Space to run

You give a child an empty house and they will run. They will terrorize. I took the boys up to the big house. They fell in love with it, and immediately started fighting over what room each of them would have. I told them their father would decide and to stop asking me. I am not going to be put in the middle. They bounded around the house checking it out.

We were there after school. I saw boys in the neighborhood of similar age to my boys, older and younger. Earlier I had seen girls walking up the hill from where the bus must have dropped them. With all these big homes, there have got to be some big families filling them. This neighborhood is full of 3000 to 5000 foot homes. Most of the homes are 20 years old or older, a nice established neighborhood. The houses have probably have changed ownership a couple of times. Daylight basements abound on the hillside. A big indicator of big families. Wonderful diverse architecture makes this neighborhood interesting. The lots are all big to accommodate the big houses and still have yards. From aerial footage on the Internet I can see one house has a big pool in its yard just down and across the street from us.


With the children in the house I strongly feel the need for the downstairs space to be finished. There was water in the basement. Seepage from the ground. I am going to have to seal the wall and floor somehow. A friend mentioned there is a metal material you can use to block and redirect ground water. They had just done their basement. I will have to get more details.

There is also an area where the plumbing exists for a bathroom. The toilet flange is already set in the concrete. I love the concept of bringing the laundry downstairs and setting up all the clothes to be stored downstairs on hangers and shelves. Right now the laundry is off the kitchen, no where to hide the loads or dirty clothes. It is just a hall closet.

So much to do. this is not quite a move in ready house the more we look at it. Rods and shelves are missing from closets. The stove is disconnected from trying to remove it. We will need to bring our own refrigerator. The blackberries cover all of the back yard in heavy thicket. The lot is 17,000 square feet of slope. Birds are nesting in the scrub trees. I am chomping at the bit to get to clearing the land of the blackberries. It will be beautiful. The view captures the river in the distance.

I am going to put a few blocking plants in along the sides of the property, up by the house, so the neighbors have a little more privacy. One of them has a RV covered in a tarp in their drive, visible from our back deck. A big laurel or a couple of Arborvitae will take care to make it pretty and private.

The English ivy is climbing some trees and is becoming overgrown and needs trimming back in the front yard. Tom noticed some sand bags in the driveway that concerned him. He thinks we may need to put a drain ditch in with metal grating to help with the water flow away from the house. Its very doable, but you need to do it. Like caulking the sky lights to make sure they don't leak.

I am guessing that is why the house has sat for a while. It does need a little love. Just not as much as the dive. Though I can see us living in the dive, but Tom can't. I just love that Location. And I love old homes.

I have downloaded pictures of the big house onto my picture painter. I have been having fun taking the mouse and painting different colors on the big house. I did grey and then I tried red. I also drew in window trim and shutters on the house. I liked the barn and farm house effect the red color had with the trim and shutters. It gave it character that wasn't contemporary modern.

I just have to figure out the stairs and where to put them for the basement. I also want to enclose the furnace in the basement into its own room. Add that already plumbed bathroom, finish the ceiling down there with all the exposed wiring, But before we do the basement, we'll need to bring in the natural gas lines for the fireplace we want in the living room and the gas stove in the kitchen that we want later. It would be best to do those lines while the walls and ceiling downstairs are open, just to have them there and done. I could even have someone do those lines before we bring the line from the street. From the street to the house and installing a meter on the side of the house was bid $1700 by the Natural Gas utility. The line on the street is on the other side so it added distance to the cost.

When ever you by a house it takes about $10,000 to $20,000 to make the house yours. We like to tweak a house and improve it. If we were staying put in the house we have now, we could probably, in five years, get out of it without loss. But we don't want to stay put. We can't. Tom has already started work with a two hour commute one way.

We added the office over the front room. the office attaches to the master bed room, making a fantastic suite. I use that sunny office as much as I use the kitchen. And it keeps me out of the kitchen so I don't over eat. We more than doubled the size of the back patio, making it more functional, and a great party space. I added landscape plants along the fence, which are always lacking in newer contstuction. If it weren't a flag lot with a vacant house right in front of us, some one would love this house.

We have had positive responses from our showings. Its just that the carpets are shot. People want not to have to tweak a place first thing. They want it move in ready. We are both improvers and hard on a house. The new construction adds value, but the floors with the beat up vinyl and carpets detract. There is a lot of competition in this price range, a lot of vacant homes and people like us who have to move for work or life reasons.

I am hopeful the big house will make the loss on this house a wash for us. But we will have to tweak the big house just as we tweaked this house. It is "quirky" as one of my friends put it. I need to make it not so "quirky", so that when we sell it the next owners will say wow what a deal for such a great house.

I already know we will be tweaking the kitchen. Tom wants a gas stove. The stove in it is a down draft electric ini the island. That means moving the stove and putting in a draft hood, Easy and expensive. The lack of a fireplace bugs us both so we definately want to address that issue. Tom suggested a two sided fireplace. There is a wall that would be perfect for a two sided fire. I can see us easily spending quite a lot on this house, but all for the good. I still think the key is the stairs into the basement. There rest is easy and can be done quickly or over time.

We'll make our lists and prioritize, then do it all. Meanwhile I will need to find some work. Part time, so I have time to do all this improvement. A lot of it is sweat equity. The clearing of the blackberries and English ivy is quick bang for the buck and I can do it all, while we dwell on the rest. Though I wouldn't mind having someone out to run the natural gas lines in the house in preparation for the changes upstairs. Then we could get started on the basement room at our leisure.

The house itself is really not that big. It's deceptive, probably only 1600 square feet downstairs and 900 square feet upstairs. The unfinished basement is not accessable from inside the house. The extra bonus room over the three car garage and the open sunny spaces give the feeling of a bigger home. I think we will be surprised at how small it is once our furniture arrives.

There is so much to do before we move in, yet we need to be there to do it. It is nice we have time and don't have to do one of those closings where you move the next day in order to get out of the house your leaving so the new owners can move in. I have never been successful at that. I always end up renting back for a week. The movers bid us $6000 to pack and move everything, or $1500 just to do the heavy furniture and we do the packing and moving of boxes. My thought is to start ahead of them and get a lot of stuff already up there. We could move the closets and clothes, but first I have to get new rods put in at the big house. I need shelves for the basement so I have someplace to store boxes off the ground. I also am thinking of getting those rolling display racks and setting up a boudoir in the basement for me and all my clothes, Since we will be down to one closet in the master bedroom where we have two big closets now.

I think we may just go up on the weekends and start work on the blackberries until closing since we are still at least a week away if not two or three. Since we haven't been rejected outright like we were on the dive I am told we will probably close. Paperwork and red tape just takes time. If they do reject us, then I will go back to the dive. I just worry it will sell before I can re offer. Tom says not to worry no one wants to pay the asking price for a house that is in such poor shape. With the sun shining I think it will look more appealing, and the location is dreamy.