- I know. - So different
than the Cape, right?
- [Daryl] Nothing like Cape Cod.
- Well, it’d be great to have space for family
and friends to come visit, right?
- Oh, yeah.
- Get the boys down here,
your brother, my sister, my brother.
That would be great.
- You ready to go find it?
- Let’s go. - All right.
(upbeat country folk music continues)
(upbeat pop music)
- There are few places on Earth that radiate with the beauty
and charm you could find across Appalachia.
And the northwest corner of Georgia
at the base of the Blue Ridge Mountains
might just be the crown jewel of this region.
Here, there is so much to do.
You can go for a dip with friends at Blue Ridge Lake
or take a drive to the Aska Adventure Area
where you can work up an appetite,
hiking the world-famous Appalachian Trail.
And then you can dine on fresh trout
while you look out over the Toccoa River.
Or if you’d rather jump in the river, rent a canoe
and spend the day floating the Toccoa
for an up-close view of the stunning scenery.
Or see the countryside by horseback
on a two-hour guided ride through streams and hilltops.
As you might expect, this is a coveted place to live.
Homes are barely lasting a month
on the market before they sell.
And there are more buyers
than properties for sale right now.
So with that kinda competition,
Daryl and Kristina will have to stay sharp
if they hope to find their American dream home
in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
(upbeat pop music continues)
(upbeat country folk music)
- [Kristina] They keep going up.
- [Daryl] I know.
- Just when I don’t think we can go up any further,
we keep going up further.
Holy Moly.
I’m Kristina.
- I’m Daryl, and we’re looking for our dream home
in the North Georgia Mountains.
- We love the North Georgia Mountains
because it offers us these fantastic mountain views.
We’re looking for wide-open spaces,
something completely different
than what we’ve had the last 20 years of our lives.
We would love to have a big, open floor plan
with some great windows with a great view.
That would be ideal.
- Somewhere in the 1.5 million range
was where we wanted to top out.
Little barn up there on the left.
- [Kristina] This one right here?
- [Daryl] Yeah.
- Yeah. - Having done so much work
inside barns, I just, every time I see a barn,
I think of all the work that was put in.
The farms that I worked on when I was a kid
were steer farms, hog farms.
- I milked a cow once.
(Daryl laughs)
That’s the extent of my country history until now.
So this one is listed at 1.72 million.
It’s got five bedrooms and five bath,
an open floor plan, and it is on a two-acre lot.
- I think that’s it up on the left, isn’t it?
- [Kristina] Looks huge, doesn’t it?
- [Daryl] It does. That’s a big house.
Look at the stone.
Surrounded by woods, too.
(car doors shutting)
- Wow.
This is gorgeous.
Entryway, and the big open windows,
and the siding over there and everything,
and how it blends in with the beams and all that.
- [Daryl] The stone.
- Absolutely gorgeous. - Look at the stone.
Wow.
Wow, that’s gorgeous.
- [Kristina] You like the red, though?
It’s pretty. - I love the red.
- Oh, wow.
- Look at that view.
- [Kristina] Right?
- [Daryl] Oh.
- [Kristina] Oh, that’s gorgeous.
- [Daryl] Look at this great room.
- I mean, how many friends
and family could we have at this table?
We could have Jessie and Susan
and all those- - Almost everybody we know
could fit at that table. - (laughs) Right?
(Daryl laughs)
What does that say?
So we have a nice kitchen, right?
I don’t even know if I know what to do
with all this space, right? - I know, right?
- This is so...
Like in our other house, right,
how many times did I have everything out on the counters,
trying to find room
to cook and bake? - And we thought
we had a big kitchen.
- [Kristina] Right?
- Yeah.
So I first met Kristina in a business meeting.
First, I asked you out,
and you said, "No." (Kristina laughs)
- I did.
- Which was devastating.
But thank God, we-
- And you recovered.
- We patched that up.
- Right.
- And now we’re married-
- Almost 17 years. - For a little over 16 years.
Yeah, coming up on 17 years.
- We have two grown boys, men,
Michael, and Andrew is 24.
Oh, that’s dope.
- Six burners, right? - That’s awesome.
- [Daryl] Two ovens.
- And if we wanted to, we could get more stools here.
We could have the kids sit while they help us
with Thanksgiving dinner. - (chuckles) Right.
Can you imagine being in the kitchen
and just being able to look out at this view.
- This view spans almost 360 degrees.
I just never imagined it’d be something like that.
- Unbelievable. - No.
- You wanna go check out the deck?
- Yeah, let’s go do that.
Oh, wow.
- [Daryl] Look, stone fireplace. Look at the big mantle.
