In March, on a trip back from Shreveport, our Bailey (as she does for sport) was searching recent listings on Realtor.com. She knows me—and knows me well—because when 800 North Sixth Street popped up, she knew it was for us. She sent me the link with a message: “Maybe this means y’all don’t get to leave us! 🤞”
Moving even 45 minutes away from the Gregorys (and I haven’t even told you about Amelia yet) was the hardest part about this decision. Let me just drop something here…
Though not biologically ours, we consider Amelia our first grandchild, and we are forever grateful for her parents and grandparents for sharing her with us. All that to say, the thought of not having Sunday-after-church lunches, Camp Winnie on days school was out, or even just being their place to go during power outages or another Snowpocalypse put a heaviness on this decision.
Our kids are in the phase of life where they want independence and don’t want Mom and Dad in their business all the time, so this move felt like a way to give them the season of “grownupiness” they needed—but moving away from our other “kids” was another story altogether. I think God knew we didn’t need all that!
I quickly combed over the photos in the listing, and of course, the first big “yes” was the location. The Nuggett Hill subdivision is located right next to the largest hospital in Longview—the place we had both of our babies and visited for various reasons over the last 50 years. Each time, we dreamed of those homes on the hill and imagined the people who lived in them.
As a kid, I didn’t know it was called Nuggett Hill. I referred to it as the “rich doctor neighborhood.”
The second “yes” was to that same grand yet cozy Tudor silhouette I fell in love with during our search in Tyler.
I immediately sent the listing to our longtime Longview realtor, Martha Weant, to see what she knew about it. Thirty minutes later, we were doing a walk-through.
I don’t know why, but my first reaction reminds me of this scene…
I LOVED her. She needed so much work, and I’d seen enough of these historic homes to know that what I could see with my eyes probably didn’t even touch the surface of just how much work—but I loved her anyway.
My favorite things:
• The sunroom—I like to refer to it as the conservatory because Clue is my favorite game, but technically it’s a sunroom.
• The koi pond right outside the sunroom with lily pads and little goldfish.
• The limestone detail on the front porch and fireplace mantle—so dreamy.
• All the original details, from the custom kitchen cabinet doors and solid wood doors throughout to the brass hardware on all the doors.
• The original light fixtures in most rooms.
• The WINDOWS. The stunning, crank-out, steel-framed, and stained glass windows.
• The cottage out back—perfect for our Airbnb dreams.
(You can see some of these details at the bottom of our home page.)
She checked all the boxes. Although her focus was on selling our current home, even Martha was excited about the potential this home held for our future. Having represented us in many home transactions over the last 20 years, she was invested in our little plan—even though, up to this point, it meant moving away from Longview.
However, we were still working with Brad, and he’d put so much work into this hunt so far that we kept him in the loop on our interest and the potential of remaining in Longview. We can’t explain how blessed we were to have both of them during this journey.
Cody wasn’t able to go on the first look, so we quickly scheduled another showing before we left for a work trip to Spain. He agreed that it was a big job, but one well worth it. However, with no great luck selling our house yet and contingent offers not working in our favor, we decided to wait to make a move until we got back. The house had only been on the market for a few days, so we were hopeful we could put an offer in when we returned.
I was standing in this approximate location at the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya when we got the call that—for me—blew up our first day in Spain. The Tudor in Nuggett Hill went under contract.
There I was in Barcelona, one of the most beautiful places I’d ever seen, in a “glass case of emotion.” Sounds dramatic, but that’s how I felt.
Cody, cool as a cucumber, carried on trusting that surely there aren’t other crazy kids out there willing to take on this project. Not me. I loved Barcelona and hope to go back one day, but I pouted the entire trip. I kept thinking there was no way we would find another home we loved this much in Longview. And I was exhausted at the thought of once again flipping my Pinterest board. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned that I am a very serious pinner!
Luckily, that travesty did not have to take place and my Nuggett Hill House board is thriving. Two days after we returned from our trip, the first contract was pulled.
Some might ask if that was scary to us—that someone went through an inspection and decided to run so quickly. Nah. We knew what we had, and the work didn’t scare us one bit.
However, there was still the issue of a contingent offer. Our house also didn’t have a contract. With an unbelievable price drop, and considering how we felt when we thought we’d lost her, we didn’t want to risk it.
We headed to a meeting with our bank to see what our best options were. And this is where God just shows out. We received a text from Martha that we had an offer coming in on our home while sitting in the bank office discussing the Tudor on Sixth.
I won’t bore you with the details that carried on throughout that month to make all this work—as we dealt with the closing of each home one week apart (in reverse order to avoid a possible probate issue), planned around a work trip to Florida, all while boxing up and organizing our entire house to go to three different places.
But we did it!
And we didn’t have to move hours away to find our dream historic home. Thanks to Bailey’s obsessive Realtor.com searches—and her reluctance to let us move too far—our future is now just across town!
The next step: finding a contractor crazy enough to take on this adventure with us.