Home, Home on the Hill

Periodically we peruse sale listings for properties. We often find something we like but can’t afford, or something we can afford but don’t like, or something we like but refuse to pay anything close to the asking price. Rarely do we experience that Goldilocks Moment where something is Just Right. Until this month.

The listing was for a summer house, a cabin. A LOG cabin, to be exact. It sat in some woods on a hill near the Kentucky River and the price was right. Sure, it was a fixer-upper, but that was part of the appeal for my husband. He delights in building and fixing things and constantly tinkering with improvements (the Kaizen attitude toward home ownership).

We started fantasizing about our lifestyle there, wondered about the neighbors, seriously considered a boat… But the detail in the listing that really stoked our imaginations was the acre of property on which the cabin sat. For a couple of gardeners currently deprived of their gardening, an acre sounds like Eden.

We couldn’t stop imagining our lives in that log cabin overlooking a river and surrounded by vegetation. Yet of all the photos attached to the listing, none gave us an inkling as to how the cabin was situated on the acre. So we drove out to see it yesterday.

The “neighborhood” was gorgeous: houses hidden in lush wooded lots, the river palisades in view. “Our” cabin stood atop a steep hill across the road from an expansive (and better) property that really did overlook the water. As we climbed the steep, crumbling limestone steps from the road to the porch and patio of our dreams, with more steps above to reach the actual cabin, I started to suspect that growing old here might prove challenging. Directly behind the cabin rose most of the acre of land promised in the listing: a wall of rock.

Yup. We’d be buying an acre of land all right, but it would be a vertical acre and practically useless to us. It was a deal-breaker.

We had to laugh. At least we had experienced a beautiful drive to a place we’d never been. I guess now we can redirect our fantasies to winning the losery (i.e., lottery).

Note: The pooch in the pics was the sentry of the ’hood and bounced around like a wicked-fast Slinky. To make friends with her, we threw sticks for her to fetch—over and over and over again.