I remember walking through our house for the first time. It looked AMAZING on the MLS. Clearly they only posted the very best pictures. Everything looked decent enough, maybe a little dated but I still loved it. The listing never showed the bathrooms, for good reason. They seemed like the worst part of the whole house (ha! If we only really knew!). But they were usable, so we could renovate them later on. And the view! Our house seriously has an amazing view. We are up in the foothills so our neighbors are down the hill from us and there is scrub oak between our properties so it is extremely private. Even in the winter. Ok, the yard was pretty bad too, but nothing a good mowing and probably a new lawn in the back couldn't fix. After getting excited and imagining my new life there with our new baby (yes, I was 9 months pregnant, how's that for perfect timing) I was ready to jump on the house. We got in the car and I said, "I love it!" My husband was floored. We had very different experiences with the walk through. He said the entire time he was just keeping a running list of everything that would need to be fixed. I think the only thing that saved it was the view. We both loved it.
We bought our house in June of 2013, closing two weeks after we had our daughter, June (yes, her name is June and she was born in June. We get it).
The renovations began immediately. We lived in a rental and needed to be out and into our house as quickly as possible. Unfortunately during the inspection phase there ended up being quite a few things that needed to be remedied before we could move in. There was mold in the basement, we had termites, and we wanted to redo our kitchen cabinets while we weren't living in the house yet. So much to do and only about a month to do it! Randal would go to work early then go straight from work over to the house to do more work and then come home around 11pm or midnight, sometimes later.
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| Mold remediation |
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| Randal couldn't come back for lunch but he managed to find a pot, a can of spaghetti sauce, noodles and a fork at the new house. It's the little things, you know? |
He was exhausted; I was exhausted. I had a newborn to take care of and I packed our rental home up. When I wasn't doing that, June and I would head over to the house to paint and clean and get things ready for the move. It was so much work. Oh, and if that wasn't enough. We also decided to reno our kitchen just about a week or so before we were set to move in. It had a false ceiling (fur down? fir down?) that went down to the top of our cabinets, so probably 15". Then in the center of the kitchen it opened back up and had mirrored tiles and a light fixture. I know what you're thinking, "Mirrored tiles AND an outdated light fixture? But it sounds so beautiful!". We knew we wanted to get rid of it someday but after putting in so much work, the last thing Randal wanted to do was start another project that could delay our move in. Well his dad was over helping and he made the point that if we didn't do it now then we never would. You wouldn't want to live in that intense of a construction zone. So they opened it up. And it RAINED insulation. It was everywhere. Our house is so dusty and I honestly think it goes back to all the renovations we did and keep doing. Anyway, they brought the ceiling up so it was flush with the rest of the house and now it is hard to imagine it ever being so low. Those were the biggest projects we tackled before our house was livable, but we moved in and the work didn't slow down, we just had to live around it. If you have ever lived through a reno, you know how awful that truly is.
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