Weekend Home Inspiration
What inspired us to even consider a weekend home? Several factors, actually. For this post, let me share with you what inspired us the most.
Tuscan Hills
Hills and mountains play an inextricable part of our story.
My husband, Luca, comes from Florence, Italy. More specifically, he was born and raised in the countryside of the rolling hills of Tuscany. His hometown lies just outside of Florence, only a 20-minute car ride away. His parents originally hailed from a little picturesque mountain town at the foot of the Italian Alps in the Lombardy region.
Memories of our time together in those Tuscan hills and Lombardy mountains remain forever imprinted in my heart.
Our long-distance relationship withstood many months apart with snail mail as our main form of communication. After four years of communicating this way, we got married. But first, we had to decide where to live.
I credit many inspiring people for nudging me. Otherwise, my big move from a city in Southern California to the other side of the world might have never happened. They all encouraged me to venture outside of myself, my comforts, and my sheltered life to begin the one I was meant to live with my soulmate.
We got married in Luca’s hometown in Tuscany where we decided to start our little family.
Our neighbors from Florence and their weekend home
Since Luca resided in the countryside, we made our first home there. Luca’s dad renovated their home into two apartments. My in-laws lived on the first floor and we lived above them.
I cherished the views from our windows. From one window I could see the small church where we were married. Another revealed rolling hills with vineyards, olive trees, and a castle.
I met the city dwellers who escaped regularly to the simple life at their weekend home. I considered myself lucky that where they lived on the weekends was where I lived all the time.
Not uncommonly, middle class Tuscan Families owned two homes. Often, the primary home is in the city where the parents work and the children go to school. And the weekend home is somewhere in the outskirts of the city like the countryside. For example, the Chianti region or the hills by the Arno River are full of them.
Depending on preference, some may have their vacation home by the sea or a little farther away in the mountains. Regardless, having a second home did not seem like an impossibility. In other words, it wasn’t reserved only for the super rich.
It was a way of life I came to know and love. Our weekend neighbors acclimated themselves naturally to their weekend setting and lived as we lived. My dreaming began. And my city neighbors inspired me.
If one day we ever owned our own second home, we would live as the locals live.
The Relocation to Southern California
When we relocated our growing little family to Southern California, it was a return home for me but a new adventure for Luca. It was his turn to make a life-altering move.
Both of us brought back from Italy the desire to one day have a weekend home to build memories, share with others, and eventually pass down to our children.
First, though, we had to take care of priority #1–finding our first home where we could settle and grow our family. We found it in a city in Southern California where we established our roots. And got comfortable.
Our story began decades ago in those romantic Italian hills and mountains. But the chapter of this part of our story begins like this.
A Class B RV Weekend Home?
Several years ago, I found my husband intently scrolling through images of Class B RVs. It looked like he was seriously pondering a purchase, or at least pitching the grandiose idea to me. But he never bothered to bring it up.
At that time, our budget would have never allowed it. Promptly, I discarded the vision of a new rig in our driveway. Wise man, my husband is. But I was curious and he knew I was curious.
The next day I asked him what his intentions were comparing RV prices and characteristics. He laughed knowingly, ready with his answer.
We live in earthquake country and every so often, Luca would express his desire to have a second home on wheels. This was the first iteration of our weekend home dream. The RV would be for camping usage (although we only camped but once a year). Conveniently, it would also serve as a backup home in the event our primary home would become unusable, for example, in the aftermath of an earthquake.
Clearly, we are avid dreamers and planners. Occasionally, we’re even follow-throughers.
This type of whimsical dreaming feeds my adventurous soul and cautious spirit. I eat it up until my curiosity on the subject is saturated and I’m ready to move on to the next big dream.
I love to imagine. It’s fun. Better yet, it’s free. Imagining provides a temporary distraction from reality but is not reality. And our bank account remains intact.
Move on, we did.
The Evolution of Our Weekend Home Dreams
Family, life, work filled our attention and time. They always do. Every once in a while, we’d dream again. And the familiar loop looked like this:
The RV (it begins all the time with the RV).
