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Adventures in Housing

“We have to do whatever it takes to get this house”

Maria Hollenhorst Apr 11, 2022
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Matt Davison, Shay's husband, works on the wooden house they eventually purchased in 2019. Courtesy Shay Davison
Adventures in Housing

“We have to do whatever it takes to get this house”

Maria Hollenhorst Apr 11, 2022
Heard on:
Matt Davison, Shay's husband, works on the wooden house they eventually purchased in 2019. Courtesy Shay Davison
HTML EMBED:
COPY

Shay Davison grew up in Patriot, Ohio, an unincorporated township near the state’s northern border, where a log house captured her imagination.

“It’s rustic, and yet there’s an elegance to it,” she said.

The big log house was down the road from her father’s farm. “And it was always so intriguing for me as a kid,” she said. “I would just press my face up against my car window in the back and just think ‘I’ve got to be in that house.’”

Davison finally got that chance a few years ago when the house went up for sale. When she learned that the current owners (who had inherited the property and were not living in it) only wanted $80,000, Davison said she immediately turned to her husband, Matt, and said, “We have to do whatever it takes to get this house.”

During an inspection, the Davisons realized there was a catch with the seemingly affordable home.

“And that was the astronomical amount of work that needed to be done to make it livable,” she said. 

Click the audio player above to hear what happened when Davison and her family took a bet on a fixer-upper. Tell us your housing story using the form below, and you may be featured on a future edition of “Adventures in Housing.”

Shay Davison, with her three oldest children (Evie, Aiden, and Jude) in front of their renovated home in Patriot, Ohio. (Courtesy, Davison)
Shay Davison with her three oldest children, Evie, Aiden and Jude, in front of their renovated home in Patriot, Ohio. (Courtesy Davison)

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