Oh wow….it really happened. We are now the proud owners of the stupid house. Except we can’t call it the stupid house anymore, because really it’s a nice nice house and it’s just been the victim of neglect and abuse and it just wants to be loved again. And we finally have it back in our family to love. Almost….papers are to be signed Friday, or early next week. Oh geez.
Remember, if it’s meant to be, it’ll happen….and everything happens for a reason. Please please please let’s hope and pray that this is a GOOD thing and that we aren’t falling into something over our heads!
Taking over an “abandoned” home is a little more challenging than taking over the house your best friend moved out of two days prior. With this house being neglected for so long, there’s quite a bit more work to be done. Landscaping, for one. There has been only extremely minimal maintenance done which means weeds galore, no edges to the lawn, there’s new trees and shrubs sprouting everywhere. Ugh. Wrong time of year for yardwork! Or is it?
(Long term plan- there’s a huge tree in the front yard that needs to come down- and massive re-landscaping of the front yard)
But before we can dive into anything at the house….we need to get the utilities and water back on and hope and pray there are no broken pipes or damage. I guess that means one of us will get to go under the house, while the other makes a mad dash for the water main if there IS a problem!
The next step will be replacing the toilet wax rings. We were told that in order for a wax ring to be effective, the toilet needs to be flushed occasionally. No flushing for 15 months likely means the wax ring is no longer any good and the toilet will be prone to leaking (if not right away, give it a month or two) and we just don’t want to have to add water damage due to leaking toilets to our list of to-do’s.
Beyond that, the immediate needs are pulling carpet and prepping walls for painting- this includes tearing off the already peeling wallpaper upstairs, and peeling off all the stickers and posters that are glued to the bonus room walls.
We do plan to carpet that room as well.
The enclosed loft room- well, the wallpaper is peeling up so we’re going to try to pull it all off…
Painting- painting- painting. We are hoping to leave the living room and dining room the same color they already are (matching the color), but the bedrooms and kitchen and family room and all of the upstairs rooms need new paint colors- we’ll probably do the same colors we did at the 5745 house (or maybe a shade lighter or grayer since this house has so much brown/tan tile).
We will likely have to call Baltazar to get bids on retexturing some of the walls (damage in Master Bedroom, texturing over the kids’ room where the stickers and posters were PAINTED OVER, and retexturing the walls in the loft area).
The kitchen? The cabinets need help- moving the knob placement, fresh coat of paint. Need to purchase a fridge and consider replacing the range/oven.
Kitchen counters- they are tile- likely staying tile for this round. I think this repair should be easy enough:
Stair railing- A LOT OF STAIR RAILING….that project is open-ended and we won’t know what is going on with that until we dive in.
#1. We want to replace the carpet- it is NASTY.
#2. In order to remove the carpet, half the spindles need to come out because they were installed after the carpet was installed (retrofitting to today’s 4″ spacing requirement).
#3. In order to make re-carpeting a much easier task- we may take down ALL of the spindles and set a wood cap/edge so that for future recarpeting there’s no need to wrap each post or remove spindles. Just thinking ahead…..
No matter what we decide, there’s just A LOT of them!
Maybe if we’re lucky, beneath the carpet the stairs are a nice enough wood that we can finish them and NOT have to ever recarpet them again and just put the spindles back!
Time will tell….
Here’s my motto for the next six weeks:
Elisa's Ramblings 