A family olive orchard for olive oil production (too lofty).
A small condo on the beach because anything bigger is too costly (less lofty but still out of reach).
An apartment in a college town nearby for pure investment purposes (more realistic but nah—this held our attention the least).
And back to the RV (because why not).
The Mindset Shift that Opened a Window of Opportunity
A Lakefront Weekend Home?
Growing up on the east coast, I have vivid childhood memories of moments at the lake with family friends. I longed to be the family that could steal away to the lake house to enjoy the water, nature and the rickety mystique of the house itself.
I carried that longing into adulthood and once in a while, I would peruse real estate sites to view the offerings of lakefront property. All the properties that captured my attention were far from our primary home and I knew Luca wouldn’t go for it.
A condition for getting a second home was that it had to be less than a two-hour drive from our primary home for usability and convenience. In order to get a return on our investment, we or our family and friends had to use it frequently. All valid points. But I tried anyway.
I showed Luca a cabin with its own little private lake and explained all its merits and reasons we had to have it. I might have conveniently left out the part that it was in Northern California. Unimpressed, guess what his first question was? “Where is it?”
And that was the end of that. Or so I thought.
Considerations of Buying a Weekend Home
As he had done numerous times before, Luca listed again all the reasons why, for our family, a vacation property that far from our home was never going to work:
- the cost of travel
- the time we didn’t have just to get there
- the management company fees because we can’t be there in less than two hours,
- etc. etc.
I knew them all. Plus, a vacation property too far away would never be used as a weekend home. I knew that, too.
There was still one place I didn’t look, the only place I avoided—our local Southern California mountain range.
A San Bernardino Mountain Weekend Home?
Maybe my experiences in the lush Italian hillside and mountains ruined it for me. Until that point, I had held some strong assumptions (too touristy) about our local mountain area that prevented me from seriously considering it.
But it did meet the “less than two hours away” rule.
That began my journey down the mountain cabin rabbit hole. Image after image, I admitted the area was prettier than I remembered. I was fascinated. Along the way, my husband joined me.
For the first time in all our dreaming years did stars begin to align. The opportunities became a lot more real because:
- There were cabins and cottages within our budget
- The properties were less than two hours away
- The location was desirable enough for us and family/friends to want to visit
- There was potential for investment—equity and short-term rental if we desired, in the future
Deciding as a Family
As we always do, we talk and talk and talk some more about our life choices. We talk in the car, during our quiet time alone, during family time with the kids, and most often over our sit-down dinners we traditionally have every night.
Gathering Around the Table with Good Food and Company to Make Big Decisions
Food is a big deal in our family—good Italian inspired food with a little bit of Filipino fusion. With food, we gather and dialogue and laugh and sometimes make hard decisions. The whole family participates in the decision-making process.
After 20 years of dreaming, the kids grew up and began to develop their own opinions. They often joined us in our conversations about a weekend home.
One kid didn’t like the idea of a small condo by the crowded beach. Another didn’t see the attraction of the desert valley. And the other just seemed indifferent. I guess we had dreamed for so long without any concrete action.
On an early summer evening over home-made pizza, Luca and I gauged their reactions by casually mentioning the mountains. Surprisingly, they each showed genuine interest for various reasons.
As we ate and talked, a buzz of optimism filled the air. A cabin in the mountains became very appealing.
The kids’ excitement spurred us on because this was the first idea we pitched that they all agreed on.
Our goal to frequently use the place would only work if the kids bought into the idea. The two oldest are now in college and the third is in high school. And all of them are fairly independent with their free time.
The Realization
Our Weekends Are Packed and Now We’re Adding a Weekend Home?
Projects around the house, the vegetable garden maintenance and other goals waited each weekend to be accomplished. Weekend home searching had to wait until we could dedicate some quality time to it. As the months passed, we realized the time wasn’t going to find us. We had to find it.
