Don’t lose your temper during the negotiations that must precede the terms of sale.  You may lose the place that just suits you.

Don’t expect to buy property with wooden money.  That custom went out shortly after 1929.

If you can subscribe to these points, you are one of those who really want a country home and will eventually find one.  Those who only think they do will stumble over some detail and then settle back with a plaintive, “We would love to move to the country if we could only find a place like yours.”  Castles in the air have everything, for imagination builds them; but those planted four square upon the earth always have certain “outs,” even though you buy a perfect building site and put the house you have dreamed of thereon.

Personally, we have always wanted a little gray house mellowed by the summers and winters of at least a century.  What we bought was a small story-and-a-half farm cottage with outer walls of weathered shingles, painted red.  It is old.  During the Revolution, a British soldier was slain in the very doorway as he came out with loot from the upper rooms.  It would undoubtedly be a haunted house in England but here our eyes are holden and we have never seen him, nor have any of our guests.

We still admire gray stone houses of which there are plenty down in the Pennsylvania Dutch country but we are honestly suited with what we have.  Its general outline is akin to the house we envisioned and the mellow tone of its red-shingled exterior has a charm of its own.  True, the grounds are lacking in those little irregularities that enable one to develop secluded spots and charming rock gardens.  No brook runs through them and there is no high point of land where one looks off to a brilliant summer sunset or hills blue with haze.  It is just a pleasing peaceful spot and we like it.

In short, have all the preconceived notions you want but keep an open mind as well as an open eye.  We know of two or three families that are absolutely satisfied with their country homes, yet are perfectly frank in admitting that they are in no way the type of house or setting indicated by their preliminary specifications.  They saw them in the course of their search and, despite the divergence, recognized that they met their demands.

One of our friends had steadfastly insisted that his country house must sit on a hilltop where he could have a view, see the sun rise and set, and be cooled by a fine breeze on the most torrid day.  He bought an entire farm just to get an upland pasture with the required hilltop.  Luckily he called in an architect and was mercifully prevented from getting what he wanted.  His house was finally built on a sightly but sheltered spot about halfway below the high point of his land.  He has since learned that during the winter months the prevailing westerly winds so sweep that hilltop that heating a house placed there would be expensive and difficult.  Also, these same winds would be apt to work havoc with his shrubbery and flower garden.