A Quandary

Yesterday morning Pam and I drove out to Lake St. George to see a cabin of interest. This has become a common occurrence over the past four or five years. We will find a cabin on Redfin that looks interesting, then make a visit only to be disappointed—real estate photography being the single most misleading form of communication in the modern world. Usually what disappoints us is the lake. No matter what might be wrong with the cabin, generally speaking cabins can be fixed. You can’t fix a lake. This place on Lake St.George was the exception. The lake was sensational, the view from the dock stunning. We were both mesmerized. As we scanned the horizon from the dock we saw not a single cabin. We did see several docks along the shore but no cabins, which gave the impression of privacy and solitude, never a bad thing. Although the lot leading down to the dock was still a mess and nowhere near finished, the potential for landscaping was everywhere, future magic bursting forth everywhere we looked. The following three pictures were taken from left to right as we stood on the end of the dock…

To make the shoreline even more magical, a few of Pam’s favorite leaning trees added to the ambiance…

But…and there is always a but. There’s a problem with the cabin that goes beyond basic bricks and mortar. We first saw this place on Redfin almost a year ago. The asking price was $750,000. A year later its $699,000, and the place still isn’t finished. This is that rarest of commodities in mid-coast Maine—new construction. But this place seems to be being built by some dude who is serving as his own architect and doing the work at night and on the weekends. Almost everything about the place is half done, a thousand projects nearly finished. In some places the workmanship seems superb, in other places puzzling. On our visit which was unannounced, every door to the place was unlocked and the inside strewn with tools and supplies of every kind. The floor plan is odd and disjointed, making you wonder, “where in the world would you actually live in this place?” Beautiful kitchen, lovely bedrooms, large and well designed bathrooms…but no living space that we could discern. But that lake….

So, at this point we are in a quandary. This cabin is a mere 37 minutes from Camden, 26 minutes from Belfast, on a lake with a fabulous reputation for beauty and cleanliness. The lake has that magical quality so lacking in most cabins. Its big enough for our needs, and although not the campy style of our imaginations, you turn Pam loose with a reasonable decorating budget and that would be remedied in a New York minute. In its present state of completion it is still overpriced, and the sketchiness of the builder is something that gives me pause, the length of time this place has been on the market is troublesome. So at this point our irreplaceable barracuda real estate queen, Tif Ford, is snooping around for the story on the builder and other background information on the cabin like a pissed off FBI agent. 

But, that lake!!