Dear Me ~ Part 3

And so the re-construction began this week for real. I've gone a quite a roller-coaster of emotions about this purchase. Everything from "this is wonderful" to the to be expected "OMG ~ "What am I doing, have I completely lost my mind!!!!". Let it not be said that I do something like this quietly and with no outward show of emotion.

I also made it a point to talk to my children about this ~ and they were amazingly supportive, vocal in their love of the idea and more than willing to suggest way to spend the money!!! I've been living in apartments for so long, I'd almost forgotten about what owning a home is like ~ almost.

The house had been owned by one family since 1960. The Father has passed away a number of months ago, and the Mother wasn't doing all that well. The Son came a lived with her for awhile, and decided that she needed to move back to where he lived and worked. That's how the estate sale came to be. the son helped gather the stuff up for the sale, and then the next day, he and his Mother boarded a plane. They literally locked up the house and walked away....leaving in the process an incredible amount of things ~ including the contents of the refrigerator.

The head of the estate sale outfit has his phone number and we connected by phone. It was a very positive chat and then he had his realtor call me. Several phone calls later it was decided that it would NOT be a good idea for his agent to represent both of us - so another agent from the same office called me and we were off to the races!!!

The closing was two days before our beloved congress tried to drive the economy over the cliff - really good timing on my part!!

My dearly loved son-in-law is a contractor and is doing all the work on the house. He also has a lot of work to do for various franchise owners of a certain fast food outlet. Again, with them rolling out a new menu item requiring re-doing most of the kitchens in a rather short space of time, my timing couldn't have been better.

More tomorrow or Saturday. Until then here's a teaser pic of the start of the re-construction!




There will be a LOT more pictures of the mess of re-doing it all that I will post later. My daughter took them, and her camera does pictures that are HUGE HUGE HUGE! She'll get them to me, and I'll get them into a size that will fit....

Dear Me ~ Part 2

The clean-up of the blog-house took a bit longer than I anticipated. You see, just as I was about to start blogging again ~ I bought a house. Yes, I finally have become part of the "landed gentry". Alas, it's not a fiefdom with hot and cold running peasants, but a charming "mid-century" (that's estate sale-ese for 1960's) house.

One of my dearest friends, I'll refer to him as BW works these sales. He called me one day and basically said: "You've GOT to see the cra...stuff for sale at this place". I've been to these with him before and a lot of times, it really is ... um ... uh ... stuff that should have been done in a yard sale/garage sale. But, getting to see it is getting out of the apartment. He arrived, and off we went.

I've been in literally dozens or more houses over the last few years ~ all types, styles, sizes and shapes. (Hmmm, that somewhat reminds me of my dating pattern!) I was NOT prepared for what happened when I walking into THIS place. My poor friend was trying to get me to look at things for sale and I'm saying things such as: "Wow, that's an impressive sun-room", "This must be the hall to the bedroom", "Good Lord ~ THAT toilet is nasty!", "How long did they live here?", How much are they asking for it?"

The price his boss had told him was amazingly low AND amazingly inaccurate! However, the real price was not out of line with the neighborhood and what the place was worth.

I'll be back probably tomorrow, and start the saga of this house - the purchase - in inspection and, since demolition on the interior started today - the story of the changes to the interior.

Until then ~ here's just a couple of teaser shots for you ....