A Moving Tale, Part 1

We’ve been packing our house from the inside out. Sneaky, undercover-style packing that involves emptying drawers and closets that we never opened anyway. Each day, we take six or ten boxes to Deadwood when we go to work. If you walked into our (current) house, though, you might not even notice what we’ve been up to. (Well, except for the pile of boxes and tape hanging out in the living room.) The house still looks fully-stocked, well-decorated, and lived-in. Just don’t open any doors or drawers; you’ll discover it’s all a sham.

And with all that stuff gone – moved to our new house to wait quietly for our arrival – my life is no different. Amazing how much stuff we hoard (even knowing we don’t have nearly as much stuff as lots of people) and how little of it matters from day to day. The boxes already packed are labeled things like “Novels F-H — Sweaters — Hippo — Candleholders”. Unpacking should be an interesting adventure.

After talking to the contractor and a few of his subs this week, we realized that there’s no chance our new house will actually be ready to live in by the time we move in next weekend. There will probably be a heating/venting system, though it’s so full of old gunk that it will probably cover the house in dust for a week or so after it gets turned on. Plumbing is a little iffier. We’re sure at least one bathroom and the kitchen will be plumbed, so that’s good, but there’s the small matter of the walls that need to be torn out to finish the rest of the plumbing.

I’ve seen what’s behind some of these walls. It looks like hamster nesting material. It’s seriously scary.

The kitchen also has only half a floor, but I”m pretty sure we can patch that up with cardboard boxes for the meanwhile.

The roof is halfway reshingled, which should be done before we move in. The foundation needs some help, and the porches all need to be rebuilt after that’s done. (Seeing what was lurking under the porches, by way of what should have been supporting the porches, was a real treat. Yikes!)

So that probably won’t all be done by next weekend. We asked the contractor which rooms we should move our stuff into so it would be out of the way while they continue to tear out/rebuild walls and make our toilets flushable. After considerable hemming and hawing, he generously suggested that the tiniest room in the back corner of the house might be a good place to stash our stuff, and that the attic might be a pretty good place to live. And yes, we can probably get into the kitchen a couple times a day if need be.

Yikes.

I think I’ll look at it as a sort of glorified camping experience. Three flights of stairs between my bed and my toilet? At least it isn’t an outhouse. Or a tree.

More updates as things progress.

New roof!

Read Full Post »

Doods, we bought a house…

In case you missed it, here’s a recap of the epic house tale:

Deadwood, where we work, is a 40-minute drive from where we live. This has never been a huge problem, but we’ve always figured that if we stumbled across a perfect house in Deadwood, we’d probably move up there.

At the end of March, we found that house:

Thinking that it was beautiful on the outside and delightfully historic (a bonus for us), we called our realtor and she gave us the tour. Though it certainly needed a lot of work, it was awesome and beautiful and obviously more house than we’d ever need or be able to afford or…

What’s that you say? It’s a foreclosed property? Fanny Mae is selling for the low low price of Holy Cow We Can Afford That?

Before the day was out, we’d gotten the city Historic Preservation Officer, the City Inspector, and a contractor up to look at the property. We got their opinions on how much effort and money it would take to fix it, whether it was worth the asking price, and what sort of assistance we could get from the Historic Preservation Fund.

The next day, we were at the bank applying for a loan. Before the week was out, we were pre-approved and put in an offer.

Turns out, we were too slow. Another offer had been submitted an accepted while we were doing our homework. It was awful. We’d gotten ridiculously attached to the house. I was irate and indignant to find out that the other offer came from someone who wanted the house as a project, to be flipped and resold. Didn’t they know that I wanted to live in it? Love it and fix it and be an excellent neighbor? Shouldn’t they have learned a lesson from the guy who got foreclosed on because he thought he could flip it?

Displaying irrational optimism, we watched the MLS listing every day to see if the “Under Contract – Financing Contingency” would go away, for better or for worse. Our realtor told us not to hold our breath.

Then one Saturday, three weeks later, the house reappeared on the market – “Available”. We high-tailed it to the realtor’s office to resubmit our offer. By the end of the week, we were accepting their counter-offer. Today we signed closing papers.

Our current house goes up on the market on Monday. Until it sells, we’ll be eating nothing but ramen and freezer pizzas. It’ll be worth it. The new(old) house is a three-minute walk from our office, and it’ll be an incredible project to keep us busy for the next, oh, several decades.

Besides – with this many bedrooms, we’ll be able to have one zillion visitors. Give us a call. I’m accepting reservations starting now.

Check out some great pictures here:  http://www.facebook.com/dustinfloyd?ref=ts#!/album.php?aid=216333&id=504773272

Read Full Post »