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!
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