Dulcimer's House...The Prequel

It seems fitting that this first post was written where the story of Dulcimer's House actually began. Although we didn't know then how it would all turn out... What we did know is that we were done with life in the southern US. I was tired of a job that had a stranglehold on my soul, and my partner (The Historian) and I were tired of being so far away from families up north. We both missed the change of seasons, and I think we wanted the opportunity to have some real winter weather again! So, after a lot of discussion, we drew a line across a map of the US, and started applying for new jobs. As applications became phone calls and finally interviews (!!!), the discussions of where to live evolved into how we wanted to live and the type of property we might buy when the job search finally worked itself out.

We wanted many of the same things: a great kitchen, a fireplace, space for my sewing room, and room for two dogs and however many cats we decide to adopt!! Easy, right? Yeah, easy except for the lot size. I'm going to summarize 5 months of conversations in about 6 bullet-points:

• I said: I think an acre or two would be perfect...

• He said: How about 5 acres? 5 acres would be nice...

• I said: OooooOOOOooookkk. 5 acres is nice, and it would still be easy to take care of, but we'll definitely need a riding mower.

• He said: Yeah, maybe 10 acres, and no mowing. It should be wooded. And it should have a cabin.

• I said: Uuuuummmm. 10 acres? No mowing? Wooded? A cabin? What are we going to do with all that?

• He said: We're going to have 10 acres!!

Since this the Reader's Digest Condensed Version, I'll just end here by saying that at one point he sent me a real estate listing with 110 acres!! Also, a property that used to be a 18th century mining cabin (and looked like it), and another that we still affectionately refer to as the 'turret house'. Thanks Zillow! So, anyways, that's where we started...

What a cabin on ten acres of woods might look like. MIGHT.LOOK.LIKE.

I could do this, right?

I finally got a job offer, and the geographic location checked all the boxes! We found a realtor, and I spent a day looking at houses. The last house I looked at that day wasn't actually even on our original list. It was newly on the market, and on paper, it seemed perfect: A cabin in the woods: CHECK! 10+ acres: CHECK! A separate outbuilding that could be my sewing space: CHECK!

There was a also a shed and a small garden shed--which looked just like an outhouse!. And then there was the building that I now call Dulcimer's House. The realtor described this last building as a “homestead house”. It was padlocked shut, the roof was rusting, some of the windows were broken, and the entire building had a bit of a slant. She had no idea when someone had last been inside it, and there were no keys.

I looked at the place and thought “What a nightmare—nobody needs this much work.” It had most of what we wanted, but it actually seemed to have way too much! Well. Yeah, we closed on it a little over two months after that. I moved to the cabin in the woods in the fall, and The Historian joined me a few months later in spring.

This is going to be our story. I sort of thought the move was the end, but now I can tell you that it's really the beginning...