Let the Demolition Begin!

We have lift off!  After a few week delay getting work started work has begun.  They started demolition on the 3rd floor and the roofers came in to fix the may-jah roof leak that had been active for over 2 years. 

Standing on the stairs looking up at the 3rd floor ceiling.

Our HVAC guy, who happens to be a family friend, called me and said, "Breezy, have you seen your house lately?"  I said that I hadn't.  He then said, "Don't go there.  Don't go in the house.  It looks like it was bombed."  He wasn't kidding.  As I went further up the stairs I was amazed.  The walls were all gone on the 3rd floor.  There was no more stained, cracked, or wall papered plaster.  We had just bare studs and knob and tube wiring left.  And soon there would not even be that.  Here are the pictures that I took before and after the demo in the rooms on the 3rd floor.

Family Room Before and After

 

Family Room window facing the front of the house.  Before & After

 

Family Room window facing back of the house.  Before & After

 

Attic space in BJ's office.  Before & After

 

 Window in BJ's office looking towards the back of the house.  Before & After

 Corner area with windows looking towards the front of the house in BJ's office.  Before & After.

Next post will be all about the whole in the earth that used to be our kitchen.  I promise to include more about the rebuilding process of the kitchen. 



Settling or Settlement?

In the weeks leading up to settlement I grew more and more nervous about actually buying the house.  We are taking a major risk buying this house.  I am talking head first dive into the kiddie pool after eating  meatloaf and mac & cheese while no lifeguard is on duty kind of risk.  We stand to lose everything if it turns out that more is wrong with the house than originally believed.  Because of the age of the house it is almost guaranteed that 1. there is more wrong with the house and 2. it ain't gonna be purdy when we find out what it is. 

BJ and I hashed out so many scenarios of things that needed to be improved vs. things that could wait.  Looks like my dream closet kept getting pushed further and further down on the list.  I told them I would even settle for the wire rack kind that you drill into the wall.  My lost out on that one when we were budgeting and statements like "Well, maybe we can just get new windows in Amelia's room and the rest of the house can wait." were said multiple times.  In the coming weeks you will see the projects as they all start up.  Suffice it to say there is no room for luxuries.  Just the major systems are being updated and major fixes to the roof and structure of the house.  We knew this after the home inspection.

The home inspection that typically happens in the home buying process was done for this house, but we did it only to confirm what we already knew from previous home inspections from the multiple people who had submitted offers on this house over the past two years and had those deals fall through.  What the report should have stated was what was functioning in the house.  The inspection took about 5 hours to complete.  I actually left 2 hours in because I had a baby with me in an old dirty house.  I left feeling like we may be making a bad decision. We stuck it out though. 

By the time we made it to settlement I had signed my name on 2,341 versions of disclosures, initialed 79,887 times, and eaten 2,000,000,000 M&M's while waiting in the conference room at the attorneys office.  And we had not even signed the settlement papers yet.  BJ was late.  He is directionally challenged. He called me cussing really loudly.  Unfortunately for him, my phone volume was turned up and everyone within earshot heard his tirade of how f*$#ing outragous it was that a firm of that size was so far out of he g@# d^$# city and who the f#$% even gave this directions.  Needless to say he was not happy.  By the time he got in the room he was mad, hot, and late.   It was a hurry up and go slow situation thought.  Our lender was waiting to hear back from FHA on some of the loan documents.  We sat in the room with the seller's son (Power of Attorney), the settlement attorney, and our respective brokers just waiting.  Two hours later we had signed our lives away along with a majority of our savings.  We walked away with the keys to the house and the original blueprints to the addition put onto the house in 1916.   Too late to turn back now!