Thanksgiving, then Right Back to Work

We had a great time visiting Carrie and Mike in Virginia for Thanksgiving. Thursday we all cooked together. The food all turned out so wonderful that we all had to go to bed pretty early considering it was a mini vacation. Friday, Carrie showed us where she works. She's an equine vet so we got to see lots of cool things vets use on and for horses! And Andrew got to be pulled from one room to the next as if he were a horse being taken into surgery.


After a little turkey chili, Andrew and Mike decided to test Angus and Roy's invisible fence collars, to make sure they are safe...

They experieced minor shocks and we all experienced lots of laughter.

Saturday, we arrived back in Memphis and thanks to Jess and Drew got home from the airport.
After checking on the cats and relaxing for a minute we decided to go check out our new house and begin a "minor" project. The floors turned out great so we headed to the kitchen.
We had discovered last weekend that the fridge (as pretty as it is) combined with the additon of the washer and dryer would leave little room for exiting the house through the back door (we'd be lucky to get 8 inches!). So after a little thought I asked Andrew if the smaller pantry could be widened a few inches so that fridge could slide into it and then later we could finish the walls around it. So we tried it.

It began like this:

And then we began to pull off the panelling, door frame, etc. Once we got to the old plaster and lath, we ripped that off too.



With some electrical help from our brother-in-law, Paul, it now looks like this:



Aaron came by and helped Andrew get the washer and dryer into the house and we can still get out the back door!! We'll have to finish off the wall around the fridge with drywall and Andrew is going to add a cabinet above it. Oh yeah, and we'll have to run the waterline through the crawl space so the it reaches the fridge in its new home! But all this will have to be put off until we get a couple other major projects done.

Today was also a big day because we spent the morning and afternoon moving! With the help of Joe, Jeremy, Warren, Kate, Polly, Amanda, and Corey we almost got everything out of the old house!. Now we'll set up the bed and sleep!

Continuing on the floors

Yesterday and today we continued polyurethaning [is that a word?] the floors. It takes about an hour and a half to do the whole house and we got super stoned off the awful polyurethane fumes, which was not actually as fun as it may sound. So the first coat looked something like this:






And Andrew got to wade in polyurethane again.



And the second coat looks even better...
After having dinner at Los Compadres with Joe, Amanda, Corey and Kate and their kids, Oliver and Polly, the gang came by to check out the floors before we started the third coat while Oliver slept in the car. It was great to have friends over to see our progress!

Then we began the third coat. We're hoping to get a fourth coat on tomorrow before we leave for Virginia to spend Thanksgiving with Andrew's sister, Carrie and her boyfriend Mike. Yay! A mini vacation will be great. We get to relax for a few days and the floors get to completely cure!

So Happy Thanksgiving to all. Enjoy spending time with your families!

And the work continues...

We woke up bright and early, well okay not so early. I headed to Starbucks for some caffeine and Andrew went straight to the house. By 10:00 the caffeine was starting to hit.
Andrew began the final run-through of the entire house with the finishing sandpaper and wonderfully powerful sander and then began the touch-ups with the palm sander while I swept the house by room, again. Around 1:00 Andrew and Jeremy were on their way to Home Depot to return the sander and to pick up polyurethane. Who chose to go with the oil based gloss because the oil based brings out the wood color a bit more and the color of the polyurethane richens over time. I headed to a baby shower for my little sister Bridget to celebrate the upcoming arrival of my first niece! Andrew continued sanding while I was gone. I arrived back at the house just in time for another sweeping session. Then the mopping began. Lots of mopping. We mopped all the floors several times to make sure we got all the grit up and the headed out for some fresh air and dinner. When we arrived back an hour later, the floors were dry and ready for the first coat of polyurethane. And so we mopped the floors with polyurethane...

And we mopped...















And mopped...















Until we backed our selves right out of the dining room door.




(Andrew really likes this picture of himself: "It looks like I was wading in it!")














Oh, but I almost forgot the treasure find of the day. While I was away, Andrew decided to open the odd grate in hall wall. It is a grate that appears to have at one time been the in-take vent for the old central heating system or perhaps the old furance. We're not sure which, but it is odd because it is under the attic stairs. So Andrew opened it because it looked like something was in there. And so he found:



Lots of bags filled with tuperware! Yay. All shapes, sizes, and colors. Now why these treasures were inside the old intake vent, we'll never know, but I sure can't wait to pull them all out and use those suckers!!!

