mThe Home of Our Dreams

The Home of Our Dreams - Complete With a full-functioning Mama!

As many of you know, our Mama (Sue Crawford) is moving from Florida to live with Drema and me. That being the case, we needed to find an alternate to our 2-story setup where all the bedrooms were upstairs, as we didn't want her to have to navigate steep stairs every day. We seriously considered adding an "in-law suite" onto our existing home, but the more we learned the more we realized that was not a good solution physically nor financially. Just so happened that the Raleigh Parade Of Homes show was going on last week and our neighborhood is expanding into a new section and had 6 entries in the show.

After Drema and I watched Rev. Hagee's sermon last Sunday...and spent some time praying (interestingly not specifically about our house situation) we went out for a glorious walk on a very "fresh" fall morning. We did our normal half-mile loop, which ended up taking about 45 minutes as we kept stopping to talk with neighbors we had never chatted with in our 8-years in the area...lots of really nice folks. We decided that 1/2 mile wasn't enough, so took off up "the mountain", which is the VERY steep hill that goes to the upper ridge of our neighborhood and continued our walk toward the new section, which is about 3/4 of a mile from our house. We ended up walking through a lot of the homes that were under construction...kind of dreaming "wish we could afford to just build a new home to accommodate our new needs" and came upon the Parade models that were open. Went through the first one and was in awe of how beautiful and what a nice design... left thinking "nice, but not really what we need". If you've ever tried to find a home in NC you'll know that 95% of the homes are Colonial style 2-story homes with the bedrooms upstairs. This was a "50's feel" version of that...nice, but... We continued our walk and wound our way to the back section onto a cul-de-sac where there was one more open Parade home. We had seen it a couple of weeks earlier before it was finished and thought it was nice, but... First off...you need to know that I'm a cheap-skate when it comes to house buying and the "starting at" price in the new section was "from the $240's to mid-300's". Anyone that has ever bought a home knows that means that everything starts at about $300k. Anyways..back to the story. Drema and I, after removing our sneakers, walked into this house and literally stopped dead in our tracks! The place felt like a mansion to us... 20+ foot cathedral ceilings in the foyer and living room...felt so open...just what we love. Then we started talking to the realtor on duty...and found out the Master Bedroom AND an "office or in-law" bedroom was also on the first floor. We couldn't believe it. The more we looked, the more we knew THIS WAS IT! Anyone that has visited our home knows that our neighborhood is special, in that most of the trees have been left up and the lots are 3/4 acre and up. We love where we live...and finding the PERFECT home to meet our needs just blew us away! Plus, the upstairs has two large bedrooms (for Jenny/Jonnie and Tommy/Jennie) and a BIG bonus room (i.e. Tom's Toy Room...Home Theater, computers...loud noises most of the time, etc).

Well to make this long story short, Drema and I decided within about 5 minutes of walking around that we wanted to pursue buying this home. I was scared to death because of the cost, but surprisingly felt a strong conviction that this was the right thing to do. Unfortunately...it already had sold...first day it showed in the Parade of Homes. Sigh.... BUT, when God has a plan it's always equal to or better than anything you would hope for! Turns out the builder of this house has two other lots in the new section - One was small..about .7 acres...not what we wanted....sigh... then we learned that the other lot was 3.3 acres... right up our alley, but we knew it would cost a ton! We told the realtor we would look at the lots on the way out and call him in a couple of days, thinking we were again thwarted. Started our walk home...and then we saw LOT 132 (the 3.3 acre lot). Covered with hardwood trees...BIG ONES... and only ONE Pine Tree (I was really interested then, because I hate pine trees)....and a STREAM that was down a 40 foot ravine...also part of this lot. We continued walking and talking the rest of the way home... and just knew we had to try to get THE House of our dreams and THE lot of our dreams.... So we cleaned up and drove back up and talked with the realtor...and made an appointment for Monday night to talk with him.

Monday Night... Marshall arrives and we tell him we've decided to "go for it"... but it all depends on how expensive the house we saw would be on the Huge lot we liked... Marshall said..."Oh, that lot is the same price as the .7 acre lot that's also available, and would cost the same as the Parade model you saw." After our jaw drop we said.. "we'll take it". Amazingly I didn't care what the price was...weird for me. Now to the present... we got our pre-qualification to buy the home today (Monday 10/18) and should have a contract to sign by Wednesday and building should begin within the next two weeks with an expected completion sometime in late April to mid-May. Our house is up for sale with Coldwell Banker (same realtor we are buying from) and it appears we are moving on...and up to our new home, complete with a full-functioning Mama!