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Cleaning, unpacking, lots of laundry to get rid of bugs... the usual!
R also took down quite a few branches that hang over our roof. He reeeeeeeaaaaly likes his new chainsaw!
Ripped off the baseboards in the bedrooms downstairs and vacuumed all the spiders and webs off the ceilings. Also vacuumed the dirt and grime out of the window sills downstairs.
Cleaned out the gutters in the evening. It was quite a mess as they haven't been touched in quite a long time and we also have a lot of tree branches hanging over the roof. The gutters are in surprisingly good shape, though! It was very good timing too because we've got rain in the forecast for the next few days. And the roofer should be coming in the next week or two.
Home Depot again.
Today was our first big shopping day and we actually got some reno stuff, including drain pipes for the gutters, paint, a chainsaw, flooring, cabinetry for the downstairs kitchen, and some other odds and ends. It took us hours to go through the store and find everything we were looking for.
We got some stick on tiles to put over the makeshift subfloor in front of the fridge. We had tried putting a small piece of carpeting there, but that didn't work out so well. The stick on tiles work much better and only cost about $3. Well worth it to avoid slivers in the feet!
R also started digging out the planter area in front of the house to see if we can see where any leaky spots might be.
Trip to Home Depot! (and only one today, yay!)
It was a good trip. After we pulled the gross stove out downstairs, we discovered the cabinet was in pretty bad shape on the bottom and needed to be replaced. We had not budgeted for a whole new cabinet there, so that was not good news. But we did discover that the existing lower cabinets are from Home Depot, and they have the exact models still in stock - and they're not expensive! That was a huge relief. This means we can keep the counter tops, drawers, and sink (which are in good shape), and just replace the base. We also found out that some of the things we need are on sale this weekend. So this is a good time to pick them up. In particular, flooring and paint. We've been debating back and forth whether to put carpet in the downstairs bedrooms or vinyl. The current decision is carpet, both because it's nicer for bedrooms, and it's actually cheaper than the vinyl. We weren't able to match the exisiting livingroom vinyl at any of the stores we've been to, which everyone assumes is actually hardwood flooring. So that's a shame. It would have been great to find more of that.
AND, our neighbours across the street both work at Home Depot, and offered us a 15% discount coupon (up to $500) that they won't be using because it expires in a few days. They are the nicest people, always offering us tips and telling us about things in the neighbourhood, and even offering to let us use their chainsaw, etc. I think they are just so happy to have owners here who are quiet and responsible, and want to fix the place up. We did find out today that the house floods sometimes in the winter if there is any ice. That was not disclosed to us even though the sellers knew about it. Not a pleasant surprise. For some reason, there was no flooding this past winter even though it was a very cold, snowy winter. Nonetheless we'll be doing everything we can to make sure that flooding doesn't happen again this year or in the future. One thing about the basement is that it is quite dry, and the storage/furnace room in particular is in great shape and doesn't smell musty at all. If flooding was a huge problem every year, there would be evidence of it.
So today was about picking paint colours, flooring styles and colours, measuring, pricing out things and deciding what to pick up for RENOS. Yay! That part was fun. R also took another load of garbage to the dump. We'll be doing that again soon, I'm sure.
Day 25 was different!
Annilee and Mom came up for the day, and R's uncle Mladen took us out on his boat so we could spread Dad's ashes out on the ocean. You would think it would be a somber event with a little ceremony, maybe a prayer, and a few tears. Nope, not for us. We're just not like that. In fact, we had ashes to spread from our family cat that we had cremated years ago too, so he went first. Then it was time to do Dad's. It started off fine, but about half way through, the whole bag fell into the water and Annilee had to grab it quick before we lost it, and dump the rest. Not exactly graceful of us! Needless to say it sent us all into giggles for quite some time. Poor Mladen must have though we were insane. And well, yes, we are, I suppose.
