It’s December. It’s freezing up here, the snow storms are coming in almost daily, the water bowls for the goats freeze over – we had a crash course in “Heated water bowls”. The dogs look outside and then back at me as if to say – “yeah no way lady – peeing on the floor is much warmer”.

But we still love upstate NY and we want to stay. I have spent weeks online looking for houses. Too big, too small, too expensive, too much work to do. Then I fell upon a site where a little red farm house was up for auction and the timer said 1 day and 8 hours left to close. It looked adorable but it was also taken in spring where the house had grass. Here we are in the dead of winter. We had no idea where the house was but a little GPS help we managed to find this doll house hidden in the woods. It had been empty for 8 years when the guy who owned it passed away. Side note – I learnt from Kevin who owns the Bottle Shop* in town that he was an attorney who was arrested for PEEPING and EXPOSING himself!!!! As long as he didn’t die in the house – I was ok with the bizarre sexual fetishes of some old man.

With Andre having a RE License – we were given the code to get in. We really didn’t need it – i just kicked the door and it opened. The house was freezing. No power, no plumbing, the kitchen has linoleum floors and cabinets that were seriously circa 1970. The 2.5 bathrooms were just as bad. Just think 1980’s mobile home shower and lots and lots of what I call Walmart Wood floors. They are a blah brown and so outdated – if they were ever “in-dated”.

But I swear I saw the potential. I saw what the house could be. We put in a bid – prayed to Jesus some guy in Nigeria wasn’t about to rip and rob us and waited….

We won the bid! We won the bid! And we got the deed and it wasn’t a joke or a scam. We owned a little red farmhouse in Millbrook and my heart was expanding.

We closed on the house on December 28th. Our lease on the rental was up on March 1. We had some serious work to do and only two months to do it. See the before images below. Trust me they were taken long before it was up for sale – because the pics make it look sorta kinda ok – it was far from that.

It was officially named Goat Hill Manor and it was ours!