To our old house’s successor,

We moved into this beautiful place in February of 2019. We’re starting this blog for you! We have so many questions about the decisions made before us and with the time, money, and energy we are putting into this home, we thought it would be prudent of us to let you know why WE’VE done what we’ve done and our hopes for you as its new caretaker. 

So welcome home!

Our names are Matt and Taylor and we currently have the best pup, Sammi (I’m sure you’ve see her scratch marks on all the windows- she’s not a fan of the mailman, or any animals in our yard)

Matt and I were not looking to buy a house when we first started looking in 2017. We decided we wanted to explore different places in New England and see what was out there while we started saving up. We had gone to 2-3 open houses before finding this beauty. The day prior, I had been giving Matt a pep talk that we were only looking and definitely not going to buy anything… but we took one step in through the front door, and I lost my breath and never recovered. I hope you experienced this same love at first sight. I blacked out for most of my walk through, and the pictures I took that day were of all its flaws in hopes that I’d come to my senses. Spoiler: I/we didn’t. Matt and I drove home in silence, both unwilling to admit our love of this house. Our first idea was to make this a bed and breakfast as a way to make this purchase a financially wise decision… It is after-all a LARGE house for just 2 people (we did not have Sammi at the time). This was enough of an idea to pitch it to our parents. We also hoped someone would talk us out of this. Spoiler: they didn’t. 

The problems we encountered with our purchase:

1. We were first time homeowners and had no idea what we were doing… So we contacted a buyers agent to help us through the process. 
2. The house was being sold as-is. There were a number of problems making it difficult to insure the house in its current state. The house had sat empty for a year before the prior owner passed away. We did our due diligence and had an inspection done which I now realize are not always the most helpful in truly assessing a home. Many do not want to hold any responsibility and will often point to getting opinions from other professionals. As it was being sold as-is, we were advised to obtain a home renovation loan through a 203k loan. Unfortunately we had difficulty obtaining bids for the work to be done. We ended up with 2 bids through some serious teeth pulling. A few days before our initial closing, the lender would not approve us after reviewing the appraisals. The projected appraisal (post renovation) came back extremely low and would have required us to bring about 100k cash to the closing because we would have been on the hook for the difference. 

By some grace, we were able to obtain a conventional mortgage and somehow insure our knob and tube, lack of ANY fire detectors, and lead-paint ridden future home. 

So here we are. New homeowners with a long laundry list of issues and no financial aid to help mitigate them. We knew what we were getting into… or theoretically did… and knew nothing was serious enough that we couldn’t move in at the end of our lease and slowly tackle the projects over the next 10-20…maybe 30 years. 

Nearly five years in now, and that timeline is definitely not 10 years… questionably 20 years, but more likely the rest of our lifetime. We are trying our best to honor this house, its history, its prior inhabitants, and we hope as you start your life here, you’ll continue our passion project.