There's our little money pit! It's the one right smack dab in the middle. (Second from the left.) As you can see, we live on a cul-de-sac and we are one of four houses on the street. Isn't that AWESOME?!?! Imagine the birthday parties our children will have!! Epic.
Now, I know I touched a bit on what repairs were needed to the house, but I thought I would go a little more in depth. (It's funnier that way too.) First of all... like a said before, we know the house needed a little TLC, and some electric work. What we DIDN'T know is that it was a ticking time bomb.
Now when you first walk in, you see these disgusting stairs (yes that's carpet), and what you can't see is four light swithches and a room off to the left. Only one of the swtiches worked, and the room to the left had no power at all. We called an electrician. All the main electric wires were run through PVC pipe on the roof of the house. It's supposed to be run through metal. (And there was something about too many negatives to one positive and a bunch of mumbo jumbo bad stuff.) As if the PVC wasn't bad enough, the pipes were broken, and full of water, and all the wires were exposed. NICE!! Our poor elecrtician worked for three days replacing burned up wires, fire hazards, and re-routing everything, and finally.... we had power.
Next, we hired a painter.
DON'T PANIC. These are BEFORE pictures with the previous homeowners stuff. But it gives you a good idea on what we were up against. The WHOLE house needed a fresh coat of paint, and some handy work here and there.
For the next two weeks, our painters were my best friends. We joked, we laughed, we told stories, one of them brought us avacados, and in return I held back my dog when she tried to kill them. It was a lot of fun. Then one day Scott (our amazing painter) said he smelled gas upstairs, and it had nothing to do with what we ate for lunch.
(Now, a week earlier we discovered that we had no hot water, and no pilot light lit. We had called the gas company out and they said there was no way to light it without blowing up the house because the water heater had a bad valve and we had to call a plumber. That was a mess. But the gas company checked for leaks everywhere else and said we were good.)
Soooo.. having full faith in Scott, I made yet another call to the gas company. The guy went in the attic and touched the gas line leading to our heater and it fell right off in his hand. NICE. One quick repair, and it was handled. Thanks Scott! You saved our lives!
Moving right along with house repairs, we discovered water damage and mold in our kitchen and den. Walls were ripped open, containments were set up and we were left with a huge mess.
Here's the den before the previous owner moved out:
And here it is after a little mold remediation.
Did I mention we were still sleeping on the floor and living out of cardboard boxes in the garage during all of this? As least we had hot water now.
