Show Me the Money...

Things are moving ahead. Our offer as accepted and we close on July 17. Getting financing is always interesting, and in our case more so. We don't have deep pockets, and at our age 30 year mortgages are amusing at best. So a second mortgage was procured on my New Orleans house, so we can pay cash for the beach house. Dave's house is on the market, and mine will go on the market this week.

The death of Dave's favorite aunt slowed us down a bit. She was 96. A road trip to South Carolina to say farewell to her gave us plenty of time to talk and reflect on life. Even though it made the logistics of all of this more pressing, it was a welcome time together.

While looking for some legal documents buried in an under-counter space in my dining room, I came upon boxes and boxes of photographs that constitute my old portfolio of work for my defunct event design business that closed nearly 25 years ago. The great purge has to commence, and I am screwing up my courage to throw out these remnants and relics of my glory days in New York.

There are so many of the mixed emotions expected with this type of decision and move. My inner voice screams, "Are you nuts"? But nuts or not, events are propelling us forward.

We stopped at the beach house on our way home from South Carolina. The listing agent was there still showing it, as the official status is "pending and still showing". We were a little annoyed that he was showing "our house", and drove away to the ice cream parlor to cool our tempers. We went back, and they were gone. Who else but us would want this wreck? We walked the property and took some measurements in the 98 degrees heat. We talked about the things to do first. There's still a lot of overgrown trash trees and vines that need to be removed from the enormous yard and off the love shack (the additional small guest cottage on the property), and that will be the first thing to do.

The Love Shack, the guest cottage on the property

We also scoped out storage units. We will have to store the furniture we are bringing, and things we will sell in a vintage shop we plan to open, while the house is being renovated. If both our houses sell quickly we will have no place to live, another daunting prospect for sure. The plan is to get the 300 square foot Love Shack renovated for us to live in for the duration of the big house restoration. Time is not on our side. Dave has a major project he is working on in New Orleans that must be completed before he can start working on our little nest. 

Hello Again...

It's been over a decade since I blogged beyond picture collecting on Instagram. I'm not young. In fact I turn 70 in a few weeks. I was once told how you start a decade out is how that decade will go, so be in a good place in mind, body, and spirit.

So as I prepare for the next decade with my new life partner Dave, we have decided to make a huge change. He has been in New Orleans for 40 years, and I have been here for 20. And though it's daunting we have decided to sell our homes and move to the beach. It sounds glamorous, but the beach is in Mississippi a place we never dreamed of living. My girlhood fantasy was to grow old in Paris, sporting a Colette look and sipping champagne with young people in cafes.

So this is the beginning of a new saga, starting with the the house we found after looking at houses in Bay St. Louis for nearly three years. BSL is just 59 miles from New Orleans. It was pretty much wiped out by Hurricane Katrina, but has come back cuter than ever as an arty little town that New Orlenians have made their darling. Consequently real estate prices are high.

We found a wreck of a house built in 1890. We both love old houses. Dave is a contractor that only works on restoring old houses. The BSL house survived Katrina. The tin roof blew off but was restored. The property did not flood. It was one of three houses built around the same time on a very short street right across from an active railway track. In fact there are only three houses on this street. Let's just say it's not for everyone.

But we love it. It's just under 1500 square feet, a very simple Queen Anne cottage with a modest center hall. I always said I would only move again if it was to a center hall house. There's a mother-in-law shack at the back of the property.

It will mean a lot of downsizing and ridding of two households with lifetimes of possessions. Stay tuned for some really good tag sales.

Our first hurdle is financing in time to to make an offer. We are both debt free except for the mortgages we hold on our homes. But on paper no bank wants to loan us money because of our advanced age and modest incomes. So now we are pursuing a private investor to give me a bridge loan using my house as collateral until my house sells. The good news is my humble little piece of swamp has appreciated very nicely over the years.

So this is truly the beginning, starting with getting the money. Stay tuned for hopefully many more blog posts about Dave and Valorie's big adventure.

Just across from the front yard

Hello again - The real estate agent snapped this of me - Do I look happy hugging this old house?