Archive for the ‘The Money Pit’ Category

I hear a lot of stories from friends about their renovations, never once have I heard that it was a wonderful experience that went smoothly. I thought I had just been better organized, now I realize I had just been lucky. Our perfect farmhouse, on the perfect acreage, in the perfect location is nothing more than a bank account sucking hog. The simplest of tasks in this house such as hanging curtains throw me into swearing fits. The studs in this place are 110+ year old oak that have aged and hardened over the years, my 18v electric screw driver is not a match for their strength. They have caused screw heads to snap off, some it is nearly impossible to drill into so I’ve been forced to move things to different locations and have patched more holes than I care to remember.

Our most recent project that we undertook was ripping out the old stairs and putting new ones in. The old ones were original to the house and well past their use by date. This project was met by multiple issues with the house not being square and incompetent unreliable contractors. I was told the stairs would take one week; six weeks in they still weren’t completed. When I questioned the guys doing the stairs I was met with every excuse in the book my favorite was always “it was more work than we expected”. Of course it is more work when you show up, spend an hour setting up and fiddling around, then work for two hours, pack up and leave for the day. Then there were the “my car broke down and I can’t come in today” excuses. That was soon followed by a screaming/swearing match on my front lawn by the two guys doing the work that resulted in one leaving and taking half the tools. With the stairs being such a major job we had to send the kids to my parents, when that stretched out to six weeks and I couldn’t see the end in site I had more than I could take, I just wanted my kids home. The contractors were fired and new ones brought in to try and finish up the mess the others left behind. Here we sit nearly two months later and the stairs are still not complete but are a lot closer than they were, we are now just waiting on the risers and trim to be painted.

This house also comes with issues that arise when fixing other issues. When the stairs came out we could see outside. The frame to the door on our upstairs balcony was rotting out. There was about a 4″ gap between the door frame and the deck that was letting water, leaves, wasps and cold air come rolling through the house. On the bright side we were able to replace the door and in one month brought our heating bill down by over $100.

All whining aside, I do love this house and the transformation from an outdated tired little farmhouse to what it is today makes me extremely happy. I may be broke but at least I have a fabulous house to hang out in!

When we bought the house I knew I wanted to give the kids fabulous rooms that they could grow with and I wouldn’t have to redecorate for years. Ethan’s room was going to be the easiest to redecorate so I decided to start with his. His room wasn’t wallpapered and he has laminate flooring. I found his bedding at Target at all places and it started evolving from there. I was looking for camping theme bedrooms for ideas and came across the paint by number mural that looked like it was made to match the bedding I had purchased. I decided to give it a go, if I turned out to be a really bad painter I could just paint over it and I wasn’t out much money.

Normally I would point readers in the direction of where I bought the mural from but I can not give a 100% recommendation so they will not be mentioned by name. The mural I received had numerous issues. It had been reproduced poorly and was missing the top border and they edges of the trees on the left had side, there were elements missing such as the birds nest, part of a tree and text. The one that got me was the key that you are meant to be following doesn’t match up to the mural you trace. There are parts of it that are just odd, lines that go to nothing and items in the key that do not exist on the traceable. Me having to draw all the missing elements in frustrated me and caused the project to take a lot longer than what it should have. I am not an artist, that’s why I bought something I could trace and fill in.

In the end I am very happy with how the mural turned out. I can paint by numbers! It looks great with the bedding and I’m happy I persevered with it to get it completed. His room is my favorite in the house right now.

Now on to Georgie’s room…..stripping wallpaper and replacing carpet, fun!!

We are now referring to our house as the money pit and for good reason. There is a large amount of cosmetic work that needs to be done, that’s not really an issue. The issue is the problems we find with each project started. We are having a half bath put in off the kitchen in what was our second pantry. Our plumber (who is gorgeous and does great work) discovered that the sewage pipe from the kitchen to the septic was held together with duct tape. I know duct tape can fix anything but seriously, why would someone do that? The last thing you want to risk is a leak in the crawl space, that is just asking for a whole mess of issues including inviting termites to come and play. We have also discovered that the downstairs shower and toilet haven’t been ventilated so we keep getting a lovely sewage smell in the downstairs bathroom. Thank goodness we got a great deal on this place! This beautiful home on our lovely estate from here on out will be referred to as the money pit.

I thought it was time I come on and answer a few questions. Thank you to those of you that have gently prodded me and checked to make sure that we hadn’t fallen off the face of the earth.

I haven’t quit blogging, I’ve been on a pure exhaustion/mental health break. In May we took a trip to New York, a few days we left before the trip we made an offer on a house. We made the decision to move to the city where we’ve spent two years “temporarily”. The job opportunities here became too good to refuse and we decided to take the plunge and call it home. We looked at our house days before we left thinking it wouldn’t be what we were looking for but fell in love the moment we pulled up the driveway and knew we were making an offer within the first few minutes. Its a good thing we love this house if we knew the drama filled path buying it would bring we would have passed on it and kept some shreds of sanity.

The drama’s that surrounded the purchase of this home have all the making of a great soap opera and would have made for some great blog posts. I’ll save the saga for another post. I will say if you are self employed and are determined you can get a home loan. When Realtors say now is the time to buy they are right, what they fail to tell you is the banks don’t think now is the time to give loans. Especially on houses that are 107 years old! My husband and I have a thing for quirky houses and this house is the quirkiest we’ve lived in by far. We purchased an old farm house built in 1892 on four acres less than five minutes from where my husband works. It was a gem of a find and too good a price to pass it up. It needs work but majority of work required is cosmetic.

We moved at the end of June and the move involved getting our things from Memphis, all our household belongings out of storage in a town two hours away and everything we had in the apartment here in town. If that wasn’t enough we had to make an early occupancy deal with the previous owner since the closing was delayed. The closing ended up being delayed by 32 days, no joke.

We are slowly getting settled in and I will start blogging regularly as soon as I finish painting my little guys room, I wanted to be done with it two weeks ago!