Searching - Part 2

The day of the open house, Dave was working and truthfully, not really interested in the property, so I packed Simone in the baby carrier, put Tate’s shoes on and we strolled around the corner and up the street. Just to see.

Walking through the front door, I was hit in the face with a wall of must and mildewed air. The floors were so uneven you could feel a different level with every step. Wall board was ripped down to expose water-rotted beams and joists, and there were actually mushrooms growing on them – inside the house! The ceilings were bowing in and cracking, with mold spores growing happily about. As I was wondering if it was even safe to have the kids in this house, Tate was being ever so helpful to the listing agent by pointing out all the spiders and bugs he spotted with his preschool eyes. She and I chatted. She quickly conceded that this house was a tear-down. It took her another month to convince the owner that it was a tear-down. Where, then, the house price was reduced to land value – finally in our price range.

Dave and I talked extensively about this property and how wonderful it would be to build right here, but he was very concerned with the size of the lot. It was only 8000 square feet and we were looking for no less than 10,000. The lot was also only 50 feet wide – incredibly narrow. I was highly optimistic and thought that if anyone was going to be able to develop this lot, it could be us – we could do it. Hell, I had an architect!! A pessimistic one, but a very talented architect none-the-less.

We looked up the plot map and the zoning laws. We placed the layout of our current house on the map with the setbacks marked (how far the house can be built from the property lines) and realized that our current house wouldn’t even fit in this lot. Dave shook his head, “NOPE. Not going to work. Forget it!” “But what if we went for a variance… couldn’t we do that?” I asked. Dave again repeated, “NOPE. Not going to work. Not going for a variance. Forget it!” {Remember that foreshadowing from before?}

So I forgot it. For a while.