An Interesting Puzzle

I had to make a front doorknob decision sooner than I expected, and it highlighted a frequent conundrum. The top piece of advice that we received from area experts (our realtor and her husband) was "don't over-improve." It's a small house in a neighborhood of nice but small houses in an area with low real estate prices. We have a 12-18K (at the very highest) window for how much we can put into the house without losing money. Thankfully, that doesn't include the amount that the sellers allowed up front to fix structural/plumbing/electrical issues, but I'm still surprised at how hard it is to fit all of the necessary improvements into this budget (floors, paint, vanities, sinks, baseboard, replacement windows, etc). So we don't want to make it too nice, but we still want it to be quite nice because a) it will be our house, and, perhaps more importantly, b) we will be selling it within 5 years.

So, the doorknob. I was limited to what was in stock at the local Home Depot. This was was fifty bucks:

This (which I prefer) was a hundred bucks: 

Jonathan thought that the knob was the obvious choice (half the price! it's just a dumb doorknob!) I agreed, plus it seemed like a precedent-setting "don't over-improve" decision ....except that when I saw the doorknob for the first time today it looked a little sad. I just noticed that there is a $50 handle set online, although it's definitely cheaper quality than the good old nob (there's another connundrum...looks or quality?). I wonder if the carpenter left the receipt? Sigh. 

Closing the Door

On Tuesday the construction guys came over and replaced the termite-eaten seal plate around the front entryway. It involved jacking up the corner of the house so that they could put in new wood (the seal plate is the piece that goes in between the foundation and the rest of the house). It's nice to know that the house is sure footing now, but when the workmen tried to close the door on their way out, they found that the front door wouldn't close! When the house shifted back into the correct position, it changed the shape of the door frame. 

A new front door wasn't in our tier-1 priorities, but the carpenter said that as long as they were tearing out the door frame, they might as well put in the new door. We chose one that was in stock locally and they got it in today. We drove by this afternoon and we like the new door! The white house/white primed door is a little sad looking so we'll have to paint it asap. Scott is hoping for "dark red, like a strawberry." I think we might do young house love blue. I'm surprised, but I miss the wood door. I didn't even consider a wood but maybe I should have. I'm sure we can find a color that we will like, though. 

Child Labor

This week was spring break, which is when we planned to do most of the demolition work, but we didn't have a plan in mind for what to do with the kids while we worked. As we have established, the house was pretty gross when we bought it (I suggested that we have a picnic dinner over there to celebrate the closing and Jonathan gagged).  We have lots of kind friends who are willing to help out, but we didn't want to call in all our favors during the first week of a long project. Also, when I told my dad that we weren't planning to bring the kids to the worksite, he balked. Gotta teach the kids some useful skills! 

So on Monday morning the whole crew got dressed in our most expendable clothes and headed to the house with bikes, toys, and movies, hoping that everyone would be happy playing in the garage at least until we could get out the carpet and vacuum the sub floor. It worked!! Man, that carpet was FILTHY (the whole house was basically carpeted), and the padding had disintegrated into dust in places. 

  

Peter was excited to help, a la "Swiss Family Robinson" (Jonathan is reading it to the boys right now. It 's a little over-the-top, but the kids have been inspired to new levels of industry) 

Every time we brought the kids home after being at the new house, we put them straight into the shower. Jonathan worked alone at the house for the afternoon and after the kids' bedtime ripping out nail strips. We did manage to get to Home Depot for a few happy purchases (Stu said that he bought this and "never looked back". So far, we feel the same way).

Next day, linoleum. By this time the allure of the garage had worn off.

This little girl felt very out of sorts...something about spending two mornings in a row at a gross old house wearing her brothers' clothes and receiving no attention from us.

It took me, like, 15 minutes to pry up a square foot of this floor...

But apparently the right man can just fling it over his shoulder like it was nothing. Jonathan and the boys did the rest of the kitchen in an hour or two.

I'm sure this wasn't as unsupervised as it looks. 

