How it happened–the true story of a house stalker.

Here’s the story about how we stalked found the house. 

We first noticed the house a couple months after we moved into our current house by walking around the neighborhood.  We probably noticed it at first due to the dinosaur that was in the front yard.  After we looked past the interesting yard decoration, I immediately loved the style of the house.  Officially I think it’s called a “Storybook Cottage” (I plan on doing more research on that later).  They are categorised by swooping gables, rounded doors and asymmetrical features, all of which this house has, and were popular in the 1920’s and 30’s.  There really aren’t many in this style around the Square so its kind of unique. 

Last fall for some reason I really started taking notice of the house.  I just really liked it and would always want to walk by ‘the dinosaur house.’  After a while we noticed that there were never any cars there.  One day a few weeks later I worked up the courage to go peak in the windows (after Stephen told me not to) and found out it was pretty vacant.  After I knew it was vacant I kind of began stalking the house.  I would always drive by it, just to see if anything had changed.  It was this big mystery to me, and I think I was so interested in it partially because I didn’t know anything about it.  I remember one day at work I suddently had the random thought: “we should buy the dinosaur house.”  I often have random thoughts, but I remember this one because the way it popped into my head was so ‘matter of fact.’  I told Stephen I thought we should buy it and of course he thought I was being stupid because we knew absolutely nothing about it and he really didn’t get my weird obsession, especially since we hadn’t been in our current house (that we both loved) even two years. 

Fast forward a couple months (during which I was still discreetly house stalking), where one time when I drove by there was a van in the driveway.  I got so excited since this was the first sign of life I had seen at the house in the months that I had been watching it.  I was on my way to school so I frantically called Stephen and told him “there’s someone at our house!”  He was like “Um, yeah, I’m home…”  “No, the dinosaur house.”  (He groans.)   “Please go see who it is or if you can find out anything.”  He agrees to walk by, but by the time he got there whoever was there was gone.  I was sad because the mystery continued. 

A couple of days later, the van is back along with another car.  Once I noticed them on my way home, I rushed home and announced to Stephen as soon as I walked in the door that we were leaving right then to go walk by the dinosaur house.  He reluctantly agrees (again, he didn’t understand my obsession and honestly neither did I).  Once we were there the cars were still there, and it looked like they were moving furniture.  I just didn’t know if they were moving in or out. 

After forcing my husband to awkwardly stand on the sidewalk for a good length of time until the people starting walking outside (he wanted to go home, but I think he stayed in hopes that I would actually find out what was up with this house so I’d shut up about it).  We crossed the street and approached the woman and asked “are y’all moving out?”  She said “yes, its just taking me a while to get everything out and get the house ready.”  Then I asked the all important question: “are you looking to sell the house?”  She said yes, and we mentioned that we were always intrigued by the house and thought it looked interesting.  (No, I did not tell her I’d been stalking it for a couple months and that we really weren’t ‘just walking by’ and noticed them there, but I didn’t want to freak her out.)  She was gracious enough to take us inside and show it to us and tell us about it. 

And the rest, they say, is history.  My sister claims I’m one of the luckiest people on earth because it seems random things like this happen to me often.  Random things like finding great houses that aren’t technically for sale and are cheaper than everything else in the area just by walking by.  Yeah, that’s now happened to me now twice since that’s essentially how we found our first house. 

I do find it odd, but I’m not complaining.