Since about the time we first met, Daniel and I have talked about how it would be nice to one day have a little bit of land with a stream running through it. You know, a place to read, maybe do some fishing, go on hikes, and basically get away from it all. Back in early January, we had an email exchange that went something along the lines of:
Me: Yeah, one of these days we'll have a cabin in the woods.
Daniel: We'll never be able to afford one.
Me: We can afford this one....
It just so happened that I had been browsing through the local property listings. It's something I do on occasion, mostly so I can see the insides of all those fancy homes I know we'll never own. This time I had stumbled across a little wooden cabin about 75 minutes drive north of here in an area called Garden Valley.
Well, one thing led to another, and this Friday just gone we signed on the dotted line and officially purchased that little wooden cabin.
Here's the very first we saw of it, back in January:
And here's what it looked like once we'd slipped and slid our way over the snow and ice covered driveway and gotten a little closer:
It was built in 1977 by, we think, the previous owner's father. He was a stone mason, which explains the sturdy construction, and the date explains the colour scheme:
Lots of burnt orange and fake wood panelling. We had the same carpet in our bedroom in Illinois, but it wasn't in nearly as good condition as this is.
Here's some more burnt orange for your viewing pleasure, looking basically in the opposite direction to the previous photo:
And in case you want any more proof that the place does the seventies proud, here it is:
Ah yes, the red, the shag, the gold-framed mirror! It's very groovy.
Thing is, all these seventies features have been kept well enough that we can't justify replacing them, so I guess we'll be staying retro for quite some time. It's just too fab, man!
Here's where we'll be sleeping:
Although probably not in those beds.
The previous owner is going to leave the things he doesn't want, so we're not sure exactly what we'll have and what we'll need to get, but either way those beds are going!
The other photos I have are mostly of structural things; these were taken back in January for the purposes of reviewing them while we decided whether or not to make an offer on the place. I'll get more once we've spent some time there.
We were a bit nervous about it; the place had been on the market for 12 months without selling, but we couldn't see any huge glaring faults (for example, that it was about to slide down the very steep hill it's perched on).
As it turned out, most people had been put off by the fact that it shares a well and a septic with one property, and a bridge and private road with three properties. No-one was sure if there were any agreements in place about how these things were to be shared, and I guess any prospective buyers balked at the idea of legal fees etc., to get everything taken care of.
Apparently previous interested parties didn't do (or I should say, didn't have their realtors do) a lot of research. There are agreements for everything, and no further legal fees to be incurred on that front. Hurray! Fingers crossed the bridge doesn't wash away in a flood any time soon.
Speaking of bridges, we do have that stream we have talked about for so many years running along the front of the place. Word has it there may even be a trout or two to be caught there, which makes Daniel very happy.
What makes us both thrilled is that it feels like a very happy place full of good memories of times spent there by previous visitors. We plan on continuing that, whether it's one of us, both of us, or us and our friends who visit. The previous owner worked very hard to fix a whole lot of things for us, because he wanted us to be happy with it. We didn't get to meet him, but I suspect he's a very nice man.
We have a little over two acres that backs onto public land so it can't be built out, and the road out front is gravel (which is to say, not some super highway full of trucks and cars). A lot of people who have second homes have them slap bang in the middle of a town (such as Crouch, which is the nearest town, about 10 or so k's away). We couldn't really see the point of that; why leave town for the weekend only to be in a place that's just like the one you left? Not to mention the fact that a lot of people have second houses, not cabins. A lot of them are better that our permanent home!
What we have bought is small (782 square feet), and should be quite low maintenance, barring a tree falling on the roof or something. There's no dishwasher, no fancy granite counters, no six-burner top-of-the-line stove (it's electric, unfortunately) or spa bath (seriously, we've rented places with these things). There's no mobile phone service, no internet access, and apparently free-to-air TV is a very dodgy proposition. There's no land line for a phone, either.
It's just a very simple place in the bush away from people (we have a few neighbours, but our closest neighbour is there two weeks of the year), and it has a stream running through it.
I don't think either of us can quite believe we've done this. To me it always seemed like something that only the fabulously wealthy could do, yet here we are waiting for Friday so we can go for a visit and get settled into our holiday home.
We're very lucky people.
