So this is our home...

I feel like I needed a real writing spell to write this post, because there are so many things to write about!

After we closed on the house, there were several dire issues with it, and some general cleaning and renovating.  So let's start with the dire issues:

Our Bathroom
When we came to see the house the bathroom was pretty nasty. It smelled like someone has been missing the toilet while peeing for years.  The walls were faded green and the bathtub has been covered with one of those covers that should make it look new, but somehow, some water got in between the two layers and kept making squishy noises.

During an inspection, it was discovered that a serious leak under the bathroom caused the floor to rot, and that needed to be completely replaced. We decided that we needed the whole bathroom gutted out and have everything new in there. My dad ripped off the floor and the rotten wall around the shower, installed new floor, bathtub, new tile with a heated membrane for the floor, new cabinet and mirror cabinet.  Here's the before and after:

Before

 

After (later we added a very delicate blue color to the walls)

 

Roof

I mean, it was probably even more important than the bathroom, and so much more expensive! After all, you can scrub the nasty bathroom, but you can't live with a huge leak from your roof.  Remember the leak I diverted with my fabulous fix?

 

 

 

This photo I saved from the realtor's website. It's a very old photo because the plants in front of the house are still small.  But, this is the color the roof was before.

 

 

And this is our after:

 

 





 

And the rest of the renovations included:

 

Kitchen

Floor and backsplash tile change:

 



 

 

Floors

We had all floors sanded and stained in a little darker, Chestnut color (this included tearing off the nasty black tile they had installed on top of the wooden floor in the dining area.

 

 Thank goodness they installed the nasty tile on top of a plywood that they nailed to the original floor.

 

This one is our bedroom after the renovation. I love the way the color of the floor came out.

 

All Rooms and Walls

Some of the walls needed to be fully pulled off, and some just got the skim coat to make them look smoother. 

 

Our chocolate wall :)

We changed the entry door as well as all of the windows in the house. I love the huge pane window we put in next to the fireplace. It will make a perfect book reading space for me, or my dad:

On the ceiling we installed recessed lights with level control. They make it very romantic if you keep them super low :)

Guest room - that whole wall had to come off because the previous owners glued the wooden panel onto the plaster wall, which made it come off in pieces when we pulled off the nasty panel.

Joe was fast to install his office and an AC in the window in the smaller room.  He will have to move out very soon because this will be our little man's room very soon :)

Now, I love this one! Previously, at the end of this wall, there was a triangular closet that was super impractical and small. And on the ceiling there was a huge nasty old fan.  We removed the closet and installed a normal attic access ladder. This makes our hallway look so much better :)

 

 

I love how everything came out in our home. There are a ton more things we need to do, but all of upstairs is super nice now :)







The Changes in 2013

In my last post, I said that we have to organize ourselves because there are changes taking place in our life this year, that will require us to be better at being adult.  Well, the changes are.....

WE ARE PREGNANT :)

The line of happiness :)

 

This is the first pregnancy test I took on Labor Day, September 3 2012. It was 6am, and I had been taking my basal body temperatures every day at this time to chart my cycle.  We had decided we wanted to start trying in June, but nothing happened in the first cycle, so I decided to get to know my body better. That Labor Day, my temperatures were still high, it was 9 days after my ovulation, and the moment I saw that delicate line, I knew it happened. Should have seen the smile on my face.

I must have the most self-control ever because after I found out, I went back to bed and tried to sleep a little more. It was a day off, and I needed to give Joe a little more time before I woke him up. I wanted it to be special and he is so cranky when you wake him up on the morning. Around 8am, I couldn't wait anymore, went to the kitchen and made us coffee, pancakes and woke Joe.  He noticed I made enough coffee for the two cups only - no extra refils for me.

We sat at the table to have breakfast, and I was thinking about the perfect way to say it, and it went something like this:

Me: I am glad you finished that bottle of wine last night. And I made less coffee on purpose. It looks like I won't be able to enjoy either in excess for a while.

Joe: What are you talking about?

Me: I took a test this morning.

Joe: And? Stop with the pressure!

Me: Well, I thought I was clear... it was positive!!

Joe: Is it mine?

Now, if you knew my hubby, you would know that this was something he was hoping to say in this situation. He doesn't take cheesy moments well :) I gave him a little well deserved punch.

