Greetings from Maine! First off, I can’t believe we moved to Maine! This is the craziest and best decision we’ve ever made! Brian and I are on cloud 9 living here… but I need to back up a bit. Wasn’t I living in Colorado a few months ago?
OUR MOVING STORY
Colorado is such a beautiful state but as much as we loved it it just wasn’t right for us. We lived there a little over a 2 years but within a week of moving I knew we had made a mistake. What do you do when you make a mistake? You suck it up and deal with it. So that’s what I did.
It’s weird how a place we loved to vacation to just didn’t work out as a place to live. The fast remodel of our home was hard on us, along with our steep mountain driveway, plus the wildfires, flash flooding, pipes freezing, the altitude, and not to mention being nearly an hour from major stores. It. Was. Hard. We knew that eventually we would sell the house, we just didn’t know when. Late one night in August I heard the words sell your house now. Brian was asleep so I nudged him and said Brian it’s time to sell the house. “Okay” he says and he falls back asleep.
I’ll be honest I didn’t trust the voice at first. It felt like the wrong time to sell, the busy summer real estate season had just ended and our house wasn’t finished. So for over a month we poured our blood, sweat, and tears into finishing every inch of the house. In order to finish so quickly we had to come up with some creative solutions but we did it. I’m proud to say we were able to put our house on the market at the end of September, it quickly sold for over asking price, the new owners bought 99% of all our furniture, and a month after listing we drove away for the last time with all our remaining possessions in a U-Haul truck.
When we left we didn’t have a solid plan so we didn’t feel comfortable talking about it with anyone. Neighbors and local friends would ask where we were moving too and we would always say “not sure yet” and we were being honest.
Our thought was to take a much needed vacation, dragging along all our stuff in a U-Haul. East is where we felt like going, it felt right. So off we went vacationing along the way. We went from Denver to Nebraska. Then on to Iowa and Chicago. Then up to Cleveland and Buffalo where we crossed into Canada visiting Niagra Falls and Niagra on the Lake.
As much fun as we were having we were also getting antsy and heavily looking at real estate online. Let me just say when you’re looking at real estate without a solid direction as to where you want to live it’s freakin hard!
After Canada we ended up in Boston, stashed our stuff in a storage unit and began looking for houses. We decided we wanted a coastal environment but I’m not sure how we ended up in Boston really, it just happened. I found lots of possible homes but they were all flops in person. I was starting to feel defeated and again like we had made a terrible mistake. I told Brian I hated everything on the market and we would just have to suck it up and rent an apartment until we could find a house we loved. Then one day I saw this yellow house… it had just been on the market a few days.
Let me back up again. Brian had mentioned living in Maine and I said no. I said no many times. I even cried, living in Maine sounded awful and that I couldn’t be isolated anymore. “Fine, we won’t live in Maine he said”. Every home we looked at in Massachutes had a deal breaker once I saw it in person. We both had very specific criteria and in this crazy real estate market it only made things more stressful but we refused to settle. So we started branching out looking in surrounding states, like New Hampshire. Out of curiosity I broadened my search to Maine but nothing interested me.
We agreed we both wanted something coastal and something we could pay cash for. Once you get used to not making a house payment you can’t go back. We agreed we loved cold winters and mild summers. Also we wanted a fixer upper because we like to add our own personal touch and enjoy working on our home. I wanted space, something that felt grand with curb appeal. Brian wanted to be on or near the water and he wanted gardens, fruit trees, and plenty of land. We scheduled viewings for 3 homes. Two in New Hampshire and the yellow one in Maine. The Maine house piqued my curiosity but I still wasn’t sold.
Schedule-wise we were able to view the Maine house first and we loved it. We told our realtor we had two more house to view in New Hampshire and that we would get back to her. That night were dining at Lukes Lobster in Portland and we talked non-stop about the Maine house. How we loved the space, the quiet street, the large backyard with fruit trees and acreage. How it felt like a quiet place to live but was minutes away from major shopping with Boston being just two hours from us. Just a few hours after we had left I told Brian I thought this was our house. We were so happy and excited that we texted our realtor we wanted to make an offer the only problem was we were burnt out on hotel living and said we wanted to close before Thanksgiving – 2 weeks away.
Having been on the market just 4 days we were told there were lots of other viewings scheduled to see the house so naturally I was a nervous wreck. But we got it. We moved into our home the day before Thanksgiving. We didn’t even have a mattress, just personal belongings but luckily we found a local mattress store that came through for us. Thanksgiving Day I made dinner in the slow cooker and we slept in our new bed. Unlike Colorado this felt right. I knew we had made the right decision. This was our home.
I think it’s funny when I tell people we moved to Maine and they say but Maine is cold. I’m thinking really? I hadn’t ever heard that before. Is smoking also bad for you? Yeah it gets cold but it’s not Antarctica it’s in South Maine, 2 hours from Boston. The temperature definitely fluctuates so we do have some extremely cold days and other days are sunny mid 40’s with no wind and very pleasant.
We did just have our first Nor’easter which is basically a New England blizzard. We were prepared and our power stayed on so we were toasty warm. The wind was pretty crazy so we didn’t get much snow in the front or side of the house, it all drifted to the back of the house! It was crazy!
We were fully prepared and Brian was able to conquer the snow with his snow blower, this thing is awesome! Like I said this was a winter blizzard so it’s not the winter normal up here.
Ironically we vacationed in Bar Harbor Maine last summer and we loved it. Maine is stunning! I’m really looking forward to summer where I can have the New England garden I’ve always dreamed of! Brian wants to get chickens and I can’t wait to grow our own food and start canning more! We have apple trees, crab apple trees, cherry, and peach trees. We’re surrounded by beautiful tall trees and we’re just minutes away from beaches and ocean access.
It’s absolutely crazy how at the last minute the universe handed us everything we wanted in a house and it was yellow. I’ve always had a thing for yellow houses.
The main farmhouse house was built in 1900, yeah you heard me right! The home has been well taken care of but it still has a fair share of work that needs to be done! The two side additions are much newer, we aren’t positive but they feel within the last 20 years or so, and there is a large attic that we eventually plan to finish out into two bedrooms and a bathroom.
In true Brian and Laura style we like to jump right in to projects and I love starting with stairs! I think the stairs and also the fireplace sets the tone of the home. Our fireplaces will take a while because of tight coding issues, so we started with the stairs! It’s been weeks of work, stripping off layers of paint, we’re replacing the balusters and adding a runner. It’s been very labor intensive, luckily we have a back staircase we can take upstairs so we’re able to take our time and get it right. It’s going to be a dramatic reveal that should be on the blog in a couple of weeks!
I’m not revealing the entire house just yet because it would be overwhelming and too many photos but here is another current peak at another project we’re working on. The future dining room! It was originally the kitchen when the home was built, you can see over to the left where there were pipes for the sink or stove. Currently we’re replacing pieces of the hardwood floor and adding a board and batten wall. There are so many exciting home updates coming up in the future and I’ll be sharing more of the house. I feel like this blog post is so long so I’ll leave it here. Ciao!
Curious about Maine? Thinking you might want to plan a visit? Summer is the perfect time. Be sure to read my previous vacation posts about Maine!