So after that, (and lunch out) there was not a lot of time for house stuff, though I did get a bit more unpacking and cleaning done.
Then in the evening, Lloyd, Martha, John, and Viola came over to see the place. It was really nice to catch up with them, since Bible study group is on hiatus for the summer. I really don't think they envy us for the work we have ahead of us!
More... you guessed it! UNPACKING!
Assembled some shelving today, found some much needed paperwork, cleaned out the fireplace so the cats won't drag ashes everywhere. Then decided to poly it off anyway because they could still potentially get into the ash and grease left behind in there and drag it around the house.
No bugs in any of the boxes I unpacked today, so that was really nice!
After some more unpacking we played some DDR on Wii. It's so nice to have something silly and athletic to unwind with, by just relaxing and having some fun!
Unpacking shouldn't be such a tedious, long process. But when you have to constantly look for bugs, kill 'em, and then wash everything to make sure there are no eggs left behind, it really does take much longer than it normally would. That's what we were up against on day 22. Unpacking, organizing, rearranging, and killing bugs. Seems like an endless task at this point.
We did have some fun stomping on all of my books to make sure anything between the pages was killed!
Day 19 was all about cleaning and unpacking (as usual!). R tackled cleaning the nasty kitchen downstairs and moved more boxes up to unpack, while I did loads and loads of laundry, unpacked some boxes, and cleaned the kitchen and livingroom. The floor gets dirty SO fast with no carpet!
R learned the hard way that it's a good idea to wear a mask when cleaning with bleach. He was kinda loopy for the rest of the day!
On day 20 we went to church and had a much needed day of rest.
Here is Luigi helping me unpack on Saturday. Yes he's just so helpful, as you can tell.
Luigi: "I caught the bug, and it was THIS big!"Today is a pretty low day for us.
Found out the washing machine we just bought is leaking. R checked it out, but we need to pull it apart to find the leak. But we will just have to keep an eye on it from now on.
Our kitten Luigi has the runs. Our other cat Ru has them too, but he's a little better at keeping himself clean (usually). So I got to give Luigi a bum bath in the bathroom sink. That was sure FUN!
R pulled out the fridge and stove from the downstairs kitchen. Oh the lovely mess we found under there. The stove has rat and mouse droppings in the bottom drawer and some are on the floor below it. But we're thinking it's most likely that they bought the stove already in that condition since there are no other signs. We're giving the stove away for free, and surprisingly people actually want it! It is really old, so maybe it's really considered vintage. Don't care, just get rid of it!
The floor under the fridge was not much better. Once it was pulled out, the smell of mold took over the whole room. So I sprayed it all down with bleach cleaner.
I cannot believe we're at day 17 already. That's just crazy!
Today involved cleaning the walls of the other downstairs bedroom (no smoke, yay! Still killed LOTS of spiders though), and also cleaning some of the other walls downstairs, finishing the final cleaning of the oven drawer and unpacking pots and pans into it, laundry, laundry, laundry (some boxes of clothes will have to be completely rewashed to make sure they don't have any silverfish eggs in them), a walk to the store to pick up a few things, and bringing furniture up from storage so we can reorganize boxes in there and get the suite cleared out for more cleaning and renos. We also finally got our portable dishwasher set up and cleaned. Yay!
The baseboards in both downstairs bedrooms are in surprisingly good shape. So we're hoping we can take them off, clean them, paint them, and put 'em back on (after we redo the flooring, of course). That will save us a bit of $$.
The weather has been warm/hot and sunny every day, and that has been great. Sometimes it's a little too hot, but still survivable. We cannot imagine having to do all of this work in the middle of winter with the windows closed and rain and cold to battle. Not to mention having to run the furnace and having it blow dust, etc. everywhere. That just would NOT have worked at all. Summer is much better for this kind of work, no question!
The truck's power stearing died a couple of days ago, so we now have a repair bill to deal with. Not the best timing, but these things happen.
