This blog is being created in an effort for us to remember everything we do on our house and encourage fellow do-it-yourselfers. We have just purchased our first house which happens to be a foreclosure. It has good bones, but it needs heavy cosmetic work. We are undertaking a facelift in each of the 12 rooms. Four bedrooms, three bathrooms, eat-in kitchen, two living rooms, laundry room, and crawl space. We're excited! I should have started this a month ago, but alas, here I am now. Better late than never. We've already done a lot of work on the house so I'll start over with the day we bought it and retrace our steps. Hope you enjoy!!
Nate is the calm and steady one. The best word I can come up with to describe Nate is steadfast. He is not easily shaken. He can handle this. He loves physical work and doesn't mind spending every day at the house to work on it. I am easily stressed, quicker to make decisions, a planner, and a big picture person who sometimes overlooks details. Hopefully we can make this work!!
2/3/10. Cashier's check, brand new pens, IDs, directions, list of places we've lived for the last 10 years (which was quite a few): check. Did we forget anything? We stretch out our wrists; we hear this is a long process that usually induces temporary carpal tunnel syndrome. We walk inside and meet our realtor Ross and mortgage lender Greg. We're pretty stoked and a little nervous. During the walkthrough, we noticed that there were several notices on the house about bills not being paid. We're hoping the title company's search will turn all of this up and get them paid. We discuss this with the title agent and she writes up the agreement to have the sellers pay the bills. Sweet. We sign a ton of papers and are only there for about an hour. Not bad. At the end, they didn't even have the keys to the house. Our big moment was when Ross gave us the lock box code. I was really hoping the title company would be used to first time homebuyers who are expecting confetti, a cake, a song--something to celebrate such a milestone in our lives. Nope, I guess that is up to us. So, we went to Red Lobster, compliments of Nate's parents (Christmas present). Then we went to our new house!! We looked around and took it all in. It's really hard to think of this as home because it needs so much work. We went through every room and measured so we knew the square footage for new tile, carpet, and wood or laminate. At this point, we are hoping to get all of the rooms painted, lay laminate in both living rooms, redo the bathrooms, and do major cleaning all before we move in at the end of March. I think we can do it. Good thing we have handy parents.
Nate's version of the story so far:Comparing this house to the others we had already seen, this one was by far the least involved as far as renovations were concerned. "Heavy cosmetic work" I would translate as needed a thorough cleaning, stem to stern. If we weren't as clean and tidy as we are, we could have bought some appliances and moved in - but we wanted it done right from the day we walked through the door to actually start living there. Why renovate right before you move out? We want the house to be care-free for years, so we're going front-heavy on the reno. My highest priority at this point was - the driveway. It hadn't been cleared in months, so there was 6" of ice with ~12" of snow on top. I'm still working on clearing the driveway, but the last week of 40* days has definitely helped me out. I found grass on the left side, but there's still another lane to go on the right.
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