- That’s beautiful. - Wow.
It’s gotta be 20 feet high.
- Oh, that view?
- Yeah.
The big chunky handrail on the deck and the rebar,
that’s just such a cool touch.
I’ve never seen anything like that.
(upbeat pop music)
- You wanna head up here?
- [Daryl] Sure.
Look at the red around the windows.
- [Kristina] Yeah, that’s nice.
- [Daryl] It’s just so well done.
- So they had this set up as a bonus room.
- Yeah.
- So maybe we’ll just see what we could use it for.
In-law suite or something.
Oh, that’s cool. - Yeah,
maybe even office space. - Yeah.
Maybe, yeah. - It’s a nice space.
(upbeat pop music)
So we spent many, many years,
a couple decades each in the corporate world.
- To say that it became a grind
was probably an understatement.
- There was a lot of travel.
But throw the 60-mile commute on that one way,
and it definitely got to be quite a grind.
- So we thought, okay, well, you know what,
it’s time to change it up.
So we bought this lovely restaurant smack dab
in the middle of Cape Cod on Route 6A,
which is like one of the most scenic highways in America.
And it’s also an old antique home.
It was an old sea captain’s home built in 1849.
And it was just wonderful to become part of that
and to see the guests return
and see the families come in summer there every year.
And to really enjoy that was something I never experienced
in the corporate world.
So we pivoted once.
So we thought, okay, what can we do
that would be just completely different
than anything we’ve done before?
So we put the restaurant up for sale
and then started looking around for another chapter.
And that’s how we ended up looking
in the North Georgia Mountains.
Wow. So this is the master.
That’s gorgeous.
- [Daryl] Not to mention, it’s a huge bedroom.
- Right? - Look at the stone.
- Yeah. - I actually like
the master bath.
- [Kristina] It’s ridiculously huge,
right? - Yes.
- It’s like, it’s amazing.
One for you. One for me.
Really like this. - Will you fit in there?
- Let’s check.
- [Kristina] Wow.
- Wow.
First shower that’s ever been tall enough for me.
I’m 6’6", and sometimes it’s difficult
to find things that fit for me,
and the shower is absolutely perfect.
- [Kristina] You wanna go see downstairs?
- Absolutely.
Let’s go. - All right, let’s do it.
(upbeat music)
- [Daryl] Stone floors.
- [Kristina] Wow, that’s cool.
- [Daryl] I’ve never seen that.
That’s really nice.
- [Kristina] Right?
- [Daryl] Yeah.
- [Kristina] Oh, check that out.
I didn’t expect anything
like this down here. - I didn’t either.
The master suite downstairs is as nice as,
or nicer than the master suite upstairs.
- [Kristina] Right?
- I love that fire pit.
- Oh, that is really cool.
Hot tub.
Watching the sunset ’cause we’re facing west.
This is perfect.
- [Daryl] Outdoor kitchen.
- [Kristina] Isn’t that nice?
I mean, everything you can need, right?
So you have the grill. You have the flat-top burners.
- [Daryl] Let’s see what we got.
- Oh, yeah.
- [Daryl] They are burners. Wow.
- Perfect.
- I absolutely think this is right at the top
of one that could be a contender for our dream home.
There’s so many things that we love about this place,
but it’s expensive.
- [Kristina] Right?
- [Daryl] We were thinking up to a million and a half.
- Right.
So this is definitely a stretch.
- I’d like to see more acreage, quite honestly.
- Yeah. - And two acres is...
And it’s two acres on top of a mountain.
- Well, the two acres is definitely on the smaller side
of what we were looking for.
Two to five was our range.
We would prefer, if it were just going to be two acres,
we would prefer it to be not on top of a mountain
so that we have some flat land, the dogs can run,
we can go walk and hike easily.
- It has a lot of things that we like,
but there certainly are some drawbacks.
But we do have more options.
- We do.
And we’ll just have to kinda compare everything
and see which one we like best.
- [Daryl] Cool. Let’s go.
- Let’s go.
(lighthearted music)
So the next one is listed at 1,869,000.
- [Daryl] Mm-hmm.
- [Kristina] It’s got four acres, though.
- [Daryl] Oh, that’s good.
- So that might be kinda nice.
- Yeah. - And five garage spaces.
Three levels. Oh, it has a pool.
- Oh, cool. Yeah. (upbeat country rock music)
Did you see that gable coming in?
- Wow, I did.
That’s beautiful. - Wow, that’s very cool.
- What a nice looking place, huh,
with those cedar shingles and everything?
- [Daryl] It really is.
- [Kristina] Very nice.
(door creaks)
Oh, wow.
(upbeat country rock music continues)