Living up north

Really Only A Few Block North

Archive for category New house

The poor quality pictures I promised

Oct 27

Posted by adambez in Demo, Home Remodeling, Kitchen Remodeling, Minneapolis, Minnesota, New house | 2 Comments

 

CIMG2449

See why I'm having the electrical replaced

 

CIMG2462

The Cabinets are gone (why do I feel the need to capitalize the word cabinets?)

 

CIMG2457

The next few I just took pictures of the dust in the air.

CIMG2458

Dust.

CIMG2459

More dust.

CIMG2457

Where'd everything go?

CIMG2452

Tore this sweet deck of this weekend.

CIMG2453

Found under deck: parts of previous deck, 3 empty handles of brandy, refrigerator parts, bowling ball, etc

CIMG2455

Deck all gone, we salvaged the stairs so that door is still useful.

 

 

 

 

So yeah, standing water in the basement…great start to home ownership

Oct 2

Posted by adambez in New house | 3 Comments

I know I haven’t written anything here in a long time, I will explain, but it’s about to start the real fun. The reason I haven’t written here since the beginning of August, is that I was trying not to jinx myself out of this place.  I have had quite a few obstacles to overcome, but I think I will finally be in early next week.

I was supposed to close on this house yesterday (September 30th).  I met my Realtor at the house for the final walk-through, and we went in.  It didn’t take long to notice some things were not right.  When we got to the back door the dead bolt lock was destroyed and in pieces on the floor.  The hole where that was, was covered by a plate.  I then went into the basement only to discover that there was standing water on the floor, and a pipe leaking.

As it turns out the bank screwed up and ordered the place to be winterized as if it were going to be foreclosed on, boy were they wrong.  Anyways, they must have hired some Neanderthals to do the winterizing, because they had no idea what they were doing.  They removed the water meter and left a dripping pipe behind to fill up the basement.

Needless to say I wasn’t going to close on a house in that situation.  If I had closed, I would have had to take responsibility for all the costs involved with turning the water back on and fixing the locks.  I’ll say one thing, it’s a good thing we did the final walk through. I can’t believe some people choose not to do one.

Today marks 108 days (yeah I know, crazy huh) since I put my offer in on this place, so I’m ready and anxious to get this process over with.  Hopefully early next week it will all be over and the fun can begin.  I will be posting much more regularly on this once I get started.  I have the contractors ready to go and won’t waste much time getting moving.    Well stay tuned, there will be more to this story.

Tags:

The Inspection

Aug 5

Posted by adambez in Kitchen Remodeling, New house, inspection | No Comments

Well, that was a learning experience. Nothing was too bad, but there were some things to deal with, as there always is. Mainly the place just needs a serious cleaning, my hands were sticky after leaving the place (and no, my hands were not sticky before I got there).
I was lucky enough to have my mom join me as well as my Uncle Mark. The plan is to have him help with the work that I am going to do, so it was a good chance to get familiar with the place. I won’t talk about too much, since I don’t even get my report till tomorrow morning, but there
were a couple things that are intesting.
Even though I plan on re-doing the Kitchen, there is one piece that will be staying and that’s the oven. It’s this antique oven/range from the 40s, and it’s beautiful. I will have to do some work to restore it, but I believe it’s going to be worth it. Here are the pictures my mom took of it.

My mom so kindly found a web site that carries manuals for these old things, and I think it would be awesome to have this in a new kitchen. These manuals have tips on restoring everything from the porcelin finish to the door hinges. Sounds like another project. I should start a list. Again, I think it really just needs to be cleaned.
Another thing we learned is that the first purchase after the house is going to be a dumpster. Lots of old crapy stuff needs to go. I plan on having a distruction party, if anyone’s intersted, I’m guessing I will be paying in beer. Plan sometime in late September or early October.

Decorative Eagles

Aug 2

Posted by adambez in Minneapolis, Minnesota, New house | 1 Comment

This will be the third blog that I have started, although the last one didn’t make it past the 3rd post, yeah I know I’m lame, but I think this one could be quite fun, so let me explain my plan.
Just last week, I found out that I am getting a house. I had an offer that I put in on June 14th accepted (only took like 8 weeks, short sales are not short). So needless to say, I will be going through a lot of new experiences in the near future. Next week I have my inspection, and then it’ll only get busier after that, as I plan to add some remodeling onto my mortgage. That will require me to figure out what I want to do, what I can do, how much it will cost, and who’s going to do it.
So with this blog, I plan to document my experiences as a home owner. At first it will have much to do with the whole process and will turn into design stuff and eventually become about life. After I get that initial home stuff done, I have many other plans like building a shop in the garage, tearing out a deck and installing a new patio, etc. I’m sure I will probably lean into subjects having to do with cooking and gardening too.
So here is the house I’m buying, as you can see the yard needs some serious work.
2009-08-02 13.04.01

2009-08-02 13.03.50

My head is full of ideas, so with lots of hard work those ideas hopefully will come to fruition. If anyone has a need for a decorative eagle, let me know I’d be happy to let you have them (I think there is another on the garage in back).