Going for it!

Now that my wife Sue and I have been living in the foothills of the North Cascades for over a year, I thought it would be interesting to set the proverbial pen to paper and write about our experiences. Moving from a medium sized city out into the hinterlands was not an easy task. For one, finding a suitable piece of property was a bit daunting. A good year before our move Sue and I took a few trips into the country just see what felt like a new home to us, to see if some area drew us to it. In fact we were drawn to a particular area and with it in mind I did a computer search to see what was listed.

(The two photos above show Sue and our realtor looking over the plot diagram. In the right hand photo note the tall trees on the left side of the background. Look for them in later post photos to help you orient the house & garden as our place grows.)

I think I found the big lead in a local newspaper, a realtor was himself selling a 20 acre piece, described as being on the side of a hill. When Sue and I visited the property we enjoyed the commanding view but neither of us desired to try and get up and down the hill during the snowy months. Though there was plenty of land it was not very usable for what we had in mind, we wanted a vegetable garden and an orchard. Sue and I wanted nature trails however we did not want to fully exhaust ourselves on a steep slope. But the good news was that this realtor knew of several others parcels of land being prepared for sale.

A few miles away from the hill top property there were some five and ten acre parcels. After visiting both Sue announced she preferred the ten acre parcels. As it turned out, three of the ten acre parcels were ready to sell, though one already had buyer. Sue and I did not waste time in making our move, we made an offer on the parcel we now own. From the County highway, our parcel is one mile in distance along a private road. At present most of the other ten acre parcels have been sold. On the one next to ours, the owner is nearing completion of her house and on another the owner is just now preparing the forms to pour a concrete foundation.

Once Sue and I decided on the property we had to decide how much house we could afford. The short platt covenants stated that the house could not be less than 1200 sq feet in floor space and there also had to be a two car garage. Sue and I decided on a manufactured home and a pole building for a shop/garage. In order to make sure we could handle the mortgage we based our home loan around the monthly payment we felt we could afford to make. The sale of our previous home netted us a fair amount, but it never goes as far an one hopes.

Fortunately we had a place to stay while the home site was prepared, the home set up and the garage/shop built. We were able to move in during the month of April, 2006.