Why Lynchburg

Welcome to my Blog. I’m writing this to describe the joys and frustrations of restoring a historic home which we have now turned into a bed and breakfast. The first question I am often asked is why Lynchburg? Are you from here? Do you have family here? Did you go to school here? The answers to the last three questions are no, so why Lynchburg?

I obtained my real estate license in 1972 and have always enjoyed buildings and architecture, especially the character of older homes. From the late 1980’s I have always wanted to live in and restore an old home so our quest began. Everytime we traveled outside the Northern Virginia area we visited the older parts of cities and towns looking for the right house. We found beautiful homes, in cities that were declining or great properties out in the country, next to the land fill trailer park or worse so we continued to keep looking. Our quest for the right property took us as far north as Michigan south to Georgia. Finally one day while searching the net looking for homes 100+ years old we saw an interesting property in Lynchburg. We made arrangements to drive down and look at it, and while it had possibilities, it wasn’t quite right. That home was originally built for a family by the name of Watts who was in the hardware business in the late 1800’s While looking at this property we noticed that the City of Lynchburg was being revitalized so we decided that while that house wasn’t the right one, Lynchburg was on our list of possible places to relocate. A year went by and we kept searching for the right property until one day another Internet search located another old home in Lynchburg. We called a local Realtor and made arrangements to look at the house and immediately knew this was it. Ironically, this home was also originally built for the Watts family who was in the hardware business in the late 1800’s. Evidently both of the Watts brothers along with a fellow by the name of Jones established a chain of hardware stores in the Lynchburg area after the Civil War.

We hadn’t made it upstairs while looking at the home when we knew that this was the place for us. We went back to the Realtor’s office and wrote the contract and became the proud owner’s of what would ultimately become our new home.

We are often asked, Why Lynchburg? The simplest answer we can give is this is where the house is. When we found “the” house it happened to be in Lynchburg, a small city that has the charm of “small town America.” It is a great place to live where the people are friendly, the City officials go out of their way to assist you and the quality of life is great. We were fortunate to find “the” house in a great place. That was in the spring of 2003. The home wasn’t in bad shape and I foolishly thought I could have most of the restoration completed by the following summer (2004). Little did I know what was in store for me…