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So, let’s get this started with our first official post!  

Why this house?

Ronan and I looked at many houses in and around the Hudson Valley before we decided on this one.  We weren’t sure of exactly where we wanted to be, but we knew that we wanted to be in a house that needed some serious love, but was also in good enough shape to live in while we worked on it.  We love old houses and were hopeful that we would be able to find one that would work for us.

The Hudson Valley is rich in historic houses, but it is also rich in people who are, well, rich.  If an older house is for sale for the right price in a desirable area, then it generally won’t be on the market for long.  Lucky for us, our house is right outside of the city of Hudson, but it isn’t in a location that gets much through traffic (and even if it did, it was hiding behind a small jungle of overgrown bushes.)  It also wasn’t showing up on many of the real estate websites we were visiting daily, which actually worked to our advantage.  

I happened to spot the real estate sign in front of the house when I was driving on a nearby road one day.  I remember telling Ronan about the “old house on a beautiful street with a stone foundation.”  We did another drive-by that night and Ronan was as interested as I was.  We did, however, notice that the stone foundation had been a figment of my imagination (though I like to think that I had just gotten lost in visions of what the house might have looked like long before any of us were around to see it.)  

I remember walking through the house and feeling so drawn to it.  The paper window shades were all closed and it seemed so dark upstairs, which is the opposite of what we are usually attracted to, but it still felt so welcoming.  We joked about the “beautiful” kitchen (because it wasn’t isnt) and the bathrooms that are in need of a lot of attention.  I am sure that our realtor thought that this was just another “no” like the countless other houses we had looked at and passed on.

Despite all of the joking, I remember fantasizing about all of the ways that we could use those perfect pocket doors separating the living room and dining room.  I could picture closing them up in order to keep the heat from a fire in the cozy dining room on a winter night.  I took in the neighborhood and pictured what the quiet street would look like in the middle of a snowstorm. I predicted it would probably resemble a Norman Rockwell painting…then I snapped back to reality.

I knew that Ronan would worry that it was all too much work.  We would never have enough time for everything that needed to be done.  The kitchen would be a total gut job.  All of the walls would need to be redone and I didn’t know what that entailed, but I assumed it was expensive and time-consuming.  The floors were so uneven that it felt like you were walking in a fun house.  I decided that I would never let on how much I loved this house.  There was no point in making Ronan feel bad about it.

As with every other house we looked at and passed on, Ronan asked me my thoughts when we got back in the car. I downplayed my reaction, as I had promised myself I would.  He said that he loved the floors.  I said it was too bad it would be so much work to level them.

“Nah, we could do that pretty easily,” was all I needed to hear to know that he was as in love as I was. (Ronan is not a gusher, by any stretch of the imagination.)  

We talked about how old it was and how much potential we thought it had.  We agreed on everything we loved and everything that would need to be changed and we made plans to talk to our realtor about a second visit.  We visited again a week later and before we knew it, we were putting an offer in on the 200-year-old blue house that didn’t have a stone foundation, but had enough charm to fit right in on the street that reminded us of a Norman Rockwell painting.