New (possible) House

Brooke and I are trying vigorously to purchase a home in the Forsyth County area, but to-date, it hasn't panned out for us. Not that we couldn't find any homes we liked. The problem is that our selection is immediately limited because we have to qualify solely off Brooke's income (because I'm self-employed), and since we haven't yet sold our home in Monroe, we are limited in what we can finance. We know we can't afford our dream property (which is a lot of acreage. IE - 20+) until we have our other home sold, so we limited our selection to homes that could provide a decent place to live, while ultimately showing a return on our investment.

Day after day we've search for homes. We looked online for hours, driven thousands of miles around the area, and met our realtor for a walk-through on many properties. Needless to say, we're getting a little tired. We're supposed to be out of the house we're currently staying in February, which makes it pretty stressful not knowing where you'll be living in a month!

MLK day, Brooke and I spent some time checking out homes in the area, when we ended up in a town called Lewisville, NC. It seemed like a nice town, and while driving down the road we noticed a for-sale sign. We turned around and ended up in the driveway of a historic home built in the 1900's... 1908 to be exact.

The home is called the JJ Marshall House. Here's a photo I took when we approached the entrance. Even though it's not what we were looking for, as an avid viewer of the show "This Old House" and a builder/contractor myself, I've always considered the idea of working on a historic property, restoring it to it's original character.

We walked to the back door, only to find some papers that mentioned this house going to auction. We took a look inside the home, and the home needs aesthetic work; at least one of the additions aren't historically accurate (which means I'd probably reverse it at some point), but overall, it seems like a sound home.

We came home, logged-onto the auction website, and found out the auction ended at 4pm today (Tuesday). The website is setup like eBay. There is a reserve price (which is unknown), and a countdown clock. Today, all we've thought about was what our bid should be, at what time we should enter it, and how high we'd be willing to go. You can imagine -- this can easily consume your day.

At the end of the auction, we were the high bidder, confirmed via a follow-up email. Now, we just begin the process of a lot of paperwork, making sure the home will qualify for conventional financing, and all that "fun" stuff. Not really looking forward to that, but we've passed the first test!

Here are some pictures of the home, taken from the listing website. The porch on the front is not original to this home. I think someone was trying to turn this Colonial Revival home into a Greek Revival home....

We'll post more as we know it, and we'll surely let you know if/when we have it as completely ours.

This is one of the bedrooms, although with that awesome fireplace, I'm thinking this might be my home office. I could just imagine a fire burning behind me as I write something really important down on parchment.

This kitchen was added to the original structure. Not bad, but could be freshened up. This will probably be the 21st century part of the house.

This room was added to the original structure. I think it serves as the living room. We only spent about 10 rushed minutes in the home, so I'm not completely certain as to which function each room serves.

This is a shot of the front from Google Streetview. It's not too clear, and it's probably pretty old, but you get an idea of the front of the house. The right portion of the home was the addition.