Finally A House of Our Own!

December 2015

Over the past 6 to 8 months Brett and I have been looking at houses to buy here in Roseburg and the surrounding areas.  We have looked at well over 100 houses~ and have been soooo discouraged... 

We began to think - oh no - we have completely made the wrong decision to sell our house in Meeker and move halfway across the country - and thinking that we would find something that would be at least as good as what we had in Meeker...  

It turns out that this county and in much of Oregon that building codes did not even exist until the mid to late 70's.  This meant that basically - anything you did to your house was fine - and even when you sold it to someone else - no big deal either...  Well, Brett being the former contractor - I am sure you can only imagine his response to the "do it yourself" projects we were coming into contact with.  

Let me give you an idea of some of the things we were seeing...  One house seemed pretty normal - not a great layout - had a spiral staircase at the front door that was the only access to the upstairs - but it's amazing feature was the laundry room - it was conveniently located in a nearby shed - just 50 yards away... the crazy part - it wasn't the only house with that amazing feature...

Turns out that there was a big fad of sunken bathtubs in this area.  There were a number of houses that you needed to literally climb down into a shower/tub to get cleaned up... one of them even had a "trap door" in the floor of the master bedroom's walk in closet- to a hot tub - under the floor- not sure what the motivation was there...
It is not that we were against a remodel - but when the owners of most of these were pretty sure that they had such amazing houses that they also needed some amazing amounts of money to buy them... 

Well, after looking at all these crazy places - we finally found a place that is quite a bit bigger than what we were originally looking for and on a bit more land than we were thinking - but this is enough space and laid out to where we can subdivide to help counter the cost of the serious amount of remodeling that will need to take place.  The house was built in 1981 and the owners were fond enough of that time period that they preserved every aspect of the early 80's... you know - things like mirrored/ metallic wallpaper (floor to 20ft vaulted ceiling of course) and the original 'cultured' marble counters, showers and bath tubs...  but overall, structurally sound and something we can totally work on remodeling at our own pace.  

We are set to close on this house on Monday - the 28th of December and we are hoping to be using the rest of the winter break to move in and get settled...  There is plenty of room for company - so please if you will be anywhere near the area - we would love to have you come by and stay with us!  We're only a little over an hour and a half from the coast and a little over an hour for getting to the ski resorts!  

We will post some pictures as soon as we have them!  

Hope you all are having a great time with friends and family over break~

Lots of love,

Brett, Jen, Braden and Elliot...