The little test was not good enough for Joe, and we drove to get the big guns at the pharmacy: Early response and Clear Blue.  Here's what they said:

Yep, very pregnant :)

For two weeks after, I kept peeing on the stick to make sure that the line kept getting darker and darker. I called my doctor the next day to set up an appointment, but since it was not till October 15, I wanted to assure myself that everything kept moving in the right direction. And those tests definitely helped :)

Same morning, I took a picture of my belly.  I wanted to document all the changes taking place in body. I really hope I can get back to the same look after this pregnancy.

131.6lb, 26.5 inches in waist.

New Year change

Wow, it's been over half a year since my last post!!!

I really wanted to start updating the blog last month, but with the procrastinator genes in me, I couldn't motivate myself to use all the free time I had during the holidays to do this. 

New Year came and I decided not to make any resolutions because I believe making resolutions gives you an easy way out - resolutions are rarely kept.  Instead, I looked at our life, and what we like in it, and what we struggle with, and I decided we just need a change. There are a lot of changes going to happen in our lives this year and without changing the way we do certain things, we will be very unhappy. The one major change that we need to make is: get organized. We have a few projects at home to complete. Our mail is always all over the place. We got a dishwasher, but the dishes still lay around the sink until we are missing all spoons or plates. Our dining table has become a drop off spot for anything that enters our home - mail, groceries, other shopping, tools. Obviously, we need to change things before they get out of hand.

These changes include me wanting to keep up with my blog. So what I decided to do is every Thursday, while Joe is out playing darts with the boys, I will update my blog. I want to have a post on catch ups, because there are many, and then one on current events. We will see how it works.

First pictures of our home

A lot has happened since our closing day. Let me start with the not so happy, and then I will jump into pictures :)

Our inspection came back with a leaky roof.  To be honest, we did not need an inspection to know that the roof was bad.  The sellers did not want to change the roof before selling, and they agreed to the concession so that we could save the closing costs and have the money to fix the roof.  We were OK with it because even with a bad roof, the house is a great deal.  What we did not expect was a puddle of water in our living room the next day after closing.

Tuesday, after the closing, we got some really bad rain, and when Joe went to check on the house, he found a little waterfall going down the window and all the way to the floor.  I am not sure how the sellers were dealing with this because it's been raining every day in NY for a month. They must have laid down some rugs and hoped for the closing day to finally come.

Anyways, when I got back home, we went to Home Depot, got some rugs and some Henry (the roof cement).  Joe got on the ladder and patched the outside, while I cleaned up the leak, and tore away some of the soaked sheetrock from the ceiling.  The patching did not help at all - the hole must have been higher up and leaking underneath the shingles.  That's when I had a moment of brilliance: when you can't stop the water, you have to divert it :)

In the basement, the sellers left behind some plastic covers for the ceiling lights they had there. I remembered that they were pretty soft.  I removed the pieces of sheetrock and rotten beam so that nothing was in the way of the plastic cover piece.  I then pushed it all the way into the attic and angled it so that the water would go down the plastic and into the soffit.  Yes, that messes up the soffit, but a least the water could leak out, and was not destroying our wooden floors. Then, Joe helped me staple it to the ceiling so that it would stay in place. Pretty good solution:

Today, we had a few roofers come in and give us the estimates of what it would cost to have our roof done. We got three estimates, and are waiting for one more.  I hope it's not going to be more than $10K.

Anyways, not to something nicer :) Pictures of the house!!

So far, I only took the pictures of the top floor and I will get to the basement in the next post.  Upstairs we have about 1,100 sq ft and that includes three bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen, a dining nook and a living room with a fireplace. Check them out:

The Kitchen

It's pretty small, but we can expand it by moving one wall... one day :)

Somehow we already made a mess there :)

On the other side of the above, the kitchen looks like this:

We are ripping off those tacky pretend-doors and we can one day move these cabinets to expand the kitchen.

The Bathroom:

It's currently light green color, but you can tell they have not done anything with it in the last 15 years.  The tub has a weird cover that makes it feel spongy and I am pretty sure they have been using this curtain since the day they moved.

See that window? Joe and I don't like the windows in the shower, so we will be replacing it with those awesome glass cube tiles that will be perfectly sealed, and will look pretty, while giving us some privacy.

Yes, all of this is going to the dump! I am thinking brilliant white sink and dark brown cabinet and mirror frame.

The Bedrooms:

This one will be Joe's office until we have the first kid.

This is a larger one and will become our guest room until we have more kids :)

This is one corner of our bedroom. It's larger than what we have now and the windows make it perfectly bright but cozy.

This is one closet in our bedroom - a little smaller than what I have now, but we will have more space in the new house so I don't care.

Bet no one will guess what this is... keep trying... entrance to the attic!!!

