Love at First Sight or: How We Got the House

Dr. Strangelove puns aside, how we got the house is a good story.

Over the summer of 2022, we were in the middle of a move from Bozeman, MT to St. Louis, MO, and were staying with Corbin's parents in their above garage apartment for several weeks in Corbin's hometown. He was busy moving our worldly possessions between the two points, so I had several weeks of quality time with a young baby in his home town. We'd been discussing where we would want to settle when we did finally decide to leave the Air Force, and the area was in the lead, so I spent the time "trying on" what life would be like if we moved.

One of the things I've always adored is old, beautiful houses, and there had been several houses in Corbin's hometown that had my heart. One in particular. I spent some time that summer driving around a sleeping baby during naptimes and looking at these houses downtown. Imagine my surprise when my favorite house popped up for sale at a dirt cheap price.

I felt absolutely sick about it. We weren't remotely close moving back. I drove past that house a dozen times. I looked at the listing photos multiple times a day. It seemed so irresponsible to buy a house we had no intention of living in for the next several years, but this house had me absolutely distraught. It wasn't a responsible thing, but I would daydream about living in that house constantly. But because it was so impractical, I never even mentioned it to Corbin. He was a little busy driving our things across five states. And then to make matters worse, Cheap Old Houses featured the house on their Instagram, complete with an interior tour. It was like the universe was taunting me with this house I couldn't have.

Corbin finished moving our things and we took off to St. Louis. The house went pending, and sold, but I would open those listing photos and stare at it a minimum of three times a week. For almost a year, I was dreading the day those listing photos would be taken down. My poor girlfriends and sisters kept hearing about the "house that got away".

During that year, we had several discussions about whether we wanted to stay in the Air Force and decided we were ready to be done and that we wanted to move back to Texas. We started sending family members to look at houses in the area that came up for sale. We knew we wanted an old fixer upper. We love historic homes and love renovation projects, but we weren't really falling in love with anything that came up.

After a couple months of looking and not falling for any options, I told Corbin, "I think for me, it's because I haven't stopped thinking about that one house...I'm secretly hoping it comes back on the market." I showed him that listing from the prior year and he agreed that if the house came back on the market, it would be the perfect fit.

Well, rather than wait for it to hit the market, I started asking around. Had anyone started working on the house? What was going on with it? Were the new owners fixing it up to sell or were they planning on moving in? I sent one friend to scope out any progress and I got back a picture of a very pink house.

Turns out, it was a pair of first time flippers that bought the house to fix up and sell. A friend who does a lot of work with historic research in the area had their email address and told us to reach out.

We sent an email, explaining who we were and that if they decided to sell in the near future, asking them to let us know first. After a few days of being certain we'd been ignored, we heard back. They were happy to sell the house to us, as it was a bit of a drive for them and wanted to get into a different property closer to them. They'd had a few things done that the house was in desperate need of, but for the most part, it was in the same state as the prior summer.

A month later, we had keys to our big old house with its slew of problems and we couldn't have been more thrilled!