History

Hello from Bob and Laura.

This Blog will become a chronical of the journey on which we are about to embark – a journey to our first house.

This journey started years ago – in 2005, to be exact.

Between then and now, Laura and I have explored just about every imaginable route to owning a house – buying an exisitng house in the area we live in; buying an existing house nearer to my daughter Samantha and her family, building a house here or there, finding a house that needed TLC (read major work), finding a commercial builder to build a “shell” which we could outfit at our leisure, buy a pre-fab, buy a kit house, buy a farm, purchase a condo in a development with people our age (we’re Boomers, or Geezers as we fondly refer to ourselves), or add on to the townhouse we were living in (we’re now in an apartment – a not-too-unpleasant development that came about because of the quick and unexpected sale of the townhouse).

An explanation about the townhouse – I (Bob) owned it before I met and married Laura so, for our purposes, we don’t consider it “our” first house.

We’ve been under contract for land purchases and house purchases. None of them came to closing – not due to any fault (or default) on our part. Looking back at those transactions, we are relieved that none of them were fruitful – although at the time we were miffed, to say the least.

Yes, we’re picky and sometimes unrealistic in our expectations. But we know want we want and don’t want, and are glad that we waited. There are a lot of bargains out there that tempted us. But buying a bargain just because it is a bargain didn’t make sense when it comes to a house purchase.

We live in the Richmond, Virginia area – in western Chesterfield County. Our house will be built in Louisa County, which is north and further west of where we currently live.

Our daily job commute will increase by about fifteen minutes each way, which is within our or tolerable limits.

We look forward to having a destination that is worth the drive – especially the one on the way back home.

So after all these years, false starts and much soul-searching, we decided to take the plunge and have our first house built for us. We will end up with the house we want, bounded only by our budget.

So in short order (one month) we found a gorgeous plot of land (11+ acres) in beautiful Louisa County, Virginia and a builder who offers striking and unusal factory-built homes.

As this journey progresses, we hope to chart our progress – the good, bad and inbetween.

We hope that you will drop by from time-to-time and share in our adventure.

Cheers!

Bob & Laura

Update As you’ll read here, we’re no longer persuing the Louisa County property or working with Topsider. Instead, we found a 2.5 acre parcel on a pond in Powhatan County about three miles south of the James River and Goochland County. We plan to close the deal on or before July 17. We’re in the process of assessing the feasibilty of making our house work on the site.

Update II We’re also no longer persuing the Powhatan County property. In order to take advantage of the pond view from the house site, bushes and young trees on the neighboring property would have to be cut – something that the neighbor wasn’t willing to let happen. Instead, we found a 10.4 acre parcel in Hanover County. We plan to close the deal on or before September 17.