Starting
OK, on April 7, 2005, a house was purchased. My husband and I did the purchasing, and a relative of the seller did her best as realtor to make the purchase hell. We figure anything after Paula will be easy.
In the early 1960's, the house was purchased by a couple in their early middle years. The fellow renovated the kitchen, bath, and barn. We found some cool pictures of the barn renovation. The renovations were done well, for the time in which they were done, and they're all absolutely hideous now. But that wasn't actually the problem.
It was the systems. This couple, who had become elderly and who never had children, didn't have much of a heating system in place. The plumbing was all run above the floor, with the water meter coming up through uninsulated space and into the kitchen floor. The plumbing was actually full of leaks when we bought the house, since Paula had turned off the heat in a cold snap in March once it became apparent that we really wanted to buy the house.
On April 7, 2005, we got the keys (actually, we walked in through an unlocked door, after Paula led us on a goose chase for nearly unfindable keys), and we started ripping. Oh boy, it was awesome to begin the process. Mouse droppings rained down on us. That's when we bought masks. Erratically-spaced lath got pulled off. That's when we put on leather gloves. And green wall paneling came down. That's when we started wearing shoes with soles thick enough to absorb an inch or so of nail when you stepped on it.
Over the next several weeks, we gathered friends for occasional weekends. They helped us pull down acoustic tiling, uncovering adze-cut beams and hand-sawn floor planks. A couple came over and demolished a room in an afternoon. They have a well put-together house, and said it was exhilarating to pull someone else's house apart, since they didn't have to put it back together again.
We used a sledge hammer and bully bar to pry up linoleum in the kitchen floor, so we could replace wet floor boards from the leaking pipes. And in the meantime, we were selling the other house. And maintaining jobs.
I tried to sell the other house myself, using the newspaper, signs, and websites. Didn't work, very depressing. Realtors have the MLS service, which is used by the vast majority of buyers. So I eventually hired a realtor at 3% of our selling price so I could have the privilege of listing the property on MLS. It worked immediately, with lots of folks coming through with their own realtors, and finally the other house sold. That closing happened last week. And we scrambled our way through moving from one house to the next, with the help of friends and parents. I think we'll stay here for years and years, if only to avoid another move.
We found out that the "new" house was probably built in 1823. Haven't found anything yet about the barn. Today while tearing out lath and mineral wool insulation, I found a rolled-up bit of newsprint and paper, tied with thin cloth. Parents were over, so the four of us went outside and unrolled it. It was dirty, frayed at one end, and the newsprint said something about boys' shirts being 6 for 5. I unrolled it on the grass, and there were machine-made punched holes in this very thin paper, with what looked like die-cut edges. It was a pattern to a piece of clothing! I'd hoped for an obituary or a notice in the paper about the fire in the house. I liked it better as a rolled-up old mystery.
In the early 1960's, the house was purchased by a couple in their early middle years. The fellow renovated the kitchen, bath, and barn. We found some cool pictures of the barn renovation. The renovations were done well, for the time in which they were done, and they're all absolutely hideous now. But that wasn't actually the problem.
It was the systems. This couple, who had become elderly and who never had children, didn't have much of a heating system in place. The plumbing was all run above the floor, with the water meter coming up through uninsulated space and into the kitchen floor. The plumbing was actually full of leaks when we bought the house, since Paula had turned off the heat in a cold snap in March once it became apparent that we really wanted to buy the house.
On April 7, 2005, we got the keys (actually, we walked in through an unlocked door, after Paula led us on a goose chase for nearly unfindable keys), and we started ripping. Oh boy, it was awesome to begin the process. Mouse droppings rained down on us. That's when we bought masks. Erratically-spaced lath got pulled off. That's when we put on leather gloves. And green wall paneling came down. That's when we started wearing shoes with soles thick enough to absorb an inch or so of nail when you stepped on it.
Over the next several weeks, we gathered friends for occasional weekends. They helped us pull down acoustic tiling, uncovering adze-cut beams and hand-sawn floor planks. A couple came over and demolished a room in an afternoon. They have a well put-together house, and said it was exhilarating to pull someone else's house apart, since they didn't have to put it back together again.
We used a sledge hammer and bully bar to pry up linoleum in the kitchen floor, so we could replace wet floor boards from the leaking pipes. And in the meantime, we were selling the other house. And maintaining jobs.
I tried to sell the other house myself, using the newspaper, signs, and websites. Didn't work, very depressing. Realtors have the MLS service, which is used by the vast majority of buyers. So I eventually hired a realtor at 3% of our selling price so I could have the privilege of listing the property on MLS. It worked immediately, with lots of folks coming through with their own realtors, and finally the other house sold. That closing happened last week. And we scrambled our way through moving from one house to the next, with the help of friends and parents. I think we'll stay here for years and years, if only to avoid another move.
We found out that the "new" house was probably built in 1823. Haven't found anything yet about the barn. Today while tearing out lath and mineral wool insulation, I found a rolled-up bit of newsprint and paper, tied with thin cloth. Parents were over, so the four of us went outside and unrolled it. It was dirty, frayed at one end, and the newsprint said something about boys' shirts being 6 for 5. I unrolled it on the grass, and there were machine-made punched holes in this very thin paper, with what looked like die-cut edges. It was a pattern to a piece of clothing! I'd hoped for an obituary or a notice in the paper about the fire in the house. I liked it better as a rolled-up old mystery.
posted by Meghan Moore at 10:21 PM
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