Weddingbee boards

We have a bit of a home saga in our life. We bought our first home, not for the house itself, but for the location. We're on a river, live in a great little town, have great neighbours, and a fantastic school nearby when we have kids. We intended to tear down the house and rebuild something more conducive to family living, the house as it stands now is not laid out properly, nor is it big enough to simply gut and rebuild inside to fix it. It's a bungalow with a walk out basement, no garage. Our yard is a steep slope down to the river, so no matter what we do, we'll never have a big yard for our kids to play in.

We started the process to renovate our home last winter, hiring an architect to do up plans, etc. Because we live on the river, our plans have to be approved by our local conservation authority and it has not been a smooth ride to say the least. They constantly and consistently contradict themselves, change their minds, make up rules, it's so aggravating and we have literally made no headway with them. We are still living in a tiny house with no garage that is pretty much exploding at the seams and held together with duct tape.

I've been really adamant about staying and fighting it out and barging our way through the process (which I'm 99% sure will ultimately come down to paying off the right person) because I love our neighbourhood and location so much. It's frustrating to say the least because we're waiting until after the house is done to have kids. We had thought we'd be building right now and clearly we're not.

Last week one of my favourite neighbours came to me and told me they were thinking about putting their house on the market. I don't know why, but this changed something in me. I sort of felt less attached. Like if they're leaving, we won't be letting anyone down by leaving.

So DH and I talked last night and decided that if we can't get approvals from the conservation authority by December/January, then we'll start house hunting and move. It would likely mean moving somewhere more remote, but with a big piece of property (10+ acres) and maybe building a seperate barn on the property to rent out as event/wedding space. Pretty cool. Then it dawned on me that if we do that, we could have a little one by next Christmas.....

I feel torn by this attachment to our location and our "dream" house, vs the idea of buying a home (or building) and starting a new dream. Giving up living on the river would be so hard but then I think having a big piece of land for kids to run around on would be amazing. But then I also wonder if I would go crazy with a more rural isolated property? Uggghhh. I'm just so confused and I wish the answer would just drop out of the sky!!!

@Ms. Martian: I think we'll be fine with the neighbours. Our neighbourhood is pretty traditional, but what we want is actually like a huge stone farmhouse with sections taken out and replaced with glass, so it's not offensive. It would stand out, but still be in keeping with the vibe of the neighbourhood. Our architect desperately wants us to have a green roof over our bedroom/garage but we're putting the kibosh on that, lol. This was our inspiration house:

It would be hard to move within our neighbourhood because if we were going to do that, we'd want to stay on the river, and these houses rarely come up for sale, and when they do they cost a boatload more than what we paid for ours and while we have some money, we don't have that much money.

I did start playing looking around on MLS last night and I did see one house that I really liked, although it wasn't my dream home. It just got my wheels turning. It was on 13 acres, up near Alliston. DH and I have talked a few times about buying a place with a big barn (or building one on the property) and opening a wedding venue because there are so few venues of that nature around the GTA but such a high demand for it. It would be a huge change on a number of fronts, both living and working, as our "work life" would now be tending the property to make it picture perfect, which isn't something we've necessarily been invested in so far with this house (read: I kill everything, I would have a lot to learn).

I don't know why, but my neighbour saying that they were leaving felt like it gave me the permission to be more open minded about moving. I was so completely opposed to it before. But on the other hand, I always think, what if we moved and hated it, and we always looked back and said 'Do you remember when we lived on the river? That was so much fun. Why did we leave?!'. On the other hand, we could stand to make a lot of money on our house if we put a little cosmetic shine on it and sold in the spring, and we've only lived here three years. It's tempting.

@tranquility: Either way, I'm going to have the stress of both. If we stay and renovate, we have to move out. This house will be leveled to the ground. If we move, I guarantee we'll do renovations before moving in. Or even just buy a property with a crappy house, tear it down, and build new. I think we're both pretty determined to have our dream house rather than another "make do".

Gosh I'm glad I'm seeing you ladies tonight! LOL!

@slicey19: Okay, good point. We currently canoe on the river, although we don't go out as often as I'd like, and we have a dock with a motor on it that we drive up and down the river (think party raft) that's tons of fun. We love having dinner on the back deck watching the swans and ducks float by. Unfortunately it's not clean enough to swim in. I would definitely miss all that.

However, as I said to DH last night, this one house I found online is waaaaaaaaaayyyy under budget, and with the money we had left over, we would have more than enough to dig an acre sized pond and throw our canoe in that.

As for the idea of the event venue, it's something we've talked about since we were searching for our own wedding and were so frustrated with our lack of options. Clearly I love weddings, so I'd be good with that aspect of it. DH is a contractor, so I think he'd be happy tinkering around, and I know he'd be happier working from home/around the property than doing what he's doing now. Of course there is also the realities of it: insurance, clean up, damages, septic tanks, working every weekend during the summer, a few hundred people being on our property every weekend. 

@ccranetobe: To answer your questions, yes we could sell our house now, and yes it would sell quickly. We live in a really high demand area and houses on our side of the street rarely come up for sale. We've had a weird spike in the number of houses for sale in the last month, they've all sold between 24 hours and 2 weeks (the two weeks one was the only one on our side of the street and it was pretty pricey, so I'm not surprised it took a little while to find the right buyer). But we could absolutely sell it, no questions asked, I'm not worried about that.

DH and I have talked ourselves in circles at this point and we're still confused. We know this much though, we're going to proceed to getting the approvals to build, because if we can sell our house with those approvals it's worth a hell of a lot more than it is now. To throw something new into the mix, my mom has said that if we buy a big chunk of land (meaning likely 10 acres+), she and my dad would definitely be open to building their own house on the property, and DH and I could also build a little one for his mom. It would be sort of a family compound I guess. DH and I both like the idea of this for a number of reasons but it would mean living pretty rurally which I haven't done since I was a kid, and we're trying to think of the implications of that for our kids (in the future) too. We want our kids to experience multiculturalism and culture in general, to be well rounded and well educated. Some times living in the middle of nowhere Ontario doesn't give you those things readily, so we're trying to take into account that we'd like to live close enough to a larger town/city where our kids can get exposure to those things.

It's pretty scary. All of a sudden trying to make this huge decisions for people who don't exist yet, and for how you're going to shape the lives of them! LOL!

@Lindsay12.31.2010: LOL! Well you're a bit far for picking up my stepson every other weekend, but I'll mention it to DH just in case ;)

@justelope: I couldn't agree more with all that you mentioned above and we will be checking into everything before making a decision to purchase. Our neighbour's place just doesn't suit us. The layout, style, etc. Just not what we're looking for.