Plan B - Buy an Existing Home

After catching a glimpse of the rigors of building a home from scratch, we decided to move on to plan B. We started searching for existing homes for sale in the area that had all the things we were looking for. We found this country gem only 8 miles from Monroe in a little town called Annabella, Utah. The home is all brick and has 5 good sized bedrooms and 3 baths. At nearly 12 years old it looks great and the owners have obviously taken great care in the upkeep of the buildings and landscape. It sits on a 2.5 acre parcel at the end of quiet street. We made an offer the next day and they accepted our offer. We hope to close in the next 30-60 days.

Annabella is closer to the mountains than Monroe and the view from our front porch is beautiful. Several ATV trails are only a few blocks away and the City of Annabella allows ATVs to travel freely on the city streets. I hope to spend some time getting familiar with the neighborhood and my new mountain. My friend and ATV buddy John Jacks lives only 3 miles down the road with his wife and 2 children.

The kids are thrilled to have an enormous backyard complete with a basketball court and plenty of trees and trails. The house also has a large driveway out front with RV parking on the side of the house - more room for the kids to ride bikes and scooters. A major bonus is the mature landscaping with some beautiful trees and shrubs.

At the rear edge of the backyard is a fun waterfall and pond. Not sure how we feel about having a pond in the backyard since we are paranoid of losing one of our small children to a drowning accident. So this nice water feature may have to be converted into a flower bed.

One of the key features of the house for us is the large garden spot and orchard with mature fruit trees. I can’t wait to get my salsa garden planted. Garden fresh tomatoes are one of my very favorite things to eat in the summer time. I’m sure my wife will want to plant some corn and squash as well.

One of my favorite features of the property is this large heated workshop at the rear of the lot. It is quite adequate for my woodworking hobby and any other use I can dream up. It measures 60 X 60 and is complete with 220 volt power. I have a feeling that this will be my domain.

The icing on the cake is the old bird barn at the extreme Northern edge of the property. The land was originally used as a small family-owned turkey farm. The current owners have basically been using it as a gigantic chicken coop. This will be perfect for my next hobby of raising game birds like pheasant, chukar and quail.