A Bit of Background
Sarah and I decided back in the early spring that it was time to leave Calgary. I wanted to move down to Crowsnest for many years and I would sit in my office and stare at the mountains every day. After a lot of discussion, we decided to make the move.
We were pretty surprised at what people were asking for old miner's shacks. We came down here a lot over the past few years and we always looked at the real estate listings so we were pretty up to date on what was happening in town. The difference was when you actually looked at these places, so many of them were dumps. I'm not saying there aren't nice places here; it's just that for what we were willing to spend, there wasn't a lot available. We'd already toyed with the idea of building and we finally realized something important. For what a lot of folks are asking for a 30 (or 40, or 80) year old house, we could build something brand new and twice the size. I was confident we could do this. Some of my first memories are of my dad building and renovating. As I got older, I helped out where I could (and when he made me). Sarah had never been around construction and needed a little more convincing. I think after she saw how I renovated our house in Calgary, she was more comfortable with it. So she agreed; I guess this means she trusts me or I'm just overwhelmingly diplomatic.
We found our lot by complete accident, which was the beginning of our considerable good fortune. We happened to be looking at a lot on a quiet street in the far corner of Bellevue when the nice folks from across the street came to talk to us. "Are you lost?" they asked. We told them how we were considering buying the lot across from them and we started chatting about the area. Jim and Lorraine are their names and they said they were considering selling half of their property. They had a great spot bordering on one acreage to the west and a municipal green space to the north. Beyond that treed hillside there was one more acreage and then wilderness. I wanted an acreage myself but Sarah said that if we were moving out the country, she wanted to be around people We were sold almost immediately.
We were pretty surprised at what people were asking for old miner's shacks. We came down here a lot over the past few years and we always looked at the real estate listings so we were pretty up to date on what was happening in town. The difference was when you actually looked at these places, so many of them were dumps. I'm not saying there aren't nice places here; it's just that for what we were willing to spend, there wasn't a lot available. We'd already toyed with the idea of building and we finally realized something important. For what a lot of folks are asking for a 30 (or 40, or 80) year old house, we could build something brand new and twice the size. I was confident we could do this. Some of my first memories are of my dad building and renovating. As I got older, I helped out where I could (and when he made me). Sarah had never been around construction and needed a little more convincing. I think after she saw how I renovated our house in Calgary, she was more comfortable with it. So she agreed; I guess this means she trusts me or I'm just overwhelmingly diplomatic.
We found our lot by complete accident, which was the beginning of our considerable good fortune. We happened to be looking at a lot on a quiet street in the far corner of Bellevue when the nice folks from across the street came to talk to us. "Are you lost?" they asked. We told them how we were considering buying the lot across from them and we started chatting about the area. Jim and Lorraine are their names and they said they were considering selling half of their property. They had a great spot bordering on one acreage to the west and a municipal green space to the north. Beyond that treed hillside there was one more acreage and then wilderness. I wanted an acreage myself but Sarah said that if we were moving out the country, she wanted to be around people We were sold almost immediately.We talked to our Realtor, John Pundyk, who also happened to be theirs and the ball was rolling. The only real hiccup was that the lot had to be subdivided. The final lot was to be 83' on the front, 100' deep and 45' across the back; big. The subdivision became its own mini-series but long story short, it took several months to complete the process; far longer than we anticipated. By the time it happened, I had pretty much left my job (they threw me a bone with a few hours a week) and we had moved to Crowsnest. In the end the wait was worth it. Look at this place.
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