Our family is embarking on a great adventure. Like any good adventure, this one promises discovery, excitement, new experiences, opportunities to learn and grow, joy, and maybe a little frustration or disappointment along the way. Overall, though, when I look back on all the adventures in my life, what I usually remember is the fun and the good times. I think this adventure will be like that.
Nearly a year ago, my mom and I started bouncing around what seemed like a bit of a wild idea of merging our households. The reasons and benefits seemed logical, from us getting more help raising our kids, to them getting more help as they age, to just plain old cutting down on the constant commuting back and forth to each other’s houses. What was first just an idea, a someday, maybe a few years from now thing, started to really take shape a couple months after our daughter, Cora, was born. With Roger and my dad on board, we raised the idea with our dear friend, and real estate agent, and she went to work getting us leads on potential properties.
Before we knew it, we were looking at houses that could provide two separate, but attached, living spaces. Our list of desires was pretty long and included a wish for some acreage to spread out on – maybe around five acres or so. We saw old houses that would need a lot of work (something that none of us are a stranger to), newer houses on not-very-nice pieces of land, and even one house that had a separate “man cave” building that we could have renovated.
We liked the man cave house enough that we made an offer on it and got frantically to work getting my parent’s house ready to sell. After the offer on the “man cave” house fell through, we kept the pedal to the metal on the house selling preparations and also got back to the hunt.
We started to realize that building a house on a piece of raw land might be the best way to get what we wanted in a place that we loved, so we opened up our search to buildable lots. One lot in particular had struck us as intriguing after looking at it online numerous times. On a very rainy day in February, we went to take a look.
Roger and I were smitten pretty much right away, but the cloudy skies and rain put a damper on the vision for others. When we started to leave that day our real estate agent’s car and my parents’ car both got stuck in the mud. A call to a friend with a winch, a call for a tow truck, and the application of quite a bit if muscle freed the cars. When all was said and done and we were leaving covered in mud, I jokingly told my mom it was the property telling us not to leave and she said it was telling us to leave and not come back.
But, we did come back. First, Roger and my parents made a trip up on a clear day and several big reasons to fall in love with the property were out in full view – Mount Rainier, Mount St. Helens, Mount Adams, and Mount Hood.
With this property in mind, we kept plowing ahead on getting the first house ready to sell (ours would have to come later), while keeping our eyes open for another perfect house or piece of land to come available. In the months between our first visit to the property to when the house was sold, nothing else really met the challenge. Once my parents’ house closed and we could see that the best choice was the one in hand, an offer was made and, eventually, accepted (pending approval to install a septic system). A few harried weeks, and two large septic “test pits” later, the property was ours. We found our perfect spot.
Now the real fun has begun as we embark on building a house from scratch – something none of us has ever done. It’s exciting, and scary, and completely nerve wracking at times, but each visit to the property reaffirms for me how right this place is. I feel truly fortunate that we will all get to live there – hopefully relatively soon.
So, please follow along, if you like. I’ll be doing my best to keep this space updated with all of our current happenings. A way to have something to look back on someday, and also a way to share our journey with you. I hope it is an enjoyable journey for all.
Chehalem Mountain Homestead 