The wife and I have officially started the search for our retirement home. I've lived in our current place since 1997, but the city has been constantly sprawling in our direction, annexing us into city limits about 15 years ago. Now I see them running utilities, water, hydrants, sewer along the highway up to our area. Ironically, I get high speed fiber installed tomorrow after recently installing Starlink to fix my internet woes. Rumors are that big developments are coming, and a new outer loop toll road will be breaking ground around 2028.
We've gone round and round on what and where we want to settle down. We were ready to purchase our friends 114 acre place in OK when it unexpectedly became available, but ultimately, we had issues with nearby solar farms and wrapping our heads about moving to OK. We've now decided we want to remain in N. TX and have scaled back on acreage to 20- 50 acres with a house and workshop. We're focusing on an area between Bowie and Muenster TX. It's a nice area with some rolling hills and vista's and often gets termed the "Hill Country of north TX, due to its Czech influence.
We looked at two places yesterday that were very close to one of our departed TBN brethren, Jimmy Inman's place in Sunset TX. One was a 2021 custom home built in the modern farmhouse style with some really nice features, including a dog washing station. I really liked all the attention that was made to the utilities, like buried electric line, buried propane tank, all downspouts piped away etc. The walk-in utility attic with the air handlers was impressive! It also had a nice outdoor kitchen and patio, although it faces west. We'll have to figure out something with shade tree's, shade sail to make it more enjoyable. You could tell there was attention to all the details though with tall, coffered ceilings, hand scraped wood floors, tile work, counter tops etc. Even the HVAC grills were fancy. I'm trying to figure out how a redneck like me with all my game animal mounts can make it work
The second place was a little older, but it had more acreage. It had some nice upgrades, but there were other things that still needed to get upgraded. The windows were all starting to lose their seals and need replaced, the bathrooms were outdated, and the recent kitchen remodel left something to be desired. We've scratched this one off our list.
So far, the modern farmhouse is our front runner. We're going to look at 2 more places this afternoon.