Day 2 of Being Home Owners

Day 2 was long, but we got a lot done. We searched the house for hidden remnants of carpet and and found them in the hall closet and at the bottom of the attic stairs. Andrew ripped those suckers up.


With all the carpet removed, we were ready for the sander. While Jeremy and Andrew went to Home Depot to pick it up, Sarah and I hacked at the kitchen floor.



Then the sanding began. It lasted for many many hours, but we sanded all the floors of our 1489 square foot home!

















Sarah and I even got to man the sander. Which was very fun, so I highly suggest you try if ever given the opportunity.























But mostly, Jeremy and Andrew sanded while Sarah and I tried our best to get all the sawdust up by sweeping the floors thousands upon thousands of times. [The next time we re-do the floors (har har) we'll definately invest in a shop-vac.] We did get a pretty good upper body work-out. Honestly though, we spent most of our time standing in dusty rooms talking, which I'm sure was great for our lungs.
And even though the boys worked hard, don't worry, they did get some rap time in:



We also found a spot on the wall that
easily exposed the many layers of
wallpaper on our livingroom wall. Which I thought was pretty cool. It's generations exposed (at least until we rip it all down).


Even though we were all completely exhaused by the end of our 12+ hour day, it was a lot of fun and we got a lot done, yet again! So we went home and collapsed in bed. From what Andrew says, it took me about two and half minutes to fall deeply asleep!

Let the fun begin!

We signed an hour's worth of papers and paid a small fortune, but we got a set of keys!!
We immediately began work this afternoon.
FIrst we pulled out the carpets: living room, one bedroom, and breakfast room. I'm still not sure why you would carpet a breakfast room, but by the looks of that carpet- someone did it a long long time ago.
I've also discovered a very solid reason for never ever carpeting anything:
Absolutely disgusting. This is all the dirt and nastyness that gets stuck in the carpet of a bedroom over the years. Who wants to breath this!?! Not us. So we ripped up the carpet and the padding and promptly placed it on the curb. Oddly enough though, someone actually stopped and picked up all the padding. So beware future carpet buyers: you might be unknowingly getting used padding. Yuk!


So now our living room looks like this:

Yay. Happy hard wood floors!
We then moved on to the kitchen floor.


This, we were not expecting, but if you look closely you can see the hard wood begging to be released from the layers of linoleum. We're working on it.

So it was a very productive day. Maybe we're crazy, but we're looking forward to tomorrow!
But first we're off to Neil's so Andrew can play a little music and I can relax at the bar with the girls!

Thanks to Joe, Corey, and Jeremy for all your hard work today. We couldn't have gotten so much done without you guys!

Closer

So tomorrow's the big day! We close on our wonderful (yet needing lots of TLC) home. This is all very nerve racking. They say buying a house is one of the most stressful things you do. I now believe them. (They said that about gettting married too, but that was only stressful the week before so I was beginning to doubt "them.")
Earlier this week we had to make a quick insurance provider switch because our long time insurance company- State Farm- refused to cover new wonderful old midtown home. I have since heard of several other folks who left State Farm as a result of the refusal to cover their midtown homes (from my understanding it is the knob and tube wiring in the attics and basements that kills the State Farm coverage). But our wonderful mortgage guy, Mano, came to the rescue! He hooked me up with a brand new, wonderfully enthusiastic insurance agent and we even switched our cars! (this was mostly due to the better-than-State Farm-and-Progressive rates and of course the discounts!!! I love a good discount!)
So tomorrow's they day. We have been assured by our real estate agent, our mortage guy, and our closing attorney's assistant that everything is taken care of and all will go smooth tomorrow. Now, it's not that I'm negative or pessimistic, I'm just nervous. Maybe it's the waiting. So for now, we wait. Tonight I'll pack some more odds and ends (although I think Andrew might lose it soon if I pack anything else- I'm getting dangerously close to packing the few things left in the kitchen-he'll be too busy to cook anyway right?- and the small amount of clothes I haven't packed yet. But now my nerves are taking control and I can't sit still! I must pack or go crazy.

Yay!

They countered. We accepted! Yay!
On November 17, 2006, we close and take possession of our first house.
Now all we have to do is pack!

