MN Mondays #19 - Up yours, Gustafson.

When it became clear that, amazing and lovely as it was, Wheelock Woods needed owners with access to substantially more resources than we could bring to bear, We started looking for a smaller house in St. Paul.  There was this one place on the East Side that looked cute and was actually pretty similar to Blair House.  But it was a little more than we wanted to spend and then it got snapped up before we could even go look at it, anyway.  So it was back to the drawing board.

We kept looking throughout the summer of 2013 as we continued to fix up bits of the house to make a better impression when we put it on the market.  We finally got everything the way we wanted it and put Wheelock on the market.  And got 3 offers the first weekend, if I remember correctly.

Needless to say we weren't ready for things to move quite that fast.  We hadn't seriously looked at many houses as prospects but now we had to get it in gear.  The sale of Wheelock was not going to take the 6 months to a year that we had figured on.  Here's where Jacob's recreational MLS scouring played in our favor.  Between him and our agent Genevieve we were able to see loads of places in a fairly short amount of time.

Grumpy Old Manor - May 2014

But none of those houses was the right one.

Then in the summer, that lovely little house we liked came back up on the MLS.  Apparently the sale had fallen through.  And the sellers had dropped the price a bit too, to boot.  So we jumped on it and scheduled a viewing.  It was exactly what I was looking for.  Early 1900s with a porch and lots of decorative wood touches.  It had many of the positive things that we both loved about Blair House and fewer of the negatives.

Grumpy Old Manor - June 30, 2107

It was also at this point that we learned about the house's particular claim to fame - it's staring role as the home of Jack Lemmon's character in the Grumpy Old Men movies.

We're coming up on 4 years in the Grumpy Old Manor and busily making our mark on it.  I've finished part of the basement as an office.  Jacob has the walls hung with art and the built-ins adorned with weirdness and objet d'art as is his want.  The gardens, flower and veg, see progress every year.  We have plans for things we want to accomplish here and continue to seek opportunities to share our home with friends and loved ones.

A fitting way to look back at memories and look forward to making new ones.