My son’s thoughts on house hunting matched mine: You know what I’d like, Mom? If we move to Virginia, I hope we move to a house on a street named after Lafayette. If not Lafayette, then George Washington. If not George Washington, then Patrick Henry.
Influenced by my eighth grade English teacher
My eighth-grade English teacher instilled a love of the right name in me.
I never realized how much she influenced me in seeking scope for the imagination until we hunted for a home in Virginia.
In San Antonio all our streets have a theme
Spoiled by creatively thematic names in San Antonio, I lived in a neighborhood where every street was named after wild cats, reminscent of the mascots of nearly ever public school and college I ever attended.
When my best friend from college came to visit me, she laughed when I gave her directions to my street bearing the name of our college mascot.
I imagined the street names in Virginia would be historically imaginative
Um, not much.
Honestly, who wants to live on Tongue Ave? Hmmm….
We drove by Lauriann Woods subdivision with the main street named Lauriann. Wow! Imagine my address label at that house!
I found a house on a street with my son’s name…too bad, problematic short sale.
On a map I found Lafayette Crossing! Can we move there?
Then we drove by Saratoga Heights subdivision with the main road named General George Washington.
Looking over my shoulder for Benedict Arnold Street as we drove looking for the houses listed, they must have turned traitor because they were impossible to locate.
We put an offer on Guston Hall Drive
We finally found a house on Gunston Hall Drive.
How unromantic. After all, what is a Gunston Hall?
Is it a place where guns are stored, like the entryway to the Governor’s Palace in Colonial Williamsburg?
Worst news was that it was right next to a high school with a stadium. Can you imagine how noisy Friday night football would be…and daily practice sessions with the band?
However, we need a house to live in and the floor plan was incredible, so we put an offer on it.
That night as we drove up I95, I saw brown sign (as in historical landmark) that said Gunston Hall, next exit. Wait!
Wasn’t that the name of the street of the house we put the offer on?
“Yes,” my daughter exclaimed!
“Wow! I can’t believe it! I wonder what happened there?”
Did Lafayette Visit There?
My daughter suggested that Lafayette visited there.
Hmmmm, that’s likely. He visited everyone in America!
After googling Gunston Hall that evening, I discovered George Mason lived there on the peninsula south of Mount Vernon.
A friend and mentor to George Washington, George Mason wrote the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which is featured at Colonial Williamsburg.
While the burgesses met at the capitol in Williamsburg they unanimously agreed to independence from England and then sent delegates off to the Constitutional Congress to agree on independence.
The Virginia Declaration of Rights was the forerunner to the Declaration of Independence.
Guests at Gunston Hall included George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Lafayette.
Running Joke with Real Estate Agents
Laughing at my perspective of street names, the real estate agents made this a running joke.
While we putting an offer on the Gunston Hall house, our real estate agent connected us to our financial officer, Rick, via teleconference.
Rick: Hey, you must be from San Antonio! (He saw my cell phone number.) My dad lives out there near Max Lucado’s church.
Me: Oh, that’s Oak Hills Church.
Rick: Yeah! My dad lives across from there in the Dominion.
Me: Oh that’s where a lot of the San Antonio Spurs live!
Rick: You know that David Robinson lives there.
Me: Oh everyone knows that!
Rick: Do you know the name of the street he lives on.
Me: No.
Rick: Admiral Way!
Me: (laughing) See Laura (the real estate agent) Street names are really important in San Antonio. The Admiral is David’s nickname because he attended the Naval Academy.
Rick: (chuckling in agreement)
Laura: (laughing and shaking her head in disbelief at this conversation supporting my thesis)
Rick: Guess David’s house number.
Me: Hmmm, it must be the number on his jersey. 50!
Rick: Correct!
Laura: (dying laughing)
Back to house hunting
Alas, someone else got the Gunston Hall house.
I am really sad about that. That would have been too cool to tell people I live on Gunston Hall Dr.
While I was looking up the floorplan, I discovered the builder is located on Lafayette Circle.
sigh Oh well.
I had the vision for the fixer upper
Plugging along for three weeks, I kept asking the family to retour an house with great bones, though a lot of work, that I discovered the first week of house hunting.
Because of all the elbow grease required to paint dirty walls, and upgrade the tired 10 year old house with builder grade cabinets, countertops, lighting, etc aka no imagination, this house kept slipping to the bottom of the list.
Further, the rooms showed as too tiny for any of our furniture, and we really didn’t have much, just the basics.
On each visit I stood in the family room, the most problematic of all the rooms, looking ridiculously teeny tiny.
The more I analyzed it, the more I figured out was in the limited furniture the homeowner had in the room with an awkward arrangement.
As time slipped by, the need for a roof over our heads continued as we checked out every single house on the market.
Even though we put offers on several houses, ours wasn’t accepted due to buyers plunking down cold hard cash.
In other cases we tried to put an offer on houses we had just toured, but offers had already been accepted.
Our ticket to receiving keys to a house would be the one no one wanted, the one needing elbow grease…and a vision.
This home with great bones needed a little love.
I had the vision and the love.
And as they say in real estate, buying is all about location, location, location!
The location was gorgeous and out of the way from all the gnarly traffic further east.
Out west we found serenity and a sigh of relief.
As offer accepted on Virginia house, we closed on the Texas house
Finally convincing everyone, our offer was accepted three weeks into our search for a Virginia house.
After sending those papers off, we drove to sign the final contract, selling our Texas house.
Interestingly I signed off on our Texas house located in a former Spanish colony in Bexar County, while sitting in the English colony of Virginia in Fairfax County.
The notary documented that with her official stamp.
Quickly our offer was accepted.
Sadly we found neither Lafayette nor Patrick Henry, or Thomas Jefferson, or George Washington at our new house.
But we do have a Colonial Williamsburg-esque setting.
In fact, I never heard of our new street name before.
Stay tuned as I explore that history, since I’m sure there’s a story there.