Here I have to take a little break to make a comment... WHAT THE HECK???? The sellers used to keep their luggage there, and when it was needed to make a trip to the attic, they would use a step ladder.  I mean, yes, it's a giant hole in the wall... and you can hide it behind a picture or a mirror?

When we went to the attic, we found an unopened huge carpet. My guess is: they put it up there last time they fixed the roof some 30 years ago, and never figured out how to take it back and out this hole.

The Living room



We are pulling these wood panels, but I will want to paint the wall same shade of brown.  The lights will be gone too, and in the spot where you can see the shelves, we will have a door from the garage.  Our garage is weirdly long, and Joe is giving me some of that space for a nice mudroom :)

I love our brick fireplace. I am thinking of cutting the right side of the bricks to match the left in size, and changing the top to a brighter color wood.  I need to clean the sod too! I heard Coca Cola was awesome for it :)

The space between the living room and the kitchen makes a little dining nook. I hope to be able to take this part wall down, and the fake plants go too. They were covered with 30 year dust.

My favorite part of our home - the wall of windows and our deck.  In the winter we will have an amazing sunset views. Right now there are too many trees covering the view, but I don't mind that, it's beautiful anyways.

The Deck

I love our deck. It's made of the wood composite, so it's goint to last long. It needs some TLC, and it will become my favorite place in the house during the summer... in the winter that will be the spot in front of the fireplace.

More deck

Because there are no trees between us and the neighbors, I will put up a nice screen with hanging flower potts along this railing to give us some privacy.

I did not take any good pictures of the front of our house, or the back, so I will post those later.

We are so excited about our home :) it needs a few little upgrades and we will make it a home very soon!  Our property is a quarter acre, which gives me plenty of land to garden on, and plenty of space for Joe to have little projects around :)



WE ARE HOMEOWNERS!!!!!

Today was just awesome!!! I felt like the day of the wedding, but with zero pressure of not saying the wrong thing at the ceremony, or making any weird faces while some family photos were taken :)

I woke up at 7:30am from a dream about the deck we would love to build in our backyard.  I took shower, made coffee, fed our animals, and made breakfast. Finally, I couldn't take the wait anymore and woke up my hubby. It was 45 minutes to our final walk through and I seriously was on pins and needles.

A little background - my hubby has purchased properties before, and this was nothing new to hin, but this was my first home to own, and for me, it was all really special and amazing :)

Our walk-though at 9:30am went well. We found one thing that the inspector did not find - mold on the wall inside the closet behind the basement bathroom. We mentioned it at the closing, but neither one of us cared about anything because we will be ripping that bathroom out anyways. So, when the owners said they are not going to do anything about it, we just thought: Karma, and moved forward :)

The closing took two hours and I signed some 500 pages of papers... I am not joking - I signed a bunch of them when I noticed that my first name (foreign name) was misspelled on one of the pages of the documents.  So, they all needed to be printed again, and I needed to sign them again. 

Aftrer the closing, we ate dinner and went to our new home, and took Ozzy with us.  Ozzy LOVEs our new home, and that's mostly because the sellers did not really clean that well so there were plenty of crumbs to lick off the floors (ewwwww).

We made a quick trip to Home Depot to get new locks, and while Joe was changing them, we met three of our new neighbors.  The older gentleman across the street who played with his station wagon the whole day wearing his t-shirt and boxer shorts - Ed.  The fifty-yo looking lady to our right with the cuttest puffy dog who did not bite Ozzy's face off, Sue.  The father-to-be, and an owner of a caged-outside-cat, and four dogs, Kevin.  All neighbors are super nice, and I think we will be really happy in there, with the exception of Ozzy who likes to show off like there's a new sheriff in town, but is totally outnumbered there. 

So, in short - we definitely got ourselves a fixer upper, but, we love the house projects and our neighborhood is awesome. I love it so much already, I can't wait for us to live there full time, and meet more of our neighbors :)

Ps: I will keep posting pictures and updates as we go. I am so happy, Joe is so happy, Ozzy is so happy... only the cats are screwed :) hahahah

We are under contract!!!

So, it's been months since my last post because after that bad inspection, we could not find anything good in our area and even considered renting till we are better off financially. I changed jobs in September, and I wanted to give it a little more time as well.

In February, we noticed that one of the first homes we saw in the same neighborhood where the other house was went back on the market, and at a $30K reduction in price. We immediately called our agent and told her we wanted it. Long story short, we were lucky. The owners were really motivated to sell, to the point where they fixed a bathroom leak, got a termite inspection and treatment and... the biggest one... replaced their rotten septic tank!!! They also agreed to a sellers concession, which will help us financially at closing.

