So those of you that are living close to us know the CRAZY adventure it has been obtaining this house. The short story goes something like this: Glen is a real estate junkie and as a family we spent a lot of time driving around looking at potential "new homes". I had fun touring around looking, but never saw anything worth relocating for....until this home!
The house itself is no great prize, built in 1987 and full of all the glory that decade entailed! It was built on a 1.65 acre lot however that remains partly undeveloped. We hope to have a large garden, fruit orchard, chickens, flowers, trees and a large field of grass with soccer goals.
We found this home in May of 2008 in Short Sale status and "won" the opportunity to buy it with the highest bid. Thirty days later our contract expired and we lost it due to our lack of confidence in the banking institution we were dealing with. We were sad to loose the house but felt right about the decisions we had made.
Several months later our realtor called us back and informed us the house was available again, so we made another verbal offer, lower of course, just to see what would happen. Weeks later we got a call saying we could write up an official offer in that amount. We did, it proceeded as normal, we signed the final closing papers, were handed the keys and ate the Key Lime pie our realtor brought us in celebration. The next morning we received a call saying our closing wouldn't go through because of a concern the lender had with a roofing issue. WHAT!
At this point the house was to go to Auction and with the Thanksgiving holidays everyone was in lock down. Well we decided to get yet another mortgage lender involved and proceed, taking more money off our offer. This time we signed everything, collected our celebratory pie (Banana Cream) put I refused to eat it until I got word the records had been filed with the county.....and they did!
This beauty of a renovation project became all ours December 10th, 2008! (A full seven months after we first saw it.)
As you've looked through the pictures, taken in June 2008, you'll see things that need work and we will keep you undated here. The front is landscaped, the back is not. The house is painted in muddy colors and accented with brass at every turn, but it has potential! Currently it has four bedrooms upstairs, including the master, three baths, formal living and dining rooms, and great big kitchen, family room, office, huge laundry room, bonus room above the three car garage, and an unfinished basement.
The highlight of the tour is the Master bathroom! Peach everything! Yes, even a peach bidet.
Well now that I've officially broken the news on the house I hope to be more timely with our renovation blogs.
We have almost completed the demolition of the master bedroom/sitting room and two upstairs bathrooms, sorry the bidet is gone. We have hired a great guy to be our general contractor on this and we are doing anything we can ourselves. On Saturdays, or during the week when we can, we take the kids over to the house, fill up our trailer with debris and run it to the dump. Since the heaters were on the list of things to be replaced the work is rather cold. We have counteracted this by serving warm hot chocolate in the kitchen when we're done. It's a fun memory we are making and that is what this move is all about!
Stay tuned...
