We had been looking at homes in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia for several years, eventually gravitating towards the Town of Woodstock.

Having made many trips to Woodstock, we developed a list of houses we thought we might like to own someday. None of these houses were for sale at the time, but our criteria for our next home were particular, so we decided to make a short list of houses meeting our long list of “wants and don’t wants”.

Several months later, one of those houses showed up in our daily Zillow.com feed as FOR SALE. We quickly responded, checked out the house (an old brick Victorian that had not been polished up in a very long time), and put in an offer to purchase it. Driving in to look at that house, we passed another old brick Victorian on the same street. It was a huge building that was clearly a grand home at one time, but that appeared to have been turned into a commercial building. Not thinking much of that building (it was so large it never made it to our list of houses we might buy as we figured it would never be within our reach financially). A few days and a few nervous offers/counter offers later, we were outbid by another buyer on the smaller old brick Victorian. Yet as fate would have it, that huge old brick Victorian appeared on our Zillow feed just a month later (having been relisted from a commercial sale to a residential sale). Amazingly, the asking price was within striking distance of our budget.

We pounced – setting up a tour of the building. Large does not begin to describe the building. Coming from an 1,800 square feet (5 bedroom, 3 bath) home, this place was almost beyond our comprehension. At 5,800+ square feet (12 bedroom, 9 bath) with a large basement, we couldn’t quite fathom having so much space. But, the building felt solid, appeared in good structural condition, and was such a unique opportunity that we decided to make an immediate offer. After all, amongst our long list of “wants and don’t wants”, we never had an exclusion for HUGE OLD HOSPITAL-NURSING HOME-SHELTER. Somewhat to our surprise, we ended up buying the home.

Well, here we are now – questioning our sanity, but excited for the road ahead!