I paid the water bill yesterday, which was very high. That is because both toilets run constantly and the tub also has a slow dribble all the time. Once those are fixed up that bill should go down quite a bit!
Oh yes, I fell down the stairs today too. That was fun. No major damage done. Just some mildly bruised spots, slightly pinched nerve, and bruised ego of course.
Today I used Simple Green cleaner and a new sponge mop and really scrubbed down the walls and ceiling of the smokey room downstairs. And yes, in case anyone is wondering, that stuff does taste like mint. Mmmm. There is still a smell, but I'm hoping once we get the floor cleaned it will improve. And paint will do a lot for it too. I killed a lot of spiders today.
R made some shelves for the bathroom cabinet so we have somewhere to put our things. Then it was all about unpacking and organizing.
We're very far behind on the renos because of all the cleaning. So there's just no way the suite will be ready for rental for Sept 1. We're gunning for Oct. 1 now.
Nothing terribly exciting to report on these days. Just more yard work, cleaning, and unpacking.
We continue to deal with bugs, and it's very frustrating. I've found sliverfish (usually just one) in quite a few boxes now, and also around the kitchen sink pretty regularly. This is going to be an uphill battle.
Other than the general yuckyness of the bugs, the unpacking is finally coming along pretty well. We're still not very organized, and the place is a mess. But at least we're able to get around better and find things that we need.
Both cats jumped off the deck today and wandered around in the back yard like they owned it. So we'll be putting up some kind of blockade to stop that from happening again.
And here's the view of the lovely maple tree from our deck. Look up and here is what you see:
Today we decided to tackle the kitchen floor. Yes, I just cleaned out all under the stove, but it was still better to rip it all out. Problem: The floor under the fridge was a total mess.
First R started ripping out the tile. That came out really easily as the mortar didn't stick to the subfloor at all (hence all the cracks in them). That was the easy part. What we found underneath the tile was subfloor, linoleum, more subfloor, and then the original shiplap. Both subfloors and part of the shiplap under the fridge were rotted out. Not good. So R decided to clean it out as best he could and put in some makeshift subfloor to put the fridge on for now. We'd love to address the whole issue, but just cannot gut the kitchen quite yet. We've got to get the suite cleaned up and ready for rental first. Fortunately, the exterior wall is good shape due to some solid construction long ago. The pass-through wall will have to have some work done on it eventually though as parts of it have rotted out pretty badly. Until we get to the full-blown kitchen renos we will be using the existing old lino that is under the tile and subfloor. That's good enough for now. We can't rip out the lower subfloor yet as that will mean pulling out all the cabinets too.
Pictured here, you can see the diferent levels of flooring. Old lino at the bottom of the picture, then subfloor on the upper right, and then the top layer of (remaining) tile on the top left.
Here you can see shiplap on the top left, then old lino at the bottom, and tile on the top right. The rest of the tile and its subfloor are ripped out shortly after this picture was taken.
And here you can see the ugly mess under the fridge. Lots of dry rot.
This area is just in front of the fridge. Still not in good shape.
Final product at the end of the day:
On a good note, R found a plumbing kit at Home Depot that replaced the parts we needed for the bathroom. So we have a sink again! And it doesn't leak anymore!!
I bleached out the inside of the bathroom cabinet area so we can finally use it to put our bathroom things on for now. It's a huge improvement.
Here are the upper cabinets now.
And here are the cabinets under the sink before the drain pipes were replaced.
Shiny new plumbing!
We did some running around today as well, including two trips to Home Depot. It was time to get a wet/dry vac, and we're already putting it to good use!
And it's hot today. Really hot. It's in the low 30's. The forecast is for low 20's for the next week or so. I sure hope they're right!
Here is R at the end of a hot, yucky demo day.
