Okay so here’s the skinny…buying a house isn’t exactly all it’s cracked up to be. It’s really nothing like “House Hunters” or “Property Virgins” on TLC. It’s a lot of hard work! The past few months have been very stressful. We started out looking for an apartment and one week later, we were house hunting. {Stay tuned for our next post about the entire home buying process so far}.
We went house hunting every weekend in the month of June and we saw some seriously awful places. I mean awful. We were so thrilled when we finally found the house we eventually put an offer on. It’s a small, 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom ranch, but it has a full finished basement with potential for a 3rd bedroom (there’s a sink down there too. Bar? I think so)! Aside from being terribly outdated, it’s actually a pretty decent little place.
It’s an estate sale, so the downside to that is, the sellers are doing a lot of guesswork. The age of the roof, heating system, hot water heater and siding were advertised as being just 3 years old. However, after the home inspection, we found out the roof is actually about 8 – 9 years old. The age of the house (seller claims the home was built in 1953) was also incorrect. Because of the older style of wood and plumbing used in the home, our home inspector was able to determine that the house was most likely much older than the sellers were suggesting. Regardless, the new heating system, hot water heater, vinyl siding, replacement windows, storm doors and relatively new appliances were all HUGE selling points for us. As I said before, the other properties we saw were awful, so these were all welcome surprises! Also, did we mention that the back yard is totally awesome? The fences on either side of the house are covered with bushes, vines and trees, making it a very private setting. NONE of the other houses we looked at had proper back yards.
Here are some pictures of the house as it is right now. The sellers did some whacky staging (ie: creepy family photo in the front bedroom, sad clown painting in the master and weird, inappropriate lovers statuette on the dresser). It made it a little harder to see the potential in this house, but we’re hoping once we get some paint on the walls and get our own stuff in there, we will warm right up to it. Pardon the poor quality of the photos – these are from the original listing:
We will be posting more, higher-quality pictures once we get in the house. Then, the work will begin and before and after photos will follow! First things first…we’ll be applying fresh paint, removing those slightly tacky awnings on the front windows and for our first big project; painting the kitchen cabinets and adding new, modern plexiglass cabinet windows to replace the current, dirty brown-yellow, plastic ones. We’ve also got big plans for the basement with fresh paint and new drop ceiling tiles. As of right now, we’re aiming for a mid-August closing, so let’s just hope that it’s all downhill from here (and that we actually get to start putting our wannabe DIY skills to the test).
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