Our House, Part Two: Before

(Find Part One here)

As I had said previously, we didn't go to our house until the day after we closed. A Saturday. First reason being that we didn't have keys because Helen didn't give us any. Second reason being that it was already late by the time we actually closed and we wanted to go out and celebrate. So, we went the next day and that was fine. We went with no real goal in mind, just slightly giddy and terrified at the fact that we now owned a whole building and, suddenly, were expected to do something (anything) with it. Odd feeling, indeed.

This is now ours?

It was the third time Matt was in the house and the fourth for me. The first time for either of us that we were there, just us, with no one else. So, we took that opportunity to really look around and voice our opinions out loud.

As an aside, I am a strong proponent of ALWAYS voicing your opinions on a house and never being afraid to really look around at a house when with an agent. How else are you really going to be able to know if you can live there? Unfortunately, it's easier said than done.

(I am SO embarrassed that the only picture I have of the powder room is one with the toilet seat up. Gross!)

We knew going into this that we would need to do some work. As I said previously, Helen offered previous tenants a reduced rent in exchange for helping her with upkeep and maintenance of the property. I think she also allowed them free reign on painting and decorating (if I may be so bold as to call it that) and the like. Top of our list was refinishing the hardwood floors. They had certainly seen better days and definitely needed some work. The floors upstairs looked like they had previously been covered with carpet (I know this because the tack strips were still there) and, as a result, were in much better shape than the floors downstairs. But, that's not to say they were perfect.

Beyond the floors, paint was also high on the list. It looked like the walls hadn't been painted in quite some time and a fresh coat and some color would really do the place some good (and, by color, I mean color that doesn't look like barf. And in moderation. See also: kitchen before pictures.).

We weren't horribly fond of the kitchen. I feel that my pictures of it hardly convey the horribleness that was this kitchen. Everything.was.yellow. Like, YELLOW. The walls, the cabinets, the ceiling, the trim, the doors. Everything. And, not a nice yellow. But, a gross, ugly yellow. There must have been a sale on yellow paint and the previous tenant was too lazy to be bothered with not slopping paint everywhere. Of course, we agreed it needed to be painted, like, yesterday. Beyond that, we kept going back and forth on whether we could live with it beyond that or if we needed to remodel it right away.

On the one hand, remodeling the kitchen would be expensive and time consuming and we weren't sure if we REALLY needed to do it right away. If we just painted, maybe it wouldn't be so bad and we'd learn to adapt and live without a dishwasher for a while.

However, on the other hand, the cabinets were that same hideous yellow as everything else. They would need to either be painted or replaced. Also, there was no dishwasher. And, go ahead and call me a spoiled brat, but the only time I've ever lived without a dishwasher was during those few months in that small apartment when I moved to Wisconsin and I honestly felt that my quality of life was severely diminished in doing so. There, I said it. I need a dishwasher*. The final, and most logical, argument in favor of the remodel right away was the fact that we wouldn't be living in the house for another month. We thought it would be much, MUCH better to do it while we weren't living there than to do it while we were and needed the kitchen.

Either way, we never really made a firm decision. We kind of decided we'd start with the floors and painting and just see how it went timeline-wise and we would revisit the possibility of a kitchen remodel periodically.

Luckily, Matt's summer job in high school was for a company that installed and refinished gym floors. So, he knew all about doing this and I allowed him to take over on this job and I would help, as needed. Really, I just wanted to move on to painting, so I focused on picking out my colors and making the really tough decisions. We were also very fortunate to have our friend Jayme available at our beck and call to assist with all things home-related. Really, he was too good to us. I'm sure he will tell you that we were horrible slave drivers that never let him rest and made him do all of the tough work while we sat around and at bon bons. And, that's probably sort of true. But really, I don't think we could have done this without him.

We didn't start our work right away. We spent that first weekend of home ownership just taking it all in and planning our attack. Since Matt worked full time during the week, we decided we would spend a few hours each evening and all day on the weekends working on the house. We spoke briefly with Helen about our plan. We just thought that would be the polite thing to do. She seemed fine with it. Or, if she wasn't, she did a good job at hiding it. At that point, we were still a little bitter over not getting keys and feeling that we had to answer to her on everything, so it wasn't much of a concern to us.

At this point, neither of us really knew what we had signed ourselves up for. We really thought we had this one in the bag. That would soon all change, but in the meantime, our ignorance was bliss.
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*As I type this out, it's comical, given the fact that our dishwasher broke last summer and we managed to go ALL summer without replacing it. Yes, it was hell and yes, I still need a dishwasher.