Love at First Sight?

Do you believe in love at first sight? After looking at many different houses, in many shapes, sizes and conditions. We saw two that really had our hearts pitter-pattering before we came across this gem. She may not look like much, but we could look past all the ickyness and could see her heart and her potential.

Allow me to introduce you to our first home and her first pictures.

The dining room.

The green is so not us. At all. Especially because they didn't make sure that it stayed on just the walls, it's on the ceiling and window frames.

Next to the dining room is the kitchen. Again with the green. This is one of the best kitchens we've seen. A little elbow grease and it'll be as good as new. Did you take notice to the ivy above the cabinets?



Other side of the kitchen, looking into the living room. Check out all those bottles of booze! Just another hint at it being the party house. In case all the holes in the walls weren't a dead give away.


Downstairs half bath. Wall paper. Need I say more? How about padded vinyl toilet seat?


And the living room. Not taken on our first night because it was uber dark and the pictures just didn't turn out. Love the red walls, no? J/k.
And the other side...remember when we had to remove the chimney and fix the wall?
Nasty and messy, huh? Don't you want an old fireplace (minus the walls) in your living room?
Heading up the stairs to the laundry room. Hmm, maybe if they kept the washer and dryer they wouldn't have left so many dirty clothes behind. You can't see it from here, but there's super nasty linoleum on the floor covered with dryer lint since the dryer didn't vent outside. See the vent in the bottom left?

The room at the top of the stairs. The best painted one in the house. Not the cleanest, but not as bad as the others.
The master. Again with the green. Someone was obsessed.
And another view on another day. With the bathroom and the huge walk-in closet. Bonus!
And the last bedroom. The light didn't work, hence the flashlight. Pretty plain. Not too bad. Just super dirty walls.
Until you see the carpet. Blahh!!
Oh and the closet. What closet? Hello chimney! More booze?
So that's the mess we fell in love with. It's fun to look back, because it's only been a bit over 2 weeks and already she looks so different. Especially, as I sit here in the living room looking at the spot where the chimney mess used to be.

Hopefully we'll be wrapping up the big changes this week and stay tune to the first round of 'after' pictures. :-)

It's Official!

As of noon on Friday, July 30th the house is ours! The past 2 weeks have been jammed packed with renovations, including, but definitely not limited too cleaning (lots and lots of cleaning), painting, ripping up carpets, laying flooring, replacing doors, knocking out walls and hanging gutters.

Saturday with the help of a ton of friends and family we loaded everything up and officially moved in. It wasn't (and still isn't) pretty, but we're in and it's ours!

It hasn't been and easy process, and it still isn't. Tuesday a cop showed up at our door looking for the previous owner to serve her papers. And tonight we came home to our back door all busted up with our locks replaced with new ones, complete with a lock box. It was too late in the day to come to a definite conclusion, but it looks like something slipped through the cracks with the bank who held the previous mortgage and it got sent to foreclosure. Just something else to deal with.

Stay tuned for a bunch of before pictures, just a warning, it's not for the weak of heart. :-)