roost down two flights of stairs to the moving truck and cleaning the place from tip to tail.  beth made the wise judgment to bring a gallon of coffee and boxes of donuts, which i’m sure helped our spirits and efficiency.

i was pleased at the state of the roost.  we’d done a good job taking care of it, and all was in good shape when we left.  the only outlier was that the floor had started to pull down from the wall behind our bed.  what can i say? 😉

so we said goodbye to our little life on stable road, a place that we’d called home in one way or another since our move to maine in 2011.  in truth, i was a little sad to be leaving our fantastic landlord (and bills-included-in-rent) behind, but we were also leaving scads of creeeeepy neighbors, so that balmed the wound well enough.

house, pre our stuff

we arrived at the new house on haleytown around 1 in the afternoon.  move-in was much more enjoyable and less hurried than move-out.  there was pizza, much beer, and lots of laughs as we piled all of our belongings willy-nilly into a room that would come to be known as “the great hall.”

and then midway through, a car pulled up the driveway and a stranger hopped out.  a stranger who looked suspiciously like a real-estate agent.  a  stranger who *was* a real-estate agent.

me:  hi there, can i help you?

him:  umm, i’m showing this house today.

me:  hmm, well, we’re moving in, so…..

him: WELL, this house is still listed, and these people have come from an hour away in new hampshire to see it.

me: (litany of happenings leading up to our renting)

him:  WELL, this is very unusual, and my client is going to be angry

me: *southern shit-eatin’ not-my-circus-not-my-monkeys! smile*

him:  *furious cell phoning*

him:  WELL, can they at least come see it for price comparison information?

me:  of coooooooourse!  right this way into *my* house!

so there we were, the 9 of us moving in, all looking a little crazed and confused, one of us packing live-free-or-die firepower, watching a real-estate agent show a house between us, by our boxes, in our way–that the would-be-buyer couldn’t actually have.

it was a bit surreal.  but, as i always do, i thought “man this is prime blog material”

i can’t even begin to describe how it felt to be home.  our house.  our beautiful yard.  surrounded by our friends.  i know i was grinning like a fool all day.

*sidenote–another truly awesome thing i got to do on move-in day was take a rusted-busted metal swing set into a million pieces with a sawzall.  i think was a little too excited about it.  man, it felt good to power-tool through metal!

swingset, you will submit!

**sidesidenote–because our friends are amazing, we are now the proud owner of our very own sawzall (plus flashlight, drill, and circular saw–world, watch out!)

*********************

ever since we thought that the house was a possibility, we’d been trying to think of a name for it.  house names, like nicknames, are best when they happen organically and just kind of stick, so i was hoping that would happen.  when i made an event on facebook for our move, i entitled it “it’s moving day, briz!” after one of my favorite childhood movies, the secret of nimh.  stephen commented on the page, “does this mean we should name our house “the lee of the stone?”

fast-forward to move-in day.  while playing in the yard, griffin decided to climb an enormous glacial erratic parked in the front yard.  it’s almost completely engulfed in a hydrangea bush so old that it has bark on the trunk.  after rooting around in the bush (not a rose bush, but close enough), griffin came up with a giant black plastic rat.  we named it jenner.  from that moment, our house was officially christened the lee of the stone.  for short, you can call it the lee.

…to be continued.