Well, after years of pining over a blog and website, I've finally made time to get the ball rolling. I am a procrastinator at heart. Oh, I don't procrastinate on things that really interest me. To tell you the truth, I would rather be digging in the dirt, tilling the garden or painting and caulking some room of my house than blogging. That said, I have made a committment. A committment to regularly post photos of in progress projects and ones we finally complete (there will be fewer of those). I would describe my style as a fly by the seat of your pants kind of gal. So things can get really exciting (and messy) around here. (I am meticulously organized when necessary).
When we first bought this house, I affectionately described it as the rat hole. Probably because it was previously lived in by rats, feral animals and any other filthy creature (humans included), which left nasty, disgusting messes for someone else to clean. On the night we moved in, one of our neighbors' sons came to offer his mowing services, to which we agreed. (I mentioned this in a previous post). Let me remind you, this was a bank owned foreclosure. Only when absolutely necessary, and prior to a contract on the house, mow or maintain the property. We had this house under contract for about 8 weeks, maybe more, during a very rainy, warm time of Spring. The grass was up to my thighs in the area they had been mowing, which was only around the permimeter of the house. The pasture was worse! Back to the neighbor's son. While speaking with us, he proceeded to give us a bit of history on the previous owner, his tenants and their pets. Needless to say, this necessitated immediate removal of the carpet. This was a slight problem. We had intended to close on this house weeks earlier so that we could do a thorough cleaning and a few repairs prior to moving in furniture. Well, the house we were selling sold so fast and asked for such a quick close, this was impossible in light of the continual failure of the bank to complete the agreed upon repairs. We unloaded several U-Haul loads of furniture and cram packed the house. We had to sleep upstairs during this time, on matresses, on the ratty floor. (I don't recommend this for those with young children or the faint of heart.) Ah, the good ole' days...... The carpet was ripped out within a few days and a stick down, easy to install and cheap vinyl strip flooring was laid with the help of our two teenage boys. Whew! What a start. (Initially, we were thinking that renovating this house while we lived in it, would only take a year or so. Two-and-a-half years in, we are still at it. Lol.)
I will be posting some photos of the early days and including after pictures as well. You can follow our progress as we complete the rest of the house. We have champagne taste and a beer budget, so most of our projects are real world friendly. You won't find a $30k kitchen remodel on here. That's a third of the price we paid for the house. Hillarious. Both our cars didn't even cost that much.
Perhaps you might be inspired to give some of the projects we do a try. They will all be budget friendly, and most are for the novice. I like to refer to them as high creativity, moderate labor, low price. Sounds do-able, right?
We purchased our house May 29, 2013. That seems so long ago because much has happened since then. What a whirlwind of a year. We listed our house and it had three offers in 24 hours without even a person having viewed it. Then came the viewings and all their offers were raised, lol. The best offer came from a newlywed couple who wanted to close in just under a month. We were not even half packed and had decided upon a bank owned fixer upper in the country. For those of you who have never purchased an REO (Real Estate Owned) property, closings take a while and rarely do they maintain or repair the property in order to sell it. BUT, God blessed us. They agreed to do a few repairs. The catch was, therepairs had to be completed to bank satisfaction before closing. Well, it was moving along very slowly. We had hoped to move all our junk into this house AFTER doing a few quick repairs on our own. There was not enough time. Fortunately, there was a bit of a hold up on from the buyers who were purchasing our home moving their closing date out another week or two. But then, ours was slowing again too. Finally, we moved all our junk into the foreclosure, cleaned the house top to bottom and patched and touched up nail holes, closing within just a couple of days. It was a wild ride, but glad we did it. For those folks with a weak consistitution and those who pefer order to chaos, I do not recommend this type of real estate deal. If you have young children, FORGET IT! We are at a place in life where teenagers can be a huge asset and they are relatively content with living in a messy environment.
The day we closed, we dropped off one load at the house and changed the locks. While there, the neighbor's son came to offer his mowing services. Remember I told you REO properties are not really maintained? Well, this house has two acres, most of it never mowed while it was for sale. They would only mow around the immediate perimeter of the house. After it went under contract, they never even did that again. The grass around the house was nearly waist high prairie grass and the pasture was worse. Needless to say, his services were welcome. While he was there talking with us, we found out the house had been rented out many times. We learned some of the stories of the people and the animals who lived here (and maybe died here)! The carpet HAD-TO-GO. Immediately. We planned on doing it shortly after settling, but that was no longer an option. I immediately informed everyone that the new protocol was to where shoes in the house at all times except while bathing. This was the opposite of what I had been trying to teach them their whole life. We had finally made progress. What was I doing? Panic about the carpet...
We a house jam packed full of everything and now needed carpet - immediately. Since we were living upstairs on mattresses, this meant we couldn't just move everything up there in order to do the floor. We had to do tiny areas, move the furniture, lay the floor. Tiny areas, move the furniture...
Because of it's affordability and easy installment, we choose vinyl plank flooring. It was a life saver, seriously. My sanity was easily restored from the stress of the renovation we were now embarking upon before unpacking. BUT, there was another complication.
After I started scrubbing and mopping the tile in the kitchen, I noticed the cleaning solution of bleach would just absorb into the grout. Yuck. But this was more than a yuck issue. It had a bit of an odor too. I had noticed some rat droppings, yes RAT, and mouse size too. This meant their urine would sink into the grout. Oh heaven help..... I called Kevin and told him about the issue, he was working during all of this, or trying to. That poor man. He insisted that he would come home that night and remove the tile because that was the only way to fix the problem and it would allow us to move into the kitchen with the flooring. Perfect timing??? Yeah right. So, he did come home and start the work. He found that the odor was because of mildew and roll down laminate that were UNDER, yes I said UNDER, the ceramic tile! The previous owner decided it was easier to just go over the laminate with the mortar and then apply the ceramic tiles. So, all the water soaking through the grout made a very nasty mess we had to correct. The problem just grew, again. Thankfully, after removing the ceramic tile and the nasty, ratty. mildewy vinyl tile, he and the boys were able to lay the new flooring in the dining and kitchen areas. In fact, much of the flooring was laid by the boys while dad was at work. They were great helpers and did several areas on their own. We were then able to move furniture to the kitchen so we could do the living area and so on.
Here are some pictures of the before and after. Glad this is behind us.
