As I was driving around this afternoon, running a few errands, I had an impulse to drive by "our" house. It just so happened the seller was having a garage sale, getting rid of all the furniture (except a few pieces we requested in our purchase agreement - Jon's favorite Eames chairs and the ice cream bar stools). I drove by twice before deciding to actually stop and say "hello". I wasn't sure if it was standard operating procedure to hang out with the sellers of the house we are buying while they clear out their belongings and say good-bye to their childhood home. We've only communicated before through our real estate agents, so I felt a little strange.What do I do? Call Jon and ask him what I should do. He encouraged me to say hello, so I drove by a third time (do you think they noticed me driving by 3 times?) {{house stalker}}, stopped and got out with Emma and Hope. MJ and CR were at the library, of course.
I introduced ourselves as the family buying their house. I say "their" because there were several adult siblings there taking care of business. They were all so friendly and very excited to meet us. They grew up in that house, a family with 8 children, and were happy to know another young family was moving in to continue the memories there. This was the "family home" until their mother passed away two years ago at 90 years of age. I was telling them my kids' names, and they flipped when they heard Cailin's name - which is spelled just like one of their girl's - who happened to be there as well. Her name is Cailin Grace. Grace is Emma's middle name. We stumbled onto one other coincidence - one of the sweet older brothers said he moved into the house on his 6th birthday. We told him we moved into town on Emma's 6 birthday! Not exactly the same thing, but still kind of cool.
I asked if I could look around and see what hadn't sold yet, and maybe hold on to a few things. Most everything had sold, except for the crazy grandpa couches and chairs in the basement, which I bought for $50. I also bought for $3 a piece, three big spotlights in red and green to light up the huge blue pine tree in the front yard at Christmas time. I was disappointed to have missed the sale earlier in the day. We could've kept their lawn mower and a few other pieces of furniture for "cheap" that would've been nice to start out with. I'm happy, nonetheless, with what we did get. It was also a pleasure to meet the family that grew up and had such happy memories in the home we will soon call our own.
2 comments:
That is nice. We talked with the people who sold our house. They had raised their children here from a young age and were happy to see a young family buying from them. We actually even have been to the house they moved into kind. I don't think this was a typical seller-buyer relationship but they were really nice. She even left a huge bag of cat food and asked us to continue feeding a stray cat through til spring. Funny!
What a cute house! I am glad you got a picture of the front. Now I can just picture your family there. How fun.
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