Today was a rough day for me. I spent it trying to clean the smokiest downstairs bedroom walls. It's got a long way to go and still smells as bad as before. It's going to need several washes and then some Kilz primer. Hopefully that will do it. After that I tackled the oven drawer and the floor under the stove. It was bad. It took a fair amount of effort to keep from throwing up and I was nauseous for quite a while after. The cleaning is just overwhelming and it feels like we're never going to get around to the renos. I feel grungy all the time because of all the filth we live in.
I found another cracked window to add to the list too, and that one has to be fixed before we get renters.
So, we decided to work on getting the upstairs more livable this weekend instead of starting on the downstairs. We need a clean, livable place to come to and get away from the filth downstairs when we start cleaning that up. The floors and most of the walls are done upstairs, but there is a lot more work to do to get this place really cleaned. The kitchen floor needs to be dealt with and we'll most likely rip out the tile floor this weekend.
R has pulled out the doors and framing around the big upper cabinet in the bathroom and cut out the lower cabinet under the sink (and also put in some reinforcement so the sink won't fall!). We're hoping we can bleach out what remains so we can finally unpack some of our things in the bathroom. The main area is clean enough to use, but the storage has been useless to us because it's so filthy and moldy. Pulling out the frame exposed the drywall, which appears to be original to the house. We were surprised to see there were only three coats of paint on the wall.
R decided to see what was going on with the sink drain and it turns out it was in really bad shape. Once the pipes were apart there was no way they would go back on. So, no sink for the night.
We're also both suffering from some sinus problems today because of the weeds and grass we've been handling in the yard for the past couple of days.
On day 9 R used the weed eater to get the side yard under control. Day 10 was for cleaning up all the mess it made. So I started on that in the morning... well until I met our resident snake. Yes it's just a garter snake, and not very big. But still. It's never fun to discover the "stick" you're raking moves. So I got a little more than half of it raked into piles before that. Plus my grass allergies weren't helping things at all. So R finished cleaning it up when he got home. He's got big boots for the job, which helps. He also picked up all the garbage out of the grass - everything from screwdrivers, to baseballs, to fondue tongs. No needles at least, so we've happy about that.
We also did more cleaning and finally made a dent in the unpacking. The kitchen in particular is becoming quite a bit more functional now.
We have a beautiful maple tree that creates a canopy over our side deck. It gives us wonderful shade and has unique leaves. Unfortunately, when the wind kicks up it makes a HUGE mess. And when Fall arrives, we are going to have a lot of work ahead of us keeping the deck cleaned off. But for now, we plan to enjoy it!
We're always discovering things we like or don't like about the house. A few highlights...
Bad:
There's no wall plug in the upstairs bathroom. So we have to use the hairdryer out in the hallway. I've always hated it when I've had to do that! And of course that is just one more thing that's unlikable about our icky gross bathroom. We're really looking forward to getting that redone.
Last night neighbours one block over had a rather loud party until 3am. On a Wednesday night! The downstairs tenants in our last rental place had parties that long from time to time, but at least it was on the weekend! And I suspect our neighbours continued the party well past three as I could hear sounds now and then still. But someone must have finally made sure they turned down the music so the rest of us could sleep. I REALLY hope that is not a regular thing in this neighbourhood.
Good:
The trees. Yes quite a few of them will be coming down eventually in order to protect the roof and the foundation. But for now, they're wonderful! They really keep the upstairs from getting too hot.
And the doors and windows are in just the right spots to get a really nice breeze going through the house.
Day 9 was mainly about cleaning up the deck. Now it's finally clean enough to walk on in bare feet. And we can let the cats out, which means finally we can open the doors and window and get lots of airflow without having to lock them up in a bedroom. So much better! I also spent some time unpacking so the kitchen is a little more workable now.
R picked up a weed eater and started tidying up the yard a bit with it. A neighbour came by to give him tips about the trees that have to come down to protect the foundation and the roof.
