Uh Oh

The NY Times has an article about post-renovation depression. Once people finish their projects they find themselves depressed thinking about all the things they could have done and wondering what to do with all the free time they find themselves with.

For a split second I wondered whether I would be depressed when we finished our renovation. Then I remembered two things. One, we have four children that we homeschool. Filling empty time has never been a problem. Two, we'll never actually be done with our renovation.

Problem solved.

(The NYT article spotted by my buddy NBS.)

Munch, Munch

Apparently at some time in its past the Purple House had so many termites dining on it that it's a wonder nobody actually heard them gobbling away. Or maybe they did. Fortunately for us, we haven't found any active colonies. Unfortunately, every time we turn around, we find more old damage.

When we bought the house we knew one sill had some termite damage. We didn't know it how extensive, until we pulled the floor above it up. We've found a few other sills that also had extensive damage and the whole back of the house seems to have had a major infestation. The good news is that because we found termite damage to the old sheathing when we were taking off the siding on the back of the house, we're going to be able to insulate the kitchen from the outside without ripping down the plaster on the inside. Not the ideal method, but now the whole back of the house will be insulated, sheathed and Tyveked.

I think I'll be spending next winter in the kitchen, laundry room or master bathroom. I guess that means life won't really be changing much.

These are the People In My Neighborhood

Thanks to the Big Purple House, we've added a whole new assortment of acquaintances. First, there is the previous owner -- she was a stripper. The carpenters she stiffed on redoing the kitchen and whose tools she stole? -- they are identical twins, country musicians and excellent cabinet builders and carpenters. Thanks to the previous owner, we've had our first ever encounter with a repo-man. The neighbor across the street is a French interior decorator specializing in faux painting and fancy plasterwork. The guy who does most of the lawn care in the neighborhood and who we got to help us clear the jungle goes by the sole name of Junior. We got Crazy Billy to cut down our tree, and made another neighbor mad in the process.

We're sorry to be leaving the neighborhood we live in now, but we sure will have more interesting stories to tell about the people who came into our lives thanks to the Big Purple House.

House Cleaning and Packing

That's where I've been for the last week. Last Monday or Tuesday our real estate agent called and asked if, although our current house isn't on the market, if we'd be willing to show it over the weekend to a house-hunter coming in from out of town.

Of course we were, and what followed was a week of frantic house cleaning and packing. Fortunately, we'd gotten a Mobile Attic storage container delivered to the back yard a few days before, so we actually had a place to stick the stuff we packed up.

Our house has never been as clean as it was on Sunday when the buyer came through -- not even when we had it on the neighborhood home tour last April -- then I didn't let people look at my closets or bathrooms. But we didn't get an offer.

That would have been too good to be true, I suppose. I'm sorry to have not gotten the place sold without even having to list it and go through open houses and the like, but apparently the buyer wanted an old house she could muck up remodel into something modern. Our house is already not particularly pure and untouched, but it still maintains a lot of the character and feel of an older house and I would sort of hate to see someone come in and transform it into something really modernist. So I'm not particularly broken hearted that she didn't buy it.

The good news is that we're farther along towards being ready for listing the place than we would be otherwise. The bad news is we still have to paint.

Will It Stay Purple?

One of the first questions people ask when they hear we bought a purple house is whether or not we intend to change the color. In fact, all our neighbