Tomorrow the contractors will start demolition on my kitchen. I thought I should post some “before” pictures to document the transition.
Tag Archives: Home
Peonies as metaphor
Years and years of tobacco smoke residue
I could smell the old, stale, cigarette smoke when I first walked in. I was getting my first look at the house I decided to purchase. The yellowed curtain rods told me that smokers lived there for a long time. It turned out that the fifty-year-old home was owned by only one family, and from what my neighbors tell me, they were heavy smokers. But the price was right, and I figured I’d be able to deal with the stale smell and make it livable again.
Thankfully, all of the walls and ceilings were painted before the house went on the market. After I moved in, I got to work on cleaning the woodwork. I started with the hardwood floors. Once over with Murphy’s Oil Soap, then rinse. I could not believe that it took five, sometimes six rinses until the water would not be brown when I dumped it out.
New home update
I’ve been living in my new home for five days now. There is a lot of work to be done, but I’m slowly getting settled in.
In the past four days I’ve made seven trips to a home improvement / hardware store, with still more things on my shopping list to pick up. I’m expecting the clerks to start greeting me by name soon. I already have people working on my kitchen remodel, which is something I want to get done fairly soon. The house is definitely a fixer-upper, but it’s going to be real nice once the fixing up is done.
Probably the most frustrating part of this move is the fact that I still don’t have internet access at the house yet. Since the phone company is having some problems (and I’ll be getting DSL through the the phone line), I’ve been suffering from serious internet withdrawal. Hopefully I’ll be plugged back into the matrix soon.
New house tour
Today was the inspection for the house I’ve agreed to buy. I thought it would be a good idea to shoot some pics while I was there with the inspector.
House shopping is like clothes shopping (only worse)
I’m not a big fan of clothes shopping. If I need a new shirt, my ideal shopping experience would be as follows: A few feet into the entrance of the store is a rack of shirts. This rack would have the exact size and style I need. It would be unnecessary to try one on. A few feet from this rack of ideal shirts would be the cashier. There would be no one in line, and I would be done shopping after a minute or two. Alas, the clothes shopping experience is usually quite different.
Now that I’ve got a good offer on my condo, I’ve been shopping for a house. I’ve come to realize that shopping for a house is a lot like shopping for clothes. First you browse the listings, then find houses to look at. Once you visit a potential house, you spend some time walking around and checking its comfort, not unlike a new pair of shoes. Like clothes, you wonder how long aspects of the house will last before they might need some mending. Will those sleeve buttons fall off soon? Will I need to replace those windows? If the house doesn’t “fit right” you move on to another house. Or you might think the fit is okay, but wonder if there is a better fitting house out there. You try the next house. You might also hear of a new sale (house or shirt), and try that one on for size. Does it fit?
Right now I’m just looking for a good fit.
The waiting is the hardest part
When I put my condo up for sale, I never considered all the waiting I’d have to do. You wait for people to be interested, you wait for offers to be made, you wait for answers to counter-offers, etc. The deeper into the process you go, the more intense the waiting becomes.
Saturday a potential buyer came to see my condo for a second time in a week. That evening they did submit an offer, so I scheduled a meeting with my Realtor for the next day, and waited. Sunday we prepared a counter-offer and I waited some more. Monday morning we received a counter-offer from the potential buyer, discussed it, and decided to submit another counter-offer. This last period of waiting was the worst. I spent the waking portion of the next 27 hours second guessing my last counter-offer. I couldn’t tell you half of what I saw of President Obama’s inauguration, because my mind was on the counter-offer hanging out there.
Thankfully, there is a happy ending to this story. Late yesterday afternoon my Realtor told me the last counter-offer was accepted! In the end, I’m not sure if I was more grateful that we came to an agreement, or that the waiting was over.
Banished from my home
My condo is currently on the market. Today I got a call from my Realtor, that someone wanted to take a look at it this evening. So, here I am hanging out at my local public library for a while.
It’s all a bit odd when a showing is scheduled for my condo. I pick up the clutter, clean a bit, and otherwise make my home look nice and attractive, and then I leave. After that there are these strangers that come. They have their own key and they let themselves in. As they look over my home, they have full access to all of my worldly possessions. Want some CDs? Stereo or computer equipment? How about my bank records? My computer backups have some pretty juicy vital records too. It’s all there if they look in the right places.
It’s not that I don’t trust the real estate agents. I’m sure they do an excellent job of keeping their clients from snooping and stealing. I just find the whole process kind of strange.
Daydreaming of a move
Yesterday I finished painting the upstairs bedrooms in my place. I had plans to do that over the winter, and here it is May already. But, late last week I got some serious motivation when I drove past a house for sale about a mile from work. The price was very reasonable, and that got me daydreaming of living within walking or biking distance of work. How great would that be?
Of course you can’t buy a new house until your current home is sold, so I headed off to the home center for some paint. Next on the to-do list, get two of the windows fixed, do some serious cleaning, and contact my real estate agent.
Of wallpaper and free time
I spent most of last weekend removing the last traces of wallpaper from my condo, when I stripped it from the downstairs bathroom. Yes, my home is now wallpaper free!
If I were ruler of the kingdom, I would require anyone installing wallpaper to be responsible for its removal. The installers would be required to do that when any future owner of said wallpaper wishes it to be removed. As much as I dislike removing wallpaper, after removing it from my kitchen, and now the bathroom, I’ve become quite good at it. Although I probably shouldn’t admit to that (no, I am not available for outside jobs).
Yesterday I spent a few hours spackling the bathroom walls, and today I painted the primer on. Hopefully I’ll get the final coat of paint on in the next few days.
As I was cleaning the paint brush today, it hit me that I’ve have spent more of my free time fixing up or improving this condo than any other home I’ve lived in. One thing I have come to realize: I would most certainly rather be doing something else. If money were no object…