The next most important projects include: putting in a new door and frame on the carport, trimming back the trees to prepare for the new roof, and starting demo on the downstairs bathroom. That's in addition to the regular cleaning schedule and unpacking. The fridges and stoves will have to be pulled out as well so we can get the floors really clean and dry.
We met another neighbour across the street, who also seems very nice. She's the owner of the black and white cat that we always see prowling the neighbourhood. She too is very happy that we've moved in. Apparently the previous tenants were drug dealers. A young-ish guy showed up looking for them today, and I guess we know why now.
I finally got some pictures of the place.
Here they are!
The house:
Annilee will appreciate this one. This is the front corner of the deck where all those greasy ashy stains were. All clean now! Cleaned it off with a scrub brush and an enviro-friendly cleaner called "Oil Lift" which was invented by some guy at UBC, I think. Very handy stuff.
Ru enjoying the deck:
Our newly painted laundry room floor! The walls still need to be cleaned and painted, but it's still SO much better than it was.
Luigi standing at the front window as I was taking pictures. For some reason he was kinda freaked out by it.
Another fun day of cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. Scrubbed down the den walls and baseboards so now R can set it up as a proper office. The walls are still that nasty brown colour (painted by the resident teenager, from what we can tell), but they're clean. So that will do for now.
Annilee and Dave had the day off and the kiddos were at Grandma and Grandpa's for the night. So they decided to take a drive up to see the new place. As a house warming gift they brought a bucket full of cleaner and bug killer! I suppose we could be offended by it (ya right!), but really we're very excited about the bug killer. LOL! Annilee helped me scrub down part of the deck so we could have a BBQ. Dave figured out how to turn the water on to the outside tap so we could use the hose. It was a perfect day to enjoy some BBQ and conversation out on the deck. AND it was really nice to take a little break and relax for a bit! After they left we were back to the grind, cleaning and sorting boxes until we were ready to collapse, and went to bed.
We have laundry! R found the right plumbing parts at Home Depot and we're finally in business!
Sadly, the dryer isn't working so well, so we're hoping that will be sorted out quickly. It does work, but just takes way longer than it should.
It was also R's first day back at work so there wasn't as much time for him to work on the house. But I was able to get the kitchen cleaned up more and lay some drawer liner. I also did some running around to find some things we needed.
R also managed to unplug the downstairs toilet, and in only about 15 minutes! Yay!
Things haven't worked out so well with the laundry, so we're still stuck.
We were able to move the washer into the laundry room, but the taps have leaks. R drove out to Home Depot to try and replace them, but that turned out to be more difficult than anticipated. So still no laundry today. We're hoping that will be fixed tomorrow.
Another neighbour came by today to introduce herself. She was so happy that we moved in because the previous tenants were really bringing the neighbourhood down. Seems like a very nice lady, and she even offered free plants for whenever we're ready to work on the gardening! She also gave us her phone number in case of emergency. Very kind of her.
Other than that, there was just more cleaning and a bit of unpacking. R is back to work tomorrow, so we had to get ready for that too.
The cats are scratching much less today, so hopefully the treatment has taken effect and the fleas are dead. I think they're enjoying the new place though with so many new smells and places to explore.
I was extremely tired all day and R started to lose steam mid-afternoon too. So hopefully it's an early night and we'll do a little better tomorrow!
Today we finished the laundry room floor with a second coat of paint. It looks fantastic, if I do say so myself! We're hoping the paint will be dry enough to load the washer and dryer tomorrow and then I can start doing some laundry. That will be good since we are pretty much out of towels right now.
Here's R scraping down the floor just before we painted.
The whole house smells like paint now because of the laundry room. It's not a nice smell, but at least it kinda covers over the musty and smoky smells.
Finished cleaning the stove and oven. It took several rounds to get it all done, and the drawer still needs to be cleaned. But it's finally functional!
Treated the cats for fleas. They're not happy as they keep getting locked in one of the rooms while we work on projects around the house and have to open all the doors and windows.
