For a while, every time I drove by this house I’d think “man, if only those guys would sell.” (Since the fantasy wheels were already turning, I’d also wish for the ability to see more than one window from the street.)

If I’d told my decade-younger self that I’d one day become so smitten with tri-levels, she would have never believed it. But there I was, in a town awash with the fruits of a seventies-era building boom, weathering pang after pang of houses flying off the market mere moments after I’d started dreaming of a life inside their walls. (In the company of many, I imagine, the 2021 real estate market is one of the things I try to forget.)

It was by pure luck, then, that I found this little lady buried deep inside the cobweb-laden caverns of Zillow’s FSBO area. With an owner so cheap as to even avoid using the MLS, I had a feeling the path ahead would be a pain in the butt. And it was, in some ways. But in the ones that mattered, we both won. He gained an acquaintance who will forever save misdirected Christmas cards for him to collect after the holidays. And I gained a sweet, neglected, jungle-guarded house that I just knew, before I’d ever stepped foot inside, that I could turn into my home.

Questionable choices and all, this is that story.