I hope you are all enjoying the story of how we met our beach house. If you missed Part One, you can find it here, and you can find Part Two here.
After thoroughly exploring the neglected old beach house, we were thrilled to find that it did have an ocean view. The only problem was that the "million dollar view" was only visible from an upstairs deck.
There was only a tiny bit of ocean view from the main living areas of the home. Apparently, the house originally had a spectacular view, but the sand dunes had grown to the point that only a little slice of sea was visible beyond the dune grass.
So, there we stood. My husband, our realtor, and myself. Our realtor wanted to show us another house. My husband wanted to find ANY other house. And I found something tugging at my heart in THIS house. To be fair, we did look at many more houses, but we kept coming back to this one. I proposed an idea.
Some days, okay, most days, we asked ourselves if we were out of our minds to consider buying this house and taking on this project. Then we would look out at the incredible view of sea and sky, and decide the project was worth it.
And so, armed with bids and conceptual drawings and codes and engineering research, we made an offer on the beach house we already loved...
After thoroughly exploring the neglected old beach house, we were thrilled to find that it did have an ocean view. The only problem was that the "million dollar view" was only visible from an upstairs deck.
There was only a tiny bit of ocean view from the main living areas of the home. Apparently, the house originally had a spectacular view, but the sand dunes had grown to the point that only a little slice of sea was visible beyond the dune grass.
So, there we stood. My husband, our realtor, and myself. Our realtor wanted to show us another house. My husband wanted to find ANY other house. And I found something tugging at my heart in THIS house. To be fair, we did look at many more houses, but we kept coming back to this one. I proposed an idea.
Suppose we brought in a house moving company
and lifted the whole house up one level?
and lifted the whole house up one level?
I drew up some conceptual models...
.... and a floor plan....
... and tinkered with some
quick kitchen concepts....
quick kitchen concepts....
.... and played with ideas for remodeling
the bedrooms and bathrooms working
with existing walls, wiring, and
plumbing as much as possible....
the bedrooms and bathrooms working
with existing walls, wiring, and
plumbing as much as possible....
.... and then we met with our
local codes official, and hired
a structural engineer....
local codes official, and hired
a structural engineer....
... and interviewed contractors
and got some bids -- also
known as "kissing frogs"....
and got some bids -- also
known as "kissing frogs"....
Some days, okay, most days, we asked ourselves if we were out of our minds to consider buying this house and taking on this project. Then we would look out at the incredible view of sea and sky, and decide the project was worth it.
And so, armed with bids and conceptual drawings and codes and engineering research, we made an offer on the beach house we already loved...
.... and the seller turned us down.