R picked up a new door for the carport as the current one is falling apart and has to be replaced. And he got a nice new lock and fancy handle for the front door and installed that. Looks great! And it's great to finally have that lock changed.
He also washed the floor in the den so we can start getting it set up. Then we washed the floor and walls in the bedroom. It was one of the dirtiest rooms in the house, with crap spilled all over the walls and floor and grime on everything. It looks and smells better now. I also continued washing more of the doors and walls in the house. Bit by bit it's looking better.
We're using the upstairs bathroom to shower in the mornings, which is proving to be a challenge. The hot water only lasts for five to ten minutes, which means I end up having a cold shower. The hot water knob also falls off all the time and the drain is really slow. It's just miserable in there. Not a fun way to start the day.
We still have boxes everywhere and it's hard to move around sometimes. It's hard to unpack when there are so few clean places to put everything.
The laundry room is well under way. It's our first official reno project here. We had to scrub the floor, and R even ended up sanding it down to clean up the flaking paint. Then we painted it, and it looks great!!
Tomorrow we will do another coat on the floor just to be safe.
I also swept the deck and will wash it down thoroughly once the garbage is gone. Then the cats can enjoy it with us. That's probably still a few days away though.
We're very upset to discover our 10 month old kitten, Luigi has fleas now. So we're off to the vet tomorrow to get something for that. R ripped out the carpets from the downstairs so the fleas have no place left to live other than on the cats. That should help. Could be an ongoing battle for a while though until the place is really cleaned up. Ick!! Poor Luigi. He's constantly scratching and licking to get rid of them. Ru seems unaffected so far, though we'll treat him anyway just to be safe.
Ru jumped out the upstairs livingroom window today. R saw him when he was downstairs. An orange blur jumping up and down in front of him outside the window. He was trying to get back inside the window that he jumped out of, but with no luck. So R ran to his rescue and got him back inside. What a goof for jumping out the window!!
I cleaned up the kitchen some today, including the oven and stove. The oven needs another cleaning tomorrow, but should be good once it's done. It's a new stove (maybe a year old), but the renters clearly never cleaned it once. Such a shame. And what a mess!
We met our neighbour across the road today as she was collecting $$ for her youth group's camp. Seems like a nice kid. We gave a small donation to help her out.
R's uncle Mladen and aunt Laurie stopped by to check out the place. They offered some good suggestions, and over all sounded a little overwhelmed by the work we have ahead of us. Ya, I know the feeling!! lol
We glued down the poly in the shower more today so it's more workable, and it has worked well. It looks like crap, but that's to be expected. In fact it's a major point of humour for us!! Welcome to our house of CRAP.
We're very satisfied with the work done in the laundry room as it's finally a noticeable step forward in cleaning the place up. But we still constantly struggle with all the work that is left to do in such a short period of time.
Overall we took it easier today, which was nice. Finally my feet aren't killing me, and R's back is not too bad. We need days like this now and then when we don't go nuts on renos and cleaning, but still get some stuff done.
More cleaning! And we did some running around to pick up some supplies. Then we started cleaning up the laundry room floor to prepare it for the washer and dryer. We picked them up used on moving day. We had found a stove for the downstairs suite. But when we went to see it, found out they had a great washer and dryer set for sale too. So hopefully we can do laundry by early next week!
First we had to clear the hundreds of spider webs and kill bugs and spiders. Then scrape down the cement that runs partly up the walls with cleaner and a wire brush. Then came the fun stuff. The floor had lots of sticky, dirty crap on it. So we got that up and started scraping down the floor to make sure old paint chips were removed and ready for a new coat of paint. Most of the work was completed, but some scraping still needs to be done on day 4 before the paint goes on. Can't wait!
R set up the computers and TV upstairs so we could finally get back on line and start looking up things as we need to (like how to deal with silverfish!). So we took a bit of a break for most of the evening, and enjoyed just sitting on the couch, chatting with Roma on Skype and catching up on email, etc. Then it was back to work.