Secret dreams of owning an orchard

We really like this house in Vollintine Evergreen!
It's two/ three bedrooms, 1 bath, large living room, dining room, breakfast room, and of course a kitchen. It has a nice sized screened-in porch. And CENTRAL A/H!!! Yea!!! The thought of that is so comforting. No more weird dog hair burning smell at the beginning of the winter. No more freezing in any room but the dining room. No more being hot in any room that doesn't have an A/C window unit in the summer. So appealing.
It is a fixer-upper. I believe the woman who lived there before was very cute and sweet. She taped neat old recipes and such in all the kitchen cabinets and labeled all the shelves. She was however, elderly and didn't have the ability to maintain the interior of the house. It does appear that she did a good job of keeping up maintenance on the major things like the roof and the central A/H unit, etc. She even had the floor joists and foundation completely reinforced! We really like the lay-out and after many of the houses we've looked at, the work that needs to be done doesn't seem to be that scary. We'd have to rip up a good amount of carpet and free the lovely hardwood hidden beneath it and peel wallpaper off the walls before we repaint. But that's not as bad as tearing out walls, right!?!
The backyard is pretty big and is full of fruit trees! So if it all works out- we could make true homemade apple pie and fig preserves! The garage is full of great shelves and utility drawers- all of course already labeled for nails, screws and other fun gadgets Andrew has.
So Jeff asked the other real estate agent if we could get a home inspection (since it's being sold as-is). She said no problem. We sent the home inspection guy in as well as a termite inspector. The termite inspector did find evidence of termites in the original floor joists, but a termite treatment would need to have been done either way because it appears it had been a few years since it was last done. So, we weren't run off by that. The home inspector found some problems, most of them small (i.e. Andrew and/or I can take care of them with the help of Home Depot). After Andrew and Jeff forwarded the reports to our mortgage guy, he informed us that the only problem is the termite deal. So in order to close we would have to pay for the termite treatment. Not so bad. A littel scary to shell out $550 on a house you don't own, but in order to own it- we gotta do it. And we really like it. So we made an offer. Now we just waiting- the hardest part really. We'll know by 4:00 Monday and I'm sure that without our friends Mario and Rachel's wedding this weekend I'd die of impatience!

Maybe, Maybe not

We may have found our house. We both really love it. It has great curb appeal and is in a wonderful neighborhood, Cooper Young- good neighbors, good school district. Ohhh, so exciting. It's a 2 bedroom 1 bath. A wonderful backyard. Kitchen could look wonderful after Andrew's done implementing his ideas! And I can't wait to get in that yard and play!!
So we put an offer on it. And we wait.
But alas, our offer was neither countered nor rejected, simply put aside. The offer made a couple days before ours was countered. So, we've decided to continue looking.
Tomorrow we're checking out a 2 bedroom l bath. It's pretty big and in Vollintine Evergreen. The list price is just about right for us, but it is being sold "as is." We know what that might mean (several other houses we've looked at). However, we have hope that this one may not need quite as much work. It is being sold in order to settle an estate and it's been on the marker for a good amount of time, so we're looking forward to checking it out.

Oh wow, there really are lots of houses out there!

So then we check out a modest house on a good sized lot in a great neighborhood. Upon seeing it we understood a little better why it was priced so well. You see, it had originally been a duplex. All the work that was done to convert it into a single family home was great. We just didn't agree with a few of the floor plan choices. We would rather have a larger kitchen and dining room than a 100+ square foot master bath and a small second bedroom. But the back yard was large and had a lovely deck. The closet space was insane, but there was no attic access therefore no storage space for that junk you just can't throw away, but clearly don't need because you've just moved it from attic to attic for the last several years. So not the house for us.
As you can see, we are a bit picky, but love to dream about our first house that we haven't found yet. We do know what we want, sort of... An old home, one we can put something into. One that has enough room for two adults, two dogs, two cats and someday a kid or two. So the search continues...

More dreams

So off we went to the next house- a cute cottage style in a wonderful neighborhood. Oh, but the amount of work needed was a bit intimidating: tearing down walls, re-wiring, re-insulating, putting walls back up, refinishing floors, tiling the kitchen, painting everything, cleaning out that unbelievably full attic, basically replacing just about everything on the interior and sanding and repainting the exterior, the structure was solid. The front screened-in porch was so inviting. Our dogs would have loved that back yard. But alas, after a closer look we found out the the furnace was a "Death Trap" (according to our HVAC friend), which wasn't awful news (well, it wasn't good), but we planned on putting in central A/H anyways. The problem was that we needed to be able to wait until next year to do that because of the extrely high price of it (thanks to the passing of a new law that nearly doubled the cost of installing central A/H) and we couldn't have lived without heat over the winter. Well, we didn't want to live without it. We just couldn't afford to get the system and gut the house. So, disappointed and sad we turned away from the cute cottage dream and moved on to the next dream...
But we did learn something else about ourselves. We may not be completely sure about jumping into a total rehab project. At least not just on any old house.

