How I ended up here.

I was inspired by GAfarmgirl to tell y'all how we ended up here in the country, 40 miles NW of everything.

When I was 24 years old I bought my first house. I was single but working very hard as a finance manager at a car dealership. The pay was very good but the hours were unbelievably long.

Since my job was to sell car loans to bankers, I made some good friends at the local banks. One of the loan officers was shocked I was paying $900 per month for a 2 bedroom apt. He suggested I look at some of their foreclosures. It was a scary thought to buy my own home but I decided to look in to it.

The first house I went to see was located in a gated golf course community. It was a nice home for the times. (circa 1986) It was what I ended up buying after looking at half a dozen more houses.

8 years later I met Bobby. He was totally different than my previous boyfriends and I was totally smitten. He moved in with me (yes we lived in sin) and quickly decided he hated the "Stepford Village" mentality of the neighborhood. Everyone was nosy and there was no privacy. We had a fleeting idea to go look at land in the country to some day move to and build a home on.

Like the quick decision on my house we fell in love with the first property we saw. It was 25 acres and owned by a family that I swear must have been related to Fred Sanford! There was junk from on end of the property to the other. Luckily we could see the potential. There was a beat up old 1976 single wide mobile home that was used primarily for hunting lodging.

Bobby and I talked about keeping my house and spending weekends at the trailer. Once we decided that we liked staying there more than in town, we gutted the trailer and totally remodeled the interior. Now I am blessed with a husband that can weld, plumber, electrician, and so on. I also am blessed with 6 multi-talented brothers!

Everyone pitched in and put a brand new kitchen and bath. New floors. Turned one of the two bedrooms into my closet-dressing room. It was darling! The place came with a long covered porch and a hot tub on the end.

My co-workers and family members didn't have faith that I would adjust to country living and roughing it. Bobby and I made a decent wage but wanted to stay in the trailer for 5 years and get the land paid for before we built our dream house.

We did very well at paying off the land and decided to build a 30 x 50 shop for Bobby before the house. Most people told me I was a sucker for that but Bobby explained that he could do a lot of the work himself on the house if he had a shop!
Well as it turns out, every time I would ask B to do a project he would explain how if he had this saw or this tool he could do it. hahahha He's no dummy.

We took all the new kitchen cabinets and etc from the trailer and put it in the shop and built an apartment to live in while we built the house. It was so much like camping to me. I always looked forward to coming home to the country after a day of work in the city. The drive was over an hour one way but didn't bother me at all. Still doesn't.

That's all for now.
More later gators!