My Biggest Purchase Yet
After 4 apartments in three cities after graduating college & with the amount of gray hair I’m starting to show, I figured it was time to buy a house. A couple months of looking later, I ended up purchasing the one below:
The house is located in North Boston, NY. Most people who I work with gasp at how far away they think it is when I tell them this, as most of them aren’t familiar with the Buffalo Southtowns, but I’m literally within walking distance of both Hamburg and Orchard Park. When I first visited this house, I was focusing on searching in Hamburg. After looking at several in the Village of Hamburg one day, my real estate agent & I headed to this one. As we left the village & passed the Hamburg town golf course, I began to wonder where we were headed. When we crossed under the 219, I didn’t think I’d have any interest in living in the area, but once I saw the house, I loved it.
The 219 turned out to be it’s saving grace as well - I’m two farmers fields & a row of houses away from the Boston State Road (aka Route 391) entrance. A ride to work at UB with no traffic and good weather takes 25 minutes (it will take longer in the winter). Coincidently enough, the distance from work to the house is 26.2 miles (the distance of a marathon). While I do have do have a Hamburg address & pay Hamburg school taxes, the selling real estate agent had mis marked the house as being in Hamburg - had she listed it correctly as being in North Boston, I probably never would have looked at it.
The house was built in 1958. It is a 3 bedroom ranch of ~1100 square feet, with a car and a half attached garage. The roof was put on in 2006 & fresh paint and Berber carpet was put in right before I purchased it. The inside is very bright, with floor to ceiling windows in the (updated) kitchen and a picture window in the living room. The bedrooms are a little on the smaller size, which was one of my fears, but since I’ve moved in, I’ve had no problems with their size. The yard is 90×225 (a half acre) and has a large shed and an in ground pool!
Additional photos can be found in my House Gallery, but none of them seem to do the place justice.
Some of the highlights since moving in:
- I’ve broken the lawn mower twice (update: four times).
- The robins that hatched in the nest above the light outside my garage have flown out of the nest. One promptly proceeded to smack head first into a telephone pole. I fear I may have ran another one over with the truck this past week. Of course they were kind enough to crap all over my driveway before leaving.
- I met the neighbor across the street (and realized afterwards my fly was wide open the whole time I was talking to him).
- I still don’t know what 1/3 of the light switches do.
- I finally put chemicals in the pool (after removing the huge bullfrog in it).
- I’ve already backed the truck mirror into the side of the garage.
- I have morning doves & robins nesting out front of the house. The back yard has two huge bunnies, more birds, who knows what in a big hole I almost lost a leg in when mowing & probably still the bullfrog. It’s like Wild Animal Kingdom out there.
- During my first (13 mile) run out here, I discovered I live at the bottom of a valley. A 13 mile run was a poor time to discover this. I had to climb a 600 foot tall hill. I got lost. I didn’t have my cell phone. I realized that even if I did, I might not get signal. If I did get signal and were to call someone while lost, I wouldn’t be able to tell them where I was (Hi, I’m on a road I don’t know the name of, but know I’m surrounded by farmers fields - can you come get me?”). Even if I could describe where I was, there’s no one out here to call…
- The very first thing I did to the house was put in a garage door opener. It worked great until the next day, when I realized the outlet it’s plugged into requires the overhead light in the garage to be turned on. I’ve added fixing that to one of the many to-do lists…
So far I’m enjoying the place & look forward to being able to enjoy it and do some more work on it. I’ve creating a new category here, so look for more updates. Or better yet - come on out & visit!