The screened-in porch I bought with the attached house.

Last summer, I bought a condo in Frisco, Colorado, instead of the book I had gone into the local store to purchase. I sit here on my screened-in porch in Kansas, I realize that I bought a porch with a house attached to it as it was the porch that sold me on the house.

Upon stepping into the front room and taking in the porch at first glance, I looked at my daughter, Emery, and it’s possible we both said it at the same time…
“You/I live here!”
I wasn’t actively looking for a house at the time, as the house I was currently in was fine, but this house was in a charming, treed neighborhood with a strong sense of history and appreciation for local merchants.   It was a neighborhood I had wanted to live in before I got married (in 1985), but my hopes were set aside when it didn’t have the same appeal to my then-husband that it did to me.

How ironic that when I walked up the stairs of the condo in Frisco and saw it for the first time, my daughter-in-law, Brooke, said the exact words to me, “You LIVE here!” yet I don’t recall making that connection at the time or maybe I did but didn’t dwell on it as I had already fast forwarded myself right out onto the deck and what it would be like to live there.  Both my daughter and my daughter-in-law seem to have an uncanny knack for sensing me living in places that aren’t yet mine.

After Emery and I had both declared our intentions for the house, I told my real estate agent, Nina, that I wanted to buy it. Nina and I have been friends for decades, and she knows me and knows that my default position leans more towards impulsive than methodical.  She thought looking at the rest of the house would be a wise idea before we started writing up a contract, which we did, both of us knowing full well that I would be buying the house for the screened-in porch, regardless of what the rest of the house looked like. After a quick walk through, and pleased that the rest of the house was on par with the porch, I told her again that I was ready to write up an offer.

“But it’s the first house you’ve looked at…you can’t just buy the first house you look at!”
“OK… then show me another one, then we’ll make an offer.”

And so she did. There was a house nearby for sale, and as lovely as the garden was, as I walked up to the front door, I knew it wouldn’t be the right house, regardless.  After a quick walk through the main level, I told Nina that I had seen enough and was ready to make an offer on the porch house

I had an extended trip to Peru coming up in a matter of weeks, and fortunately, Nina was able to convince the sellers to delay the closing until my return, a few months later.  The entire process, from contract negotiations to inspection, went off without a hitch.  I genuinely believe, and experience has confirmed this for me, that when something is meant to be, things fall into place neatly and in a timely manner.  It’s when you’re met with obstacle after obstacle that I think the decision should be questioned. I was meant to live in that house and sit on that porch.
About a month later, from an internet cafe in Villa el Salvador, Peru, I sold the house I was currently living in. While sitting at a computer in a dimly lit, hot, small room with a handful of teenaged boys enjoying computer games, I muddled my way through the process of signing a contract, then faxed it and waited for confirmation of receipt, with a minimal Spanish business vocabulary and a growing line of impatient school boys waiting their turn for the computer I was using.  It was one of my prouder accomplishments, especially given that short of email and some photo and music storage, I really wasn’t very computer savvy.

The house I sold to buy the screened-in porch house was the first and only house I looked at shortly after filing for divorce.  Maybe it was beginner’s luck that continued, but I knew right off that it was the right house for me.  My real estate agent at the time did the same thing that Nina had done and showed me several similar houses, after my proclamation of wanting to buy the first one I saw because “you can’t buy the first one!”  I ended up returning to the original house, as I knew I would,  made an offer, and was signing contracts by the end of the day.   There’s a pattern here, and now I understand why my sister wouldn’t let me go house hunting in the Adirondacks with her husband, John, “just to look…”

When it’s right, it’s right, and you know it in your heart and gut.  Seriously, I’ve given more thought to a pair of jeans while sitting in the dressing room at the GAP, a situation that rarely gets it right the first time or has me saying, “You live in those jeans!”

In the time it took me to type this, I would still be deciding on the jeans.  I’ve bought houses in a shorter amount of time.

The porch that I bought and was lucky that a house was attached to it…