Allen and I bought our very first home in January or maybe February of 2006. We bought a "fixer upper" as they are called but in reality, this house was a disaster. But Allen saw a jewel and he convinced me to buy it, trying to help me imagine all the cool things he could do to make our new home "ours."
Our home was built in the 1940's, at least that's what the deed says. But, there are many things about our home that has us convinced it's even older than that. It's a very well-built home, for the most part. I mean, it's a sturdy house, built with lots of solid, thick wood.
So we bought the house with the knowledge that work would need to be done. We bought the house knowing it would take some time and effort to get it right. Slowly, as we begin to remodel, we discovered there was a lot more wrong with this house than met the eye. Eventually, we felt we had been royally screwed over by the owner of the house, who now lives just a few houses down. We didn't pay a lot for the house but considering all the issues we've found, we still paid too much.
We knew the basic stuff was wrong; updated electrical and plumbing was needed, there were some issues with the floor, you know, that type of stuff. But we found a whole lot more.
We need a new septic tank. We kept seeing puddles in our yard and though there was no record of where our septic tank was, we figured out that it was in a general area. We knew that some of the lines had been driven over and were probably crushed. We eventually found the location of the septic tank and we dug around it and discovered it needed to be looked at. In the end, we had to go to the county people to get our septic tank put on inspection. This, of course, required us to have it inspected first and they told us it was outdated and needed to be replaced within a year. Of course, when we got it cleaned, we discovered it was messed up anyway and wasn't working like it should. So, we called around and got some estimates to replace it. The estimates came in around $3,000. First big problem.
Next, our roof needs to be replaced and not just the shingles but the whole entire roof. We had our roof inspected when we bought the house, as we did the septic tank, and they passed! Someone is obviously not a good inspector. Our roof is in pretty bad shape and so to fix that, it will set us back a couple grand. Luckily, Allen can replace the roof so it won't be quite as expensive but we're still looking at at least $2,000.
Inside the house didn't seem quite as bad, until we started really tearing stuff down. We found supporting walls that had been torn down, which if you know about building houses, that's apparently a no-no. So we have to go in and fix that. We've found termite damaged wood. Luckily it's old but we've had to replace those pieces of beams and such throughout the house. It's been one thing after another. Of course, in reality, all this stuff is probably typical of buying an older, fixer-upper home but man, it's been a nightmare for us.
Allen's worked on the house since we bought it. Not one single room has gotten finished. It's frustrating because we should have been further along by now but at the same time, I know it's been a lot of work and he hasn't had a lot of help with it. But now, we have a baby coming in June and at least the inside of the house has to be pretty close to done before the baby gets here. So, now Allen is rushing and he's probably gotten a lot more done in the past 2 months than he has in 3 years but we are still finding stuff wrong, which makes the process even lengthier.
We can't have a baby with our house the way it is. I think we both know that. I feel pretty confident that Allen can get the inside of the house pretty close to done by June. But right now, we're living in a shell. Our kitchen is completely gutted and has been since before we found out we were having a baby. Now, our new living room and the baby's room is in the process of being gutted. Our current living room doesn't have a normal floor. It has wood but it's livable. The bathroom is, well I hate our bathroom and cannot even begin to tell you how happy I will be to see that remodeled. It's a lot of work and I hope and pray Allen can find people willing to help him out on occasion to get it done.
Even if we knew all the stuff wrong with our house, I can't swear to you we still wouldn't have bought our house. We love where we live and we love the potential of what our house could be. But maybe, just maybe, we would have talked down the price a little more.
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