Luigi snuck downstairs for a while, so we're hoping he didn't pick up any gross germs or bugs or something! He sure had fun!
Day 2 was supposed to involve some unpacking, a bit of cleaning, and maybe even a tiny bit of demo on the downstairs bathroom. Instead it was a day of cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. Even after all the work done on moving day, the floors were still way too filthy to walk on without shoes. And the doors were gross to touch. We also put poly up in the upstairs tub because the surround is leaking and moldy and we don't want to make it worse. We also don't want to touch it! Showering is not fun because there's always plastic touching you on both sides. I'm so looking forward to getting that tub out of there!
The kitchen is where we get all the cleaners ready, so we don't really have it set up for cooking. We're living on leftover pizza and cold cuts. That's gonna get old really fast!
The whole house stinks. It smells musty and smoky. We've gotten rid of some of the stink upstairs, but downstairs is still really, really gross, and will be for some time. We've put plastic wrap around all the furnace vents to keep the stink from that to a minimum. We'll be getting it cleaned later, but just don't have the time to do it yet.
Moving day went so well! The movers showed up (more or less) on time, and hustled all day long in the heat. They actually cost less than we had expected. The renters were moved out of the house, so we had no problem when we got the keys. And they didn't do any additional damage to the place since the last walk-through. They did leave quite a bit of crap behind, that we'll have to take to the dump. We're not even sure how to dispose of all of it.
We had friends come for the day to clean with me while the movers brought everything in. They worked SO hard, and were a huge help. Unfortunately, even after all of that, the place is still filthy and it will be weeks, maybe months before we get it really clean. We've seen a few silverfish around the place which is so gross! I don't know if we'll be able to get rid of them. Almost all of our boxes are downstairs, which is still pretty gross. So we don't know if they're going to end up in all of our stuff or not. I really, really hope not. We've got more than enough to deal with!
We're both sore and tired. We hadn't really slept well in several days because of the heat wave. Then moving day night we were so sore that it was hard to sleep. AND our kitten Luigi decided to start howling at our door around 4:30 am. So R ended up sleeping the rest of the night on the couch just to keep him quiet.
Well, we did it. We bought a house. I'd love to say it was a wonderful, fun process. But it's been a lot of work and mostly frustration along the way. You watch all those TV shows about people buying houses, and it looks so exciting. But they really don't portray all the research, leg work and disappointment that comes with the whole process. BUT, here we are! We found a place, knew it was the one, put in an offer, and after some "back and forth", got the place.
It's a big old box house built in the early 1960's. It's got a really solid structure and loads of potential. Looks like it was probably a custom build too. The neighbourhood is not the best, but not the worst either. and we've definitely got the worst house on the block, so lots to work with. We're close to the university, which means renting out the downstairs suite should never be a problem. It's also a very hot rental market here, so that works in our favour too.
The house is filthy and very run down. There was a group of people renting the whole thing out for the past eight years. They've smashed windows, put holes in walls, stuck gum everywhere, and I don't think anyone ever bothered to clean ANYTHING. But once we get it cleaned up it will be so much better. I think that alone will increase our equity! All the taps in the house leak, so both bathrooms have to be gutted immediately. Our friend Sandra and her two daughters helped clean the place on moving day, and were SUCH a huge help! They were able to get rid of lots of mold build-up on walls, ceilings, and windows.
The yard is quite big, with lots of trees. Unfortunately, some will have to come down because they're too close to the house and will start to damage it if they're left.
Negotiations for the house included having the roof redone. It should have been done several years ago. So we got a cheque from the sellers, payable to a company that we chose as part of the final negotiations. They're going to put in some skylights for next to nothing too, and we're very excited about that!
We've taken out extra money on the mortgage for the renos because the rate is better than our credit line. That means steeper monthly payments though, so it's going to be tight!