There are fice major things that we will want to fix/upgrade right away:

1. The roof - it is not leaking, but has had six layers of shingles laid already and my dad's friend is a roofing contractor so we will get a good price. The owners would not do anything about the roof, and we actually got about $5k less on the price of the house.

2. Walls and floors - some of the rooms have wood panels and some of the hard wood floors need to be refinished, so that's our little project to do ourselves.

3. Electrical panel - they have an old panel that's like 25 years old, and our friend who is an electrician will do it for us at a good price.

4. Bathroom - their tiles are nasty and bathtub is pretty bad too. My dad will help us put in a new bathtub and new tile.

5. Garage - we need to put in a door from the garage to the living room and install a new garage door that opens with a remote. We get a lot of rains in NY and I am not going to run in rain to open the garage door to drive in, and then around to get in through the front door.

So, hopefully in a few weeks we will close on this house and roll up our sleeves to start making it ours :) We're going to be homeowners!!!!!

Inspection disappointment

On Thursday, we had two inspections - septic tank and general. Septic could not be completed because some idiot put a black top over the septic tank. I am at a loss for words over this one, so this is where I will leave it. It's the general inspection that shattered our dreams of owning this house.

Everything that could be wrong, is wrong with this house:

1. Mold - there is so much mold there the inspector said he was surprised there was no warning sign on the door. You could not see any of it, but he showed us where it was and oh man was it black and nasty.  All of the lower level rooms would have to have walls pulled down 4' from the floor up - all of them.  And that's not even it. The roof was never ventilated correctly, so there is mold everywhere there too.

2. Bugs - there are termites and carpenter ants everywhere. The inspector told us we should ask for a permit to pull down the part of the siding to see the damage to the structure - he expects it would be severly damaged, based on the anount of ants.  Worst is - since the house is running on well water, and the well is only 5 feet away from the house, we would not be able to use the conventional methods to get rid of the bugs. Hubby is laughing we would just have to wish them away.

3. Roof - the shingles are so old they need replacement - The inspector said the shingles themselves could wait, but considering the amount of mold in the roof, he said it would be cheaper to just replace the whole roof and get rid of two problems at once.

4. Illegal and dangerous deck - the inspector is a construction engineer and he said that everything you can imagine is wrong with the deck they have built there. 

Other than the above, none of the floors are real wood - they got us fulled with the well maintained imitiation, and there are mice everywhere. Also, the heating is dangerous - the fire is all yellow so the inspector believes there is some leak somewhere.

The estimated cost of the renovations would be around $150,000 and there is no way the investment company would sell us this house for 50% of what we initially offered, so it's a NO on this one for us.

Off to more searches... hope they are more fruitful :)

Inspection scheduled

On Thursday at 4pm we are having an inspection.  Since our house is a foreclosure and is sold as is, we will not be able to use anything we find out at the inspection to bargain for a lower price, but it will help us find out if there are any deal breakers.

The poor inspector will be surprised when he sees 4 people come to his inspection, but our family is just that - everyone gets involved - my hubby and I and my dad and mom will be there. My dad's a contractor, so that's why he is coming. I am curious, and it's an occasion to get into the house again.

I really hope the inspection will not turn up with something messy. The house uses well water and a septic tank, so we definitely need to have the pumps inspected. I also want him to check for mold and radon. I read that radon comes up naturally from the ground in many areas in the US, but in some places the amount is larger and some smaller. I hope there is just no radon in our basement and that's it.

Hubby and I agreed that if the inspection comes back with issues that will cost no more than $10,000 to fix, we will still get the house.  That excludes foundation or septic tank issues - those cannot really be estimated till a considerable amount of digging has been done.

First Post - First "real" Step

Today, August 25, 2011, we received a word from our Realtor that our offer was accepted by the seller. I decided to start a blog to keep up with this process, share ideas, happiness, frustrations, etc.
My hubby and I love remodeling projects and are not scared of hard work on a house, so we are really looking forward to all the renovations that our new house will require. 

A little bit about the house.  It's a foreclosure, and the last owner left it with a pretty bad kitchen and bathrooms.  I will post pictures as soon as we have a contract in.  Till then, I don't want to jinx it. 

We are planning to have an inspection next week - crossing fingers that it goes well, because I really love this house already. I know I should treat it as an investment, a business transaction, but I just can't stop imagining it all cleaned up and prettied up.