Just an update on our homestead search…we found a house that we feel would work out for our whole family and after much discussion, an offer was finally put in. We should know by sometime next week if they will accept our offer. We are sitting on pins and needles right now!
We have been all over New Mexico in search of the place we will call home, leaving no stone unturned and making sure we have explored all possible opportunities. I’m sure we drove our real estate agent nuts as I would ask to see properties that would take up to 45 minutes to get to. We narrowed a list of homes down to about three or four prospects, and from there we finally decided on a house located just 20 minutes from Albuquerque. My first choice was a house I went to see all the way down in southern New Mexico, but for the sake of convenience with regards to my husband’s work, we decided to shoot for this home, keeping the house in southern New Mexico as a sort of back up plan. We also have a few other options on the back burner, but these properties will require quite a bit of work before we’d be able to move in.
The house we chose is an older brick 3300 sq foot home with five bedrooms and three baths. Its situated on 1.2 acres and there are no restrictions on the land use. We can have horses, goats, sheep, alpacas, cows and lots of other animals. Obviously this very small holding is not large enough to support lots of animals, but we can have a nice healthy balance of
the different animals we want and need. The house will require a bit of work on the interior, but it is mostly cosmetic and updating that needs to be done. Our biggest obstacle will be all the paneling in the house! Yuck! 1970’s paneling is not my idea of pretty…even if it is painted. To avoid the expense of taking all the paneling down and putting up drywall (another non-favorite of mine), we will be filling in the grooves of the paneling and actually going over the surface with an Aliz plaster. The Aliz will be pigmented so that no painting will be required. Dom plans on doing all the walls in the house (its his specialty) during his vacation time off. We originally were going to do the walls little by little, but since my grandbaby Simone is so allergic to wheat gluten (one of the ingredients in the Aliz) he felt it would be better if the walls were all done and dried before we move in.
The house has so many possibilities and a lot of potential. Even though it is very outdated, there was a lot of work done to the house over the last six years, which made the house very appealing to us. The fact that the roof and blown insulation was redone was probably the biggest thing we were thankful for. Next is the fact that the heat is baseboard water, which makes it really easy to hook up a solar water heater. The house also has natural gas, which eventually can be converted over to our own biogas digester. We also have some ideas for creating electric which will include solar, wind, magnetic motors, and a back up generator that runs on methane fuel.
The photo to the left is of the back courtyard which is completely walled in. I love that the courtyard will provide a very safe place for Simone to play when she’s outside.
I also really like the sun porch, which will become our first little tropical green house. Another green house will also be added at a later time, but I like the fact that this one will be ready to utilize right away.
Another great thing about this home is that it is situated only 15 minutes from the Parajito Mesa, which makes it possible to still work with the people there, and it is still very close to where Simone will get speech therapy, physical therapy and occupational therapy. Being close to medical services will be a huge relief!
Here is an aerial shot of the property:
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