Well we did it. After 2.5 years of searching and 14 offers, we finally closed on a home. It has been, obviously, a long road and a frustrating one at times. We got a perfect house for us, though. It's bigger than we thought we'd be able to afford, and we don't share walls with anyone, which we also didn't think we'd be able to afford. We have a nice yard and a full basement, and we're located on a nice quiet cul-de-sac in a pretty neighborhood. Everything is pretty ideal, really.
Except the house. Here's what we saw when we first came to the house:
This is the side yard. They had piled up old construction materials, broken toys, boxes of paperwork and just simple garbage back here.
This is our kitchen. Floor torn up, debris on every surface, mouse droppings everywhere.
This is our living room. Note the way the laminate flooring is installed. The end seams all line up, matching panels are all placed right next to each other, and there are pretty good-sized gaps between the boards.
This is the largest of the holes in the walls. No idea how this sort of thing happens, but there you go.
Just one of the many stains on the carpets upstairs. It's really impossible for pictures to capture just how gross the carpets were. Stains this dark and even darker were common.
So that's how we started. Floors installed incorrectly, garbage and filth everywhere, stained carpets and a whole lot of damage to the walls. These are just a few choice images, but believe me the overall effect was sort of disgusting. I never went into this house without feeling like I needed to wash my hands afterward.
We've got a lot of work to do, and a fair bit we've already done, so I'll do my best to keep this blog updated as we plan, learn, design, and rethink what it means to be homeowners. And, God willing, I'll get to smash some walls with a sledge hammer.
Dude, the first thing you need to do is kill all the mice! They will annoy more than the zombie hoards if you don't. I suggest several packs of the traditional mouse traps. (Your cat will also be a large deterrent.)
ReplyDeleteThe mice are gone now. There were some traps set in the house and all were empty. We also haven't seen any new droppings since we cleaned up the old stuff. Any stragglers will become toys for Smitty. Definitely something we were concerned about at first, though.
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