So, we're in the car and I am crying huge alligator tears. My hubs turns to me and says, "I want to build the house instead. Will you be OK with that?" I mulled it over for a moment, having been through two previous house building experiences, one when my parents built when I was 14 and one at 21 with my high school sweetheart when we decided to move in together and see if things were for real...obviously they weren't, and knowing that it is very stressful. I agreed and so began the most stressful 11 months of our marriage - considering we'd only been married three at the time.
We began looking for a place to rent, finally settling on a little house in S. Minneapolis. This is a whole other story, but I ended up bawling through the entire move once I realized that the people who owned the house were less than great housekeepers. We're talking having to run the self clean cycle on the oven 3 times just to get it clean. A word of advice when renting - open drawers, open appliances, really look at the floors. Just because they guy who owns the house is a lawyer with a skinny wife and little girl, doesn't mean that they know how to use a broom or a mop or press that little button on your oven that says self clean for that matter. Enough of that...
In our previous home shopping excursions we came across two homes for sale as tear down re-builds or remodel situations on this tiny little cul-de-sac, right in the neighborhood we wanted to be in. One of the lots was already contracted with another builder, meaning that we would have to build with them if we bought the lot. We wanted to build our house with our builder so the other lot, which was the better choice anyway, became our target. We did a "showing" to look at the property (picture above right) and made an offer to begin negotiations. While this was happening, we proceeded to begin searching for a construction loan, which are terribly hard to get in this market. The first broker screwed us over big time as he was in transition to a new company and delayed our loan to try to bring it to his new employer. We found another lender, with better terms and everything was set, or so we thought. A second deadline was laid out and the sellers, who ended up being really great, but were feeling pressure from the other side since they had purchased a new home once the deal supposedly closed, basically said we needed to meet that deadline or the deal was off. So. Much. Stress. Twelve hours before we were supposed to close, the lender called us and said we needed more money. A lot more money. Basically we needed to buy the property outright in order to get a construction loan to build on the site. My husband was able to scrape the money together, while his pregnant wife cried and cried...it was all just so much to handle and I couldn't imagine having to live in the now cleaned, but once was dirty rental house.
The closing took 4 hours, but finally, finally happened and we were the proud owners of a tiny little house that we were about to tear down. We had a building reuse it organization come and strip out what they could take. And we proceeded to have the house demolished. I felt a little guilty about razing the home, knowing that in other countries who live in extreme poverty that would consider that home a wonderful place to live. We did try to have the house moved, but it was one foot too large. A friend of mine told me to get over my guilt and so I did. Photos of the demolished house below:
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