You know what they say about all work and no play...

She's very good at picking up nails.

Our super nice realtor lent us their demolition trailer. 

We knew we were getting a great deal on the house; we didn't know it came with free worms!

Our standards have slipped a little. I mean, not THAT much, just enough to sit on a derelict deck and pass around a singe bottle of caramel cream soda.

THIS IS THE ONE!

We currently live in an adorable little house in the middle of student rentals. It was the ONLY viable option when we were looking for housing long-distance last summer, and we like it. It's also exactly one step up from our student townhouse...it has a tiny garage (not attached), a bit more space (950 sq feet) and no shared walls. Before we even moved in, though, we started looking for more permanent solutions. Housing here is SUPER reasonable, so it makes sense to buy. Our #1 consideration was ease of resale, and our target was 3 bedroom, 2 bath, attached garage, fenced or easily fence-ible yard, door from kitchen into back yard. With our lease out in June, we weren't in a rush, but over the course of a few months we saw 7-8 houses with our amazing realtor Margie.

One day this little house popped up at an incredibly low price (even for here)--1300 sq feet, 3 bed/2 bath, sort-of fenced yard. 

We walked into the little entryway...little entryway?! I have always wanted a little entryway (bold color! Fun pattern!) I took off my boots, but then I realized that my socks were going to get filthy and I put them right back on. BLECH! The house reeked of stale cigarette smoke and we tried not to touch any surfaces.

No subfloor, but more on that later...

Smoke and filth aside, we got a great vibe from the house. It has good flow (in contrast to other ranches we saw), and it filled all of our requirements to a T.  We knew we'd have to do all new carpet, a chemical clean of the surfaces for the smoke, and prime and paint the whole house. And maybe remodel the kitchen. No big deal!

Margie reported that a few people were coming by for a second visit of the house, so she advised against a low-ball offer. We made an offer, they countered, we accepted. As we were working out the contract, though, we hit a snag over "termite damage"--the sellers wanted us to pay for anything that was found by the termite inspector. Red flag? Margie thought so. Termites are common here, so if you don't stay up-do-date on inspection and treatment, you can get into trouble. The termite inspector came and found active termites. It wasn't his job to estimate damage, but he indicated that it was significant.

Sigh. Margie's heroic husband stopped by and went into the termite-infested crawl space to let us know whether it was even worth going forward with the house inspection. We (and he) expected him to find huge damage and tell us that we shouldn't touch the place with a 10-foot pole, but NO! It didn't look *too* bad! (although the subfloor was basically gone in the entryway)

That afternoon the inspector came by and found a bunch of other problems...water leaks, pipe issues, etc. We added up the repairs and asked the sellers for a significant price reduction. At that point we were completely ready to walk away. We liked the house, but not enough to lose money on it. They only came down a tiny bit, we made a final counter offer that still gave us what we think is a comfortable margin to make all of the repairs. They accepted! I jumped up and down pumping my arms. Jonathan looked a little green in the face (I should note here that these roles have reversed now that we have entered the demolition phase).  

OK. Back to the house tour. These were taken during the home inspection.

Looking out of the entrance hall.

Turning to the left (functioning wood-burning fireplace! S'mores! (after the kids are in bed)

Looking back from the fireplace towards the bedroom hall.

There's a big master bedroom with three windows and a bathroom with an interesting tub surround. In some kind of karmic coincidence, the bathroom has the exact mirror medicine cabinet/vertical florescent bulb fixture as we had in graduate housing, and it makes the exact same humming sound. Tearing it out will be symbolic of our progress in life.

Looking down the little hall. Laundry on left, bedrooms on right.

Our future room! The other wall is covered with a dark brown adhesive cork board.  

Looking down past the most incredible realtor ever into the kitchen/dining with the other bathroom on the right  

Bathroom!  Bathroom...carpet!   

Little kitchen!  Needs a little work, although who doesn't love a plaid soffit? I just learned that word a few months ago, and boy does it come in handy.