Third stop was further up the road, closer to John's work, in a little town called La Cueva. This was a log house on 5 acres IN the mountains. Bears visit the property regularly. It had a nice layout, plenty of garage space, and, well, bears. However, the interior would need complete reworking to replace all the lower grade dark paneling, the not great kitchen, and the camo carpet (yes, camo)
Fourth stop was back towards Jemez Springs, away from John's work. Nice enough inside. This place REALLY had the views. It also had a driveway that would require a tracked vehicle to go up in the winter. The serious killer here was the foundation. Sure, the repairs were guaranteed. But when the house slid down the cliff, would the company holding the guarantee NOT go out of business? Oh - the only entrance was through the garage.
Fifth stop (we're all dragging) was a funky old house in Jemez Springs. It had been restored on spec and had some nice new stuff and some new windows. But the exterior walls were only 4 inches thick, meaning enormous heating bills. This place had some very eclectic outbuildings. I don't think I could type enough to explain them.
Well, we decided, even though the price was out of range without selling our house in Derwood, to check out the Riverdancer. Eleni fell in love with the place. It is currently a bed & breakfast, but doing all sorts of ecectic retreats and massage and wellness stuff. The neighbors are a Zen Center and a Catholic nunnery. You could play touch football in the main room. It has a beautiful, though not for sitting really, courtyard that each room looks out on. And a separate cottage. And it is ON the river. Etc. Eleni will tell you all about it - call. Fifty minutes from John's work and sell Derwood before buying.
Is that enough for the first day? Don't worry,
We could not sleep on Mountain time, so we had plenty of time to kill before
our 9:00 appointment with
the Real Estate agent in Los Alamos that we had the reference for. We
walked the two blocks up the street to the office, only to find that "our"
agent had been seriously ill since Sunday (this is Tuesday). There being
nobody else in the office, and no time to waste, we went nuts trying to get
somebody to show us stuff close to Los Alamos, but still outside town where
you can get more than 0.3 acres. Mary from yesterday was out of pocket. We
checked with the person that the hotel STRONGLY recommended, but he only
works the town. He gave us the name and number of someone down the hill that
was selling her special place. We left a message for her also. Then
Mary called back and we made an appointment to check out the houses in Sierra
Los Pinos, way up in the mountains, but only 30 minutes from work.
These houses were mostly depressing. Very rustic. Design flaws.
Unfinished. Poor lots on difficult roads. The nicest
one was almost finished, and was very nice inside. But the yard was depressing, just sand and gravel. One broken
down shed for a garage. They had a turkey, though. One side of the house faced a wall
of mountain. After not being able to get in one house
that looked way too small and one other house that
looked nice from the outside, but what looked like ugly houses next
door, we went hiking along the Jemez River. John sat on some rocks that formed a natural easy chair
in the middle of the river. Then he sat on some
higher rocks.
When we got back into cell phone country, a message was waiting from the
woman with the "special place." Despite it being 6:00 pm, she was ready
to show it to us. She said she had an offer, but had not accepted. This
house is located on a little chunk of land surrounding by pueblo land.
It really turned out to be really special. Her late husband engineered the
heck out the place, and she made sure to sink tons of money into special
features. While it had a lot of floor space, it only had 2 bed rooms.
She said we could have it if we gave her an offer at the low asking price
because she liked us and thought we would make a nice addition to the community.
She was keeping another house next door, so she would still be around.
John really thought this was a great place. Eleni was slightly less enthused
only because she was getting weird signals from the owner.
We called and arranged to meet with Mary to see this house again, and one
other near by the next morning.
Then it was Miller time.
We went to visit another house in White Rock, near Los Alamos. It was very
nice, but perhaps too formal for us. White Rock is a very flat town, until
you get to the cliff that drops hundreds of feet to the Rio Grande. Anyway,
the house had excellent gardens, plenty of bedrooms, heavy duty sliding wood
doors, and all the bedrooms on the lower floor with french doors leading out
to the gardens. It appeared that at least one of the owners was of Greek heritage.
John just could not get excited, but Eleni thought it would be nice for when
we had visitors. Note that having space for visitors seems to be Eleni's
prime consideration.
After White Rock, we drove with Mary to see the "special" pueblo house.
After all the talk the prior evening, we were shocked to find an Open House
in progress! Mary toured it with us and agreed it was pretty nice. John took so many pictures, they are on their own page.
We went back to our hotel to write up an offer. While leaving, we made
it obvious we were likely going to write up an offer.
While writing up the offer, we needed to call the "special" woman to find
out the name of the county the house was in. Imagine our feelings when
she handed the phone to her real estate agent who said they had already
accepted the offer that some other people were writing while we were there!
The owner who loved us the day before was in hiding. After biting down our
confusion and perturbation, we put our three faces back in to the wind and
went to Sierra Los Pinos to see the one place we could not get in the previous
day, and this other place next door that happened to be for sale by owner.
Since the owner was waiting for us, we went to the "by owner" house first. Mary and Eleni ran out of superlatives. This house is a log-mansion. If you are unfamiliar with Sierra Los Pinos, it is pretty high up in the Jemez Mountains, one half hour from Los Alamos and one half hour from Jemez Springs. The master bedroom (Eleni's favorite) has a kiva fire place and a stained glass (but still double-paned for John) window. The living room has a huge stone fire place and huge windows facing south towards the neighbor (who are on a mountain ten miles away). There is a loft for visting neices and nephews to sleep in (all can fit). Two other bedrooms for our kids if they come or visitors if not. Effie & Michael will be satisfied to hear that our new kitchen makes our old kitchen look like a hot plate in a dorm room. There are hand-carved pine accents everywhere.
We still went next door and saw that other place that
seemed very nice on the outside, but that had a really poor layout inside.
Also, several things the owners had done after the initial bulding were
really poorly done (witness a caved-in out building and a huge deck supported
by 20 foot 4 x 4s).
After a night's sleep on it, we headed over to Mary's office and wrote up an offer
on the log mansion. We are really stretching it monetarily, but this place
really satisfies both our needs (close to Los Alamos [John] and room for
guests [Eleni]). Then we went hiking along the Jemez Rive again. We took so many pictures, they have their own WWW page.
The we ate too much dinner at the new location of De Colores [sorry, could
not find WWW page, but it was good].
Well, we could have made a counter offer, not knowing what would go, and wait some more before switching our target to White Rock. Instead, we convinced Mary to call and ask the owner whether it would be worth it. It seems one of the major stumbling blocks was the possesion date! So, we offered about $5,000 more than we can possibly afford and went shopping (for a wedding present) while Mary went and presented the offer to the owners. When we drove past Mary's office, she was still gone. We ate dinner in town (Los Ojos does have some interesting food if you look hard enough). Then we checked Mary's office again - still not there. Back to the hotel.
Cell phone reception is non-existent in the mountains. But when we finally got reception back at Los Alamos, there was a message waiting from Mary, congratulating us (after rambling on some to tease us) that we had bought ourselves a mansion.
It being July 4, we decided it was Miller time. We were too tired to drive anywhere, so we watched the fire works from the hotel.
Our new street will be Coryphodon Lane. Coryphodons were prehistoric cows.
We will meet Mary at the house Monday to get all the signed papers and take more pictures, so check back some time after that! Meanwhile, here is a quick description taken from the listing on the web.
