Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

Stone House Still for Sale

11:26 AM Edit This 0 Comments »


Throughout the summer, I could not get my mind off of the "Stone House." I could picture all of that beautiful land - reclaimed, tamed, flowering. I could see us having parties in the front yard or relaxing next to the little pond that trickled down from the freshwater spring above it. And I kept wondering who would buy such a place and what did they intend to do to it.

I was sure the answer was that someone would destroy it rather than rehab it... take it down, stone by stone, and divide the property up into suburban cookie-cutter plots with cloned houses sitting within a rock's throw of one another. The thought made me crazy -- to take such a gorgeous, natural retreat and carve it into rectangular slices, destroying the trees and uprooting all the creatures that lived there - well, it was a sorry thought indeed.

We took a trip to California to visit my family, and I remember telling my Granddad all about it - wishing it was something we could invest in and cultivate to make a beautiful family space. But, unfortunately, that Sale Pending sign persisted.

As the summer months dragged on, we continued to see the sign and wonder, so I placed another call to the realtor. "It's been 3 months, " I noted - "are you SURE this thing is going to go through?" "Yes," he told me, "it's as good as done." I said, "Well, if you're telling me that the proverbial 'fat lady' has already sung, I guess I'll move on, but you have my number if anything changes."

After a couple of days of gnashing my teeth about it, Brien said, "You just have to let it go..." I said, "You know what - I believe that this place will come back to me, so I am going to do just that. I will let it go, and it will come back to me." And, with that, I stopped obsessing about it and moved forward to other pressing matters of the time.

10925 with slow moving avenues for sale by Kevin Hilton brown 67753332(?)

10:50 AM Edit This 0 Comments »

On Sunday, June 22, 2008, Brien called me to say he'd found a really interesting property in Loveland. Set so far back from the street that only a Sale Pending sign and mailbox indicated there was even a house there, he just HAD to take a look.

Brien drove up to check out the place and was intrigued by what he saw - a huge, old, stone-built house set in the clearing of a rather rangey but very green and verdant forest of trees. He called me to tell me about it, and we went to check it out together.

As we drove up the LONG, curving, tree-lined driveway, I wondered if we'd ever get to the house. Then, as we topped the final rise, there it was - like something frozen in time, slowly being reclaimed by the greenery surrounding it. We'd never really seen anything comparable to it, other than our city's "famous" Loveland Castle. 

The house was massive, adorned with stones of all sizes and colors, even agates and geodes and a millstone! There were stones as tall as our daughter and twice as wide, and some just a few inches in diameter. Dangling precariously above the entrance was a wrought-iron railing that looked as if it had once enclosed a deck, but no deck remained - only some charred wood remnants along the wall where it had once been connected. We were amused at the fact that this railing even had a gate in it to a non-existent stairway that might have led down from above.

Feeling a bit sheepish in our tresspassing, we were not bold enough to walk too far around, but we were incredibly intrigued and a good bit confused. What was this place and how large was its land?

As we exited the driveway to the street, I left myself a message on Jott, which Jott transcribed for me as: "10925 with slow moving avenues for sale by Kevin Hilton brown 67753332(?)"

Not a great transcription... but it was good enough to remind me who to call when I got home. I immediately called to speak with the realtor who told me the basic story of the home and that the land was nearly 6.5 acres! Since it was under a contract that he considered to be solid, he couldn't invite us for a showing, but I insisted that he please keep our name on a list, in the event that the sale didn't go through. He basically advised me not to hold out hope, but he took my name and email address at my urging.

From that day on, I set about wondering...
Newer Posts
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)