Moving Right Along...

Here's little Tan man just working away. He worked so hard that we now have the resulting pictures:

These were all taken November 8th, 2008. Nearly one month after closing these are all the changes we have accomplished - 

Here you can see that the front of the house has been painted. Instead of cream with brown trim it is now a tannish green with white trim. 

Also, notice the new roof - the shingles are no longer falling off or peeling up. It is kindof a grey color.We also had all of the windows replaced. It sure makes a big difference. Our whole house feels a million times cleaner.

Brody and Mylan worked really hard at raising the garage beam twelve inches so that we could have a taller new garage door. Here you can see that we installed an electric one. The home had always had a manual door.

Some areas of the house are looking much worse now that we have started digging in. Brody said raising the drop-boxed-light ceiling in the kitchen was the worse job yet. Trying to manage all the free-floating lint-like insulation that was above it was quite the trick. Here you can also see the new window and framing that went around the sink area.

Here is the view from the outside. Jason came and gave Brody some masonry lessons to accomplish this one. It was some pretty cold work for a while. 

This first picture is a before of all the vent-work that was down stairs in the yellow bedroom. Now that we have  a new furnace inside instead of outside, they had to remove a reverse a lot of the duct work. We get half the ceiling back in this room once we are able to finish up the sheetrock.

Like I said though, some of it is looking worse. But the project is showing potential :)

You can see here where there was water damage around the basement windows.

It sure is nice to have that huge boiler/ furnace "barnacle" off the side of the house now. There is a cement pad where the air conditioner is going to go once we cement over the hole in the foundation - you can see it where the yellow insulation is stuffed in to the right of the window.

My beautiful downstairs bathroom is going to be torn up for quite a while. With two upstairs, it is not much of a priority and there will be some 2x4s that will be replaced due to the water damage and the rancid mouse smell that we can't get out. The new furnace and water heater are already in place where the old laundry room was. Just on the other side of the bathroom wall. 

The home was run on propane with a tank in the back yard. We have arranged for natural gas to come and have a nice trench in our grass to show for it now. The furnace/ gas inspector should be coming and attaching everything on the 19th of November so we are excited about the potential of heating our house again. 

In the beginning...

Ta-da! Here is our house the day we closed October 13th, 2008. Yep, pretty scary. Built in 1978, the home has just over 3,000 sq. ft. and is on an acre and a half (3/4 grass and house, 1/4 pasture). It has reddish-brown brick with cream siding and brown trim. 

There are two family rooms, 5 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, a two car garage and a walk-out basement. We are on a dead end road with nice neighbors that have more property than we do on all sides so we are fairly spread out.

 

The home was originally built by a contractor named Whiting who lived there with his family until it was sold to the Anderson's in 1989.

 

Anderson's left the house as is, changing only a kitchen ceiling fan in 17 years.

 

In 2005 the Anderson's went on a mission and left the house to their son. His wife and 4 kids lived their for two years. They tried to renovate as much as they could while living there and moved out in late 2006. 

During the year and a half that it sat vacant, they tore the sheet rock out of the main upstairs bathroom,  all cabinets and appliances from the kitchen, stripped all the upstairs rooms of wallpaper (every room had at least one layer), painted, re-carpeted, removed a few door frames and installed wood/ laminate flooring through the 

entryway, family room,dining room and halls upstairs.

There were no appliances left in the home besides the boiler/ furnace on the side of the house, the cracked water heater and a pump for our well. 

The shower in the basement had a cracked seal and ruined 10 adjacent walls with water damage. 

The front and rear of the house is hugely lacking in rain gutters so the foundation windows had sever water damage and were found to have leaks. This caused us to rip out a lot of sheet rock in the basement. 

See here is the water damage of the basement and also the empty main floor bathroom.

Here is the land. 

We have three water shares, most of which access the Monastery water canals that run through the area. There is a small barn in the pasture that is housing years of accumulated antiques and junk furniture. The only fun thing I have found are 2 antique school desks I hope to refinish. 

The previous owners also used the pasture as a dump/ burn area so it will take quite a bit of clean-up itself. 

Due to the purchase clause "as-is" in the contract, we also became the proud new owners of all the vehicles you see in the pasture; a Ford Mustang, VW Beetle, Dump truck and tent trailer. Yippee us! 

Here I have a shot of the boiler/ furnace that was attached to outside of the home. This had large ductwork penetrating the foundation that allowed all sorts of varmints into the home. When we tore out the rotted basement walls we uncovered dozens of little mouse carcasses. It's pretty scary what lurks behind the walls of your home that you don't see from the surface :( At least we know now. ;)