Building The Love Shack

Keeping exciting news is not one of my best traits. When something exciting is happening, I could stand on the mountain top and shout it to the world. And today, I am standing on that mountain top, but first, let me take you back to the beginning.

I know I shared the story of how we met Gary and Julie eight years ago on our first night of the cruise through the Panama Cannel and since then have become friends and travel partners.

We officially made them Weekend Warriors two years ago when they came up from Minnesota to stay at the Love Shack and helped put in the garden.

When they came up, the cottage to the right of us was for sale. We kind of nudged them to buy it, but Gary wasn’t sure. He was retiring in a couple of years and Canada is a foreign country for them.

The cottage was sold and the oppertunity was lost.

The next year after regretting not making an offer, Gary and Julie got a little more serous about it, but no cottages came for sale.

This year, it was official, Gary is going to retire in November, but now we have Covid. The borders are closed. With No Chance for them to visit for house hunting and no cottages going up for sale, it looked like another lost year was going to hit.

Then suddenly the cottage behind me came up for sale. I called Julie and in minutes, I got “buy it”.

Husband and I ran up to the cottage with our Real Estate Agent and friend, Darrel, who you read about in “Our Story”. The next thing you know we’re in a bidding war for a cottage that needs at least $40,000 worth of work.

We were sure we had put in a good bid giving them more than asking price. And then we had to wait to hear if we got it.

We didn’t. We were out bid.

There were four very sad people at this point. The next afternoon Julie called me and said “how are you doing?” I said “in my pajamas at three in the afternoon sitting on the deck pouting. How about you?” She said “miserable”. I said, “you know they say if something doesn’t happen it’s because something better is going to come along? Well, I believe something better is going to come along.” She said ” I hope so.”

A few weeks later I’m sitting at my computer and I get an email from one of the many real estate pages I follow and another cottage is for sale, this time about a five minute walk from me. Again I’m on the phone with Julie. Only this time, it’s “go and get that dam cottage.”

This time, I go to see it with Husband, my daughter-in-law Karen, and Darrel. Oh wait this is the night before the anniversary party at the cottage.

I now have Julie on facetime because there are no pictures listed on the listing. So I’m walking through with my cell phone trying to show her this cottage on the inside and outside. She says what do you think? I say it’s perfect. And it needs no work. She say “so buy it”.

Now dam it this time, I am not going to lose this house!

Darrel get multiple offers ready getting ready for a bidding war, and we go in with an offer. Soon we get told, they won’t look at it until an extend amount of hours later. That means, you know it, we are being put on hold because … there are others coming in to look at the house.

Ok so it’s going to be a long night and next day. They’re going to look at the offers at 6Pm, right about the time, we’re starting to serve dinner to the guest for the Anniversary Party.

Now you know at this point our hearts are in two places. We are excited to celebrate our Twentieth Wedding Anniversary with our family and friends but that house and worry that we won’t get it, is in our heads dancing around.

At 2 pm the phone rings. I see it’s Darrel. This can’t be good. I answer the phone not with hello, but with “we’re in a bidding war right?”

Darrel says, “we got it, first offer, it’s yours.” I cry and go running out of the cottage to find Husband who is setting up the front of the house yelling like a nut ” We got it. We got it. We got the house.” The kids are of course laughing at me with the other Warriors and my poor neighbor thought I had sold my place and was moving away.

So next we had to call Julie and Gary. When I reach her, she is out shopping and I won’t tell her if it’s good news or bad news only that I need to talk to them together.

She calls me less than thirty minutes later on facetime and I tell them this. “I have some good news for you. I saved XXXX amount of thousands of dollars.” She said “How?” I said “they took the first offer and we didn’t get into a bidding war! It’s yours.”

There was silence on the other end and watching their faces as it registered was something that will stay with me for sometime. Somethings are priceless.

Since then, I have learned a whole lot about real estate sales with foreign buyers. I have been an acting buyer for them and involved with an average of fifteen phone calls a day, between Julie, Darrel, the banks, myself and everything else to setup the house and get it insured. It certainly has been an education and lot of running around for all of us.

But today is closing day. And Julie and Gary are officially Cottage Owners in Canada.

Today I have the keys for their home and today, I can deliver to their new house, the beginning of the shopping I have been doing to start setting up their new home that needs, EVERYTHING!

Julie and Gary won’t see their new home until Spring, hopefully of 2021, dam Covid. In the meantime, she is going to be doing shopping on line and having things sent to me and I’m shopping for her and we’ll get that house ready for their Spring arrival.

They will be spending the warm months of the years at the lake with us, only five minutes away. It will be easy for them to figure out which house is theirs. It will be the one with the person jumping up and down on the deck when they arrive crying happy tears.

Yesterday when I did the walk through before closing, I shot pictures of the inside and outside of their new home for them to see. It was the first time they had actually pictures of the home they bought. Thankfully she said ” I love it. It’s perfect. ” Well thank god for that cause I spent their money already. LOL…

So yes, I’m shouting this from the mountain top… The Warriors are coming and we are so excited to have them on their way.

Oh PS.. I got told by two of the other Warriors that day, we might be needing a couple more. The Warriors have fallen in-love with the Love Shack and cottage county.

Dam did we ever get a great Anniversary Gift!

Congratulations to Julie and Gary and Welcome to Canada. I bet no one would have ever believed sharing a smoke looking over an ocean on a cruise ship one evening would have every brought you to here. But it did.

Julie and Gary’s new cottage.