The Story of the House
So, we went to vote on Nov 5, which happens to be our anniversary. Theresa left her wallet home and didn't want to drive to work without her license. On the way home she drove past a house that had grey boards on the windows. She recognized that it was a HUD foreclosure. She went to work and picked a real estate broker from the phone book who turned out to be a lovely gentleman who had coincidentally been by our house many months before asking if we were interested in selling.
It turned out that midnight that day was the closing of the bidding period. I also had a night class that evening. So Pedro, the realtor from Long Island Community Realty and his son met me at the house at 11:00 at night to show me the house by flashlight.
I really liked the property and the house was not
too badly damaged for a foreclosure so we bid on the house. We found out a few
days later that we lost. About a week later we found out that the winning bidder
fell through so we got it as the second bid.
We had to do some work to get the damage fixed so that the mortgage bank would
approve the mortgage and it has been like trying to teach an elephant to dance getting everything and everybody together on this.
We couldn't get the boiler checked until the water was turned on but they
wouldn't turn the water on until we had heat. The boiler guy couldn't do
anything until the electric was on but they had to inspect before they'd turn
the electric on because it had been abandoned for over 18 months, So we had to
have an electrician come and disconnect some appliances and replace some lights,
wall sockets and switches.
Fortunately, Theresa is a wiz at organizing and coordinating stuff like this.
In the middle of all this the heat went out. The oil delivery had stirred up sediment from the tank bottom which clogged the filter. The
house got cold and every baseboard heater in the house froze and burst. None of the main plumbing got lost as we found
out in time and our contractor rented a space heater for us while the pipes and the boiler got fixed.
The kitchen floor is a nice blonde Pergo now, the fireplace has been inspected and the new doors are up. The hallway and bathroom ceilings had the water damage from the upstairs bathroom leak and had to be replaced. Also, the graffiti on the garage and the side of the house had to be painted over.
All this and we still didn't even own it
yet.
It is a 4 bedroom 2 bath house on a little over half an acre so we should have room for the grandtwins and their mom now.
It is only 4 blocks from where we live now which is great. We really like the
neighborhood.
The house web page will be at faeriehaven.the-christie-family.com. We're going to call her FaerieHaven, by the way. I have some before pictures up and also some in process ones as the renovation goes on will be added as I find time. It does need a bit of work but it's going to be well worth it when it's done.
We finally went to closing and the contractors
showed up on Valentine's day to start work.
The bathrooms are fully ripped out. The window guy, the electrician and the alarm folks are coming next week and the appliances have been delivered.
It looks like it has hardwood floors on the entire first floor except the kitchen, the bathroom and the pantry.
The fences aren't up yet so the dogs will have to be walked if they're not up by the time we move in. We have buyers for the old house and are trying to hold off closing for a few weeks to give us repairing/moving time.
Check back, we'll be posting pictures as work progresses.