This huge reality check smacked us upside the head. And I’m glad we didn’t ignore it. If we were going to add this project to our list, we would have to figure out how to manage ourselves within the limited time we have.
Work, family, church activities, home and garden projects—how were we going to fit in taking care of another property and learn about mountain living?
That question is still something we grapple with today. But surprisingly, we are making it work. It takes some planning, organizing, will, and flexibility. But most of all, learning to let go of perfectionism.
Can we do it? Yes. We’ve got this.
The Search
The first step that we knew would “lock us in” was to contact a realtor. Because once you do, you’re sort of scooped up into the “home-buying” ecosystem that seems to have its own language and set of rules.
We called. And our search officially began.
In the mountain range we were exploring, there are two lake towns popular to local tourists. These towns attract people for their ski and hiking seasons. Other smaller towns pepper the mountain, and that’s where we focused.
What We Didn’t Want in Our Weekend Home
At first, we didn’t know what we wanted until we experienced what we didn’t want. These are some of the things we immediately realized we didn’t want:
- Bad cellular service
- Long steep driveways
- Streets that are not plowed during snow season
- Cabins in the forest that get no sun
- Complete isolation
- Cabins in disrepair
- Limited road egress
- Areas that were too touristy—pedestrian congestion, car traffic
- Sloped property
The only “rule” we ended up breaking was the sloped property rule. We realized for all that we wanted, it was a trade off.
Weekend Home Must-Haves
So what were the things that we wanted in a house and location?
- At least three bedrooms
- Good cellular service
- Flat driveway
- Garage
- Good lighting from direct sun exposure
- Easy street access and car maneuverability
- Ample street parking (a commodity in the mountains!)
- Plowed street during snow season
- Private but not isolated
- View of the lake, the mountains, and sunset
- And the biggest non-negotiable—within budget
Admittedly, this list resembles more a long shot wish list than a Must-Haves list. Sure enough, these criteria began to limit our search considerably. So we focused on one area in a mountain town that met most of these qualities. The challenge was to find a cabin for sale at the right price.
The Find
With the pandemic, house searching was a little more complicated. However, it also opened up the possibility of virtual house tours for sellers that allowed it. Most of them did. Our cottage was one of them.
We were just getting over the disappointment of another cabin that fell through.
A Cabin or Cottage Weekend Home?
I decided to look one tier above the price range we were focused on and found a possible weekend home.
I wouldn’t classify it as a cabin. When I think of a cabin, I think of the many houses we did see, more rustic in look and feel. By the pictures, it didn’t have the look and feel.
It wasn’t a chalet either. Articles on the topic consider a chalet as bigger, more luxurious, and pricier. This house fell somewhere in between. And it came furnished. Hmm. A furnished house. Do I like that idea? Not really sure I did. But I kinda really liked it and didn’t want to get attached to it.
In Italy, when you move, you take everything, even your kitchen! Surely Luca would NOT go for it as the idea might have been too foreign for him. Until I showed him the posting.
Instantly he tilted his head, raised both eyebrows and said with interest, “hmm.” That’s code for, “this one is interesting.” And sure enough, after about three seconds he announced, “this one is interesting.” So I made a call to our realtor.
That evening, our realtor did a virtual tour of the house. Using her phone, she took 10-20 second videos of each corner of the house—exterior and interior.
Finally, Our Cottage
Perfect did not describe the property. But it was charming and much better than some of the places we had seen.
As I mentioned before, it sits on a down slope. But we accepted that trade-off to have a view of the lake several streets below. After several reviews of each video and several more rounds when the kids joined, we made an offer. That night.
We did finally see the interior for the first time during the home inspection, but not until several weeks later. The sellers had already committed to short-term renters and we respected it.
But before then, we did make several trips up to the property. We went to take pictures and more videos of the area, the property and the exterior of the house. At this point, I was pretty convinced this was a cottage—not a cabin or chalet.
Later, we named it Acorns Cottage, a truly fitting name for what we discovered when we began to occupy it.
