Mark really should be the one writing this blog as he's the one doing most (all) of the work on the house, but he has absolutely no free time anymore. Any spare moment is spent up at the house, and will be for quite some time. I'm just the helper and kid tender. I go up to help him carry garbage out to the dumpster, move some of the billions of pavers previous owners put in around the yard, and any other grunt work Mark needs me to do. Hopefully I can be of more help as framing, drywalling, etc. begins.
It's going to be a loooong journey, but once we're all done we're going to have a fabulous house in a very nice neighborhood, and it will be just how we want it.
Before Photos
I thought I'd start off with some photos of how the house looked when we were first thinking of buying it. Some of them are quite horrifying, and I'm sure you'll wonder what in the world we ever saw in this place. Fortunately Mark has great vision and the ability to look at a house and see amazing potential. Good thing, because all I saw was a cluttered dive when I first saw the place!
The living room - this is what you first see when you walk in the door. The woman who lived here appeared to have some hoarding tendencies, and when we went to see the place for the first time, her realtor's warned our realtor that the house was as is. The condition it was in was the best the seller could manage at the time. This room looks clean compared to the rest of the house!
The upstairs. Quite horrifying. Remember, this is the condition it was in when we went to see it for the first time. This isn't moving/packing clutter. This is everyday clutter.
The good thing about the upstairs is we have a great view of Mt. Olympus from the deck up there. The bad thing is that the condition of the deck leaves something to be desired!
This garage is on the back part of the yard. It's HUGE, but like everything else associated with this house, it needs a lot of work. It seems to stay pretty dry though, thanks to some pretty crazy patch work our realtor, mortgage broker and Mark did at the request (demand) of the inspector, so we've been able to start storing stuff in it. How often do you hear of your realtor and mortgage broker rolling up their sleeves on a rainy Saturday to help you patch the roof of the garage on a house you're trying to buy? Now that's service!
The yard is really good sized, especially for Salt Lake. It's about 1/3 of an acre, but the back yard is kind of broken up by the garage, patio, flower beds, etc. so it's not this mass of lawn. Once we get done with it though, it will be totally different, of course!
Well, that's it for now. I have a bunch of before and after pictures to post as Mark has done a ton of demo. I also have a whole series of photos of crazy things Mark has found as he's been tearing the place apart. It's amazing what you find when you tear into an old house!
You'll have to bear with me though. This blogging stuff is new to me, so I have quite a bit to learn about formatting, etc. as you can probably see from this first post. I'll get it down eventually!
No comments:
Post a Comment