It all started five years ago when we were living in Ozolkalns (small village near Gulbene, Latvia) for a year. We couldn’t decide to stay here or buy our property somewhere else. We even thought about moving to Germany, that sounded real with two small kids :). But we are Latvians and wanted to stay in our country even sometimes we are frustrated with corruption and selfish jerks! Anyway… we started to look around.. and look around… and look around… for property! Everything seemed so far away from Gulbene.
We started to talk about whether we want to drive and how far we want to drive our kids to kindergarten and school. Ozolkalns is a perfect place – only 5 km away from Gulbene – but feels like you are living in a remote area!
We started to walk to an old house close to us and also to Janis parents. It makes a triangle Janis parents house, house we are living in now and the old house. All about 1 to 2 km apart… We started to walk there… and enjoyed the view! And we fall in love! Seriously. I started to dream about plants I plant and where we’ll have a barbeque (more like campfire). We knew that this house belonged to Janis Father’s brother’s wife’s sisters son. (Don’t know about all the ‘s). Anyway.
We never heard they wanted to sell it and we continue to dream about this place in our minds… hearts! And one day our friend Aivars came over for coffee and said to us – I heard they are selling the house and there are buyer!!! What!??
After a two of further and back, we bought the house and the land around it. The process wasn’t easy.. and we tried to pay it off in cash! We didn’t have savings… we had help from Janis parents! In 27th February, 2019 property was officially signed to us.
After a year of paying off what was left, we can now say – it’s ours!
To honour the house, that is built in year 1880 and and the magnificent tree – Chestnut that grows next to it, we called the house – Chestnut Manor!
Now the old chestnut is in bloom and the house waits for us to start the renovation! And our journey begins 🙂
Ilze
I’m sure you will realise your dream, though it may take a while. You have time and I’ve known you give up on what you’ve decided to do.
It’s a magnificent ‘manor’ in a wonderful location.
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‘Never known’ of course – this crazy keyboard!
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It will be a wonderful place for the girls to grow up!
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It will be! I hopes so! A lot to do! We have only roof and those stone and brick beams – anything else is in poor condition.
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Great house, great location, I’m happy for you and your family, your future starts here 🙂
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It realy starts. You know we wanted to build straw house… no land.. then looked for some old houses with land… too far away. This one is perfect – not a straw house, but house with a bit of history 🙂 1880 is… long ago 🙂 And we know what was lived there! Since Janis Grandparents were living across this house!
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Congratulations on the purchase. (You just need one more apostrophe in sister’s 🙂 )
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Thank you! And somehow it’s hard with apstrophes for me 😀
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And for most English people too.
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🙂 well, there wasn’t a problem until I heard someone explaining ‘s and s’ since that I think to much and at the end get it wrong 🙂
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Mostly you get it right as far as I can see.
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Thank you!
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It must be great to find your true home. Good luck at renovation! What’s with the cottage You previously blogged from? That also seemed to be a nice, beautiful place.
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We are still living in the cottage. We are lucky! But it will end as soon as owners sell it! Now thanks to covid… we still have opportunity to live in this beautiful place! I don’t wanna think about time “between”. We have caravan… but it won’t work in winter 🙂
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