(Click here to read part one.)
As the inspection date grew closer, we found ourselves asking Do we really need to attend the house inspection in person? (TL:DNR answer: HELL YES!)
After all, our realtor will be there, and property inspectors are generally neutral parties.
In the end, we decided that Stephanie would head back to Raymond while I stayed home and worked.
This turned out to be an excellent decision, one that saved us from making our first home-buying decision into a mistake we’d have regretted for years to come.
Home Inspection reveals creepy discovery
Upstairs, everything seemed fine. On the original visit we’d only briefly visited the basement, and hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary.
But in the light of the inspector’s flashlight, Stephanie noticed a coin-sized hole in the basement wall. This came as a surprise to both our realtor and the inspector.
Further inspection revealed the presence of screws, painted over but easily detected. These screws held a plywood board, and when the inspector removed the screws the board came off, revealing a hidden basement room not mentioned in the listing.
This secret room contained a moldering couch, a non-functioning elliptical, and a DVD copy of the Zach Snyder film 300.
The back wall of the hidden basement room was only partially completed, with wooden panelling merging into an earthen wall slowly overtaking the room itself.
(The above image is AI generated – thanks, https://perchance.org/ai-text-to-image-generator. Throw in a moldy couch, non-functioning elliptical and DVD and you’ve got the idea.)
Stephanie’s detective skills were relayed to the seller, who returned our earnest money quickly and without comment. Our discovery had revealed potential malfeasance on the seller’s part, as, according to the Zillow listing they’d purchased the house in 2002 and the film 300 wasn’t released until 2006. Though mentioning this didn’t convince them to reimburse our inspection fee, it did compel them to remove the listing.
Onwards to Eastern Oregon!
Though we fared better in coastal Washington than we had in coastal Oregon, our two experiences going into the inspection phase there had been somewhat dispiriting. We decided to turn our sights eastward, to explore properties in Eastern Oregon. We’d already taken some tentative steps in this direction, looking at a few houses in The Dalles (lovely, but more than a bit over our budget) and in Goldendale, Washington (nice enough but we didn’t click with any of the properties).
Truthfully, we didn’t know all that much about living in Eastern Oregon. A friend of mine, a fellow travel writer, described Eastern Oregon as being similar in culture, views and overall vibe to the front range of Colorado, where I’d spent a good deal of time between overseas gigs. Stephanie and I discussed the possibility of exchanging coastal dreams for dryer climes, and as she’d spent many years in New Mexico, we turned our search eastward.
Like the American Southwest, Eastern Oregon is vast and spread out. Though other towns piqued our interest, specifically La Grande (thanks to it’s university and hot springs), we decided to explore Pendleton first to try and stick to our single day there and back from Portland driving range rule.
We’d heard a bit about Pendleton before our first trip, mostly about the famous Pendleton Woolen Mills, Pendleton whiskey, and of course, the Pendleton Round-up. Over the week we looked at ads on Zillow and Redfin, clicking the heart icon on houses that both appealed to us and were within our budget range. In Central Oregon, these had been few and far between, but in Pendleton we had the opposite problem – there were at least a dozen suitable houses within our budget range.
House Hunting in Pendleton
Hoping to make the most of our first trip to Pendleton, we scheduled several viewings and left Portland early.
Though now a familiar sight, our first glimpse of Pendleton, a small city in a Valley, cradled to the East and South by Oregon’s Blue Mountain range, felt auspicious after the drive through the scrubby high deserts of Gilliam and Morrow. We found the presence of a large solar array on Pendleton’s western edge equally auspicious.
We got to our first address, a lovely two story house on Pendleton’s South Hill, where we met the realtor. Over the course of the next three hours we toured the four houses we’d selected, confirming that from a home-buying perspective, Pendleton offered more and higher quality space for the price than anything we’d seen previously.
Each of the four houses – two on the south hill, and two on the North Hill – had pros and cons, and while all were possibilities, none sparked enough joy to get us to make an immediate bid.
But a smart realtor knows to save the best for last. “There’s another house for sale on the North Hill that I’d think you two will really like. It’s over your budget, but if you’d like we can go have a look.”
And it was here, on the North Hill of Pendleton, that we were led to what would become the house of our dreams.
But we’re already at the thousand word mark, so that story will have to wait for the exciting conclusion of Our Long & Winding Road to Pendleton.
Next up: The trilogy concludes.