Then we spent a day (yes an entire day) researching the up and coming neighborhood Glenview. It has been getting some very positive attention in the last year as an old neighborhood making a comeback. So we looked into it.
Old homes at great prices!! But what about the nieghborhood- that is after all important too. So we drove around and saw that although the residents have beautiful homes and are clearly working on helping those that haven't been kept up or fixed yet, it is pretty close to some folks we just aren't sure about. You see, we are planning on having kids one day and we figure we should keep this in mind in our first house. So, we just weren't ready to leap into a neighborhood where drugs are openly sold on several corners in a five by ten block area. We just aren't that gutsy, I guess.
The neighborhood is beautiful and the residents were all so friendly (even the drug dealers, actually) so we wish them all lots of luck because they are doing a wonderful job of revitalizing a fine neighborhood!

Beginnings

We began our search where all modern searchers of anything begin: the internet.
The interent real estate sites were a good place to start for us because it helps keep you from looking at houses you can not afford- you just tell the search engine what you can afford and tah-dah- it only tells you houses avaible in that price range. Wonderful, the modern luxuries we have, huh?
Then we narrowed down to specific houses we were interested in and gave Jeff (real estate agent/ uncle) a call. Off we went.
So the first few houses we looked at were fixer-uppers for sure.
There was the beautiful victorian: large rooms, high ceiling, enormous kitchen, separate laundry room and separate butler's pantry, two full baths, large back yard, wonderful front porch, and the best part- the original turn knob doorbell- just awesome! Sounds pretty good right? Well then you add: old smelly carpet covering all hard wood floors, gutted kitchen, some rotted wood-inside and out, scary old bathrooms, about-to-fall-down back structure (not sure what to call it- not a backhouse, not really a carport- but mostly because it wasn't attached to a driveway-- very odd). Ok so not awful- all fixable problems, but then you have to factor in the price you are paying, the money you'll have to spend just to get it livable, then the money you'll want to spend to make it look like the picture in your head! Then you think about how long all that will take and if you plan on staying there forever or if this is just a starter home/project. Then you ask your real estate agent about the neighborhood and the possible resale amount of the house after it looks like the picture in your head. If this amount is lower than the price of the house plus the money you'd spend to get it fixed up- DO NOT BUY! If not, you're golden. Unless it needs more initial-just-to-make-it-liveable work than you can afford, then DO NOT BUY! Because living in a house that needs works that you can't afford, doesn't seem fun to us!
So we hope that who ever bought the Victorian felt more risky than we did and will make her shine again.
On to the incredibly small house (not even room for a bathtub) in a very prestigous neighborhood. Nope, not for us. Too small for the money. And actually needed more work than we could have imagined for the price. So...
Next we saw a bungelow and upon finding out that it had cracked joists (it appeared to be an "opps" by a previous owner), we decided against it. Thus we realized we had more than just monetary criteria. We also want a house that is structurally sound! This is very important to both us and our mortage company!

Why?

We have started this blog in order to share our house hunting experiences with others.
About six months ago we decided to go ahead and jump (more like a slow motion hop) into the housing market. We were inspired by the realization that we are paying far to much in rent for a home that we can only change or improve minimally! So we called our real estate agent (who happens to be Candice's Uncle) and started looking. We looked at one house that was a beautiful home, but we could not afford it, and thankfully we did not fall in love with it. We are completely insane, er...ambitious, maybe even realistic, and would rather buy a house that needs a litttle work than one that has already been updated and perfected. After discussing the possibilities of buying the house, ie. if we had enough money, perfect jobs, money trees, etc., we decided to call the real estate agent (hereafter known as JEFF, sometimes in all caps and sometimes normal...depending on the mood, obviously). Anyway, as any good real estate Uncle might, he said....

It's important when looking to know how much money you can spent on a house. Knowing this can keep you from looking and falling in love with a house that is way above your limit. Think about what you want in a house, and then call this guy [a mortgage broker], and let him know that we are looking around.

Good advice! I can't stress that enough. DON'T TRY TO BUY A HOUSE WITHOUT KNOWING WHAT YOU WANT!!!!! That helped in our budget and marriage. A house that needs work is always less expensive than the one that has already had all the work done. So we know our monetary limit. So with that knowledge we began the search for our first home!