Marking the Territory Right Away!

Yesterday, when we arrived at the new house after not being there for several weeks, the first thing we noticed was the eyesore next door was still standing. Barely.

However, we noticed that someone had been inside to remove any salvageable historical pieces, like trim, windows and mantels for resale at one of the many historical salvage yards in the area. So, that indicated good news--that demolition day is coming soon!

From this view, you can see how much open space our house will have in the back with two empty lots beside it, and it will not only allow for not only a nice view of the rest of the neighborhood, but also allow for much more light to filter into the windows. 

Hopefully, they will remove the massive dead tree along with the house. The leaves you see in the photo are misleading, they are actually reaching over from another tree that was behind the area where I was standing when I took the photo. In fact, the dead tree has not one single green leaf--it's a definitely a goner. I'm actually a bit concerned about some some of the branches, or the whole tree, falling onto our house. It needs to go!

Since we had not been to the property in a few weeks, and we have gotten so much rain, the weeds had completely taken over the front and back yards. I entertained our two little ones inside the house while Brian hacked away at the overgrown weeds in the rear yard. Look at him go!

After going inside with the girls, the next thing I noticed was ceiling drywall on the ground. Evidently the recent rain and heavy winds did a real number on the roof over the downstairs bathroom, where there was a smallish leak before the storm hit, causing a much larger leak and two-thirds of the ceiling to fall into the room...what a mess!

While the girls and I were inside, three-year-old L (who has been potty trained for months) had a little surprise for me. I was walking down the stairs when I heard her cry out, so I ran back up to see why she was so upset. As I rounded the corner in the stairwell, I saw her peeing all over the stairs. I don't know why she decided to do this, but I can't help but think she was marking her territory in the new house! Ha! She does like to pretend to be a puppy sometimes, but this is going a bit overboard.

We had planned to go to the Richmond Folk Festival, but those plans were soiled, I mean foiled, with the problem of pee-soaked tights and boots! I tried to remedy the situation by stopping by the closest store to pick up new undies and shoes, but the shoes hurt her feet and she was miserable. So we decided to head out without finishing clearing the weeds from the front yard, as planned, and skipping the Folk Festival altogether. You can see the overgrowth, and two little ladies peeking out from behind the weeds (notice one without tights and wincing from her uncomfortable Dollar General shoes). At least they got a smoothie out of it. Maybe that was her plan all along.

I think that whole episode was a reminder of why we are not taking this renovation project on by ourselves, kiddos in tow, and rather, we will have a general contractor to do the hard stuff. Two ornery little girls running rampant when mom and dad have serious work to do = bigtime distractions, low productivity and inevitably many, many more unfortunate events! Not to mention that when the real renovations begin, there will be nails and other potentially dangerous pitfalls abound. Where there is trouble to be found, our two little ladies WILL find it!

While we were running around buying underpants, shoes, and taking pit stops in McD's (of course R had "to go" too) Brian managed to make some huge improvements with his weed wacker and rake, and managed to haul two large truck loads of debris to the dump.

                                                      Before:

                                          After:

Way to go hubby! It looks so much better, but we still have quite a bit to do to beautify it. We will be tilling, fertilizing and seeding in hopes of seeing some fresh green grass in place of that dry, brown stuff you currently see.

Next on the agenda--we'll take on the overgrown front yard!

Tomorrow, I meet with the contractors to discuss the renovations. According to the terms of our construction loan, we have 60 days to complete the rehab, which will be no small feat! Due to the tight timeline parameters, they will begin work this week, and we are excited to finally get moving and see some real progress. Stay tuned for updates, and if you would like automatic update notifications emailed directly to you, you can subscribe to my blog in the upper right hand corner of the page by entering your email address.

Let the renovations begin! Again!

We finally closed on our latest investment property today. After having lost the usage of both of my computers on the very same day--my little ones managed to break my laptop (thank goodness for warranties!) and just mere hours later, my ancient desktop monitor went kaput on its own. After several weeks of being pitifully computerless, I now have a new hard drive in my laptop so that means I am back in the blogging game!

And, without further ado, here is our latest renovation project:

It's the charming little fixer-upper on the far left, on the end. Do you like it?

Me either. And I'm just kidding, we didn't buy that one. Got ya! It is actually slated to be demolished any day now. Unfortunately, it is well beyond repair so the city has decided to take it down. While I never am happy to see a historical home suffer such a plight, rather than be lovingly restored to former glory, I admit, I am torn because we certainly benefited from its existence in its current state. We got a fantastic deal on the house next to it because really...who in their right minds would want to buy a house with a neighboring house that's considered to be the #2 most blighted house in the whole area?   http://chpn.net/news/2010/03/31/the-10-most-blighted-houses-in-church-hill_12915/

We would! But only because we discovered, through some virtually effortless google searching, that the blighted house next door was slated for demolition. I'm pretty sure that most other potential buyers took one look at the dilapidated house next door and hollered, "NEXT! THIS IS NOT IT. KEEP DRIVING!!!" at their realtor as they toured the neighborhood in search of their next cozy city dwelling. So that little tidbit of insider knowledge allowed us to get a great deal on a fantastic fixer-upper in a convenient and charming neighborhood!  But first I had to confirm with the city that it would indeed be demolished in the near future, since we hope to rent our house out in the next couple of months and didn't want an eyesore next door to scare potential tenants away. Indeed it was confirmed to be on the schedule for demolition, and we decided to put in our offer, which was accepted.

So, will I be sad when the blighted house is torn down? I will feel bummed for the loss of a historical property that could have been an asset to the community if only someone had not neglected it for so long. I think it is a shame that nobody cared about the house enough to sell it to someone who would care for it if they couldn't or didn't want to care for it themselves. But on the other hand, it needs to be taken down for safety reasons (it looks like it could fall onto our property if someone were to sneezes on it), and I admit that another major benefit is that our property is going to have an awfully nice new view with a big open lot next to it.

So, we bought the one next to "the blight". We purchased the 1,464 square foot, circa 1900, tan and white attached row house, which looks much better on the outside but still needs a great deal of work.

Lucky for us, some of the renovations have been completed already by the previous owners, like updated electrical and new drywall and windows, but there is still much to do! To give you an idea of some of the projects in store, we plan to knock out some walls to open it up inside, I'm particularly eager to remove the wall separating the kitchen and the living room, and we'll add a breakfast bar with seating where the wall used to be. We're going to add a second full bathroom upstairs, add duct work and a new HVAC system, repair leaky areas in the roof and resulting water damage in the ceilings and walls, replace rotten porch posts and soffits, add interior closets and a laundry area, repair trim, paint the walls and hang new lighting and refinish the heart of pine floors. All with the goal of turning it into a fun and hip place to live for some lucky tenant!

The best part of this project for us is that for the first time, we have hired a general contractor so we don't have to do all of the hardest, dirtiest, most dangerous and often most frustrating work ourselves. Brian and I still plan on taking on smaller projects, but we look forward to having someone else manage the renovations and the sub-contractors, and handle the many "renovation surprises" that arise once the demolition and construction begin. These days, with two young kiddos taking up much of our free time (Free time? Who am I kidding? What is that?)  we just don't have the time to rehab a house from the ground up ourselves, so we are looking forward to the planning and design aspects of the project, and leaving the hard manual stuff to the professional contractor.

We do plan to tackle the overgrown forest of weeds in the back yard this weekend.

Yikes! I hope we don't get lost in the underbrush. I'll bring my cell phone with me, just in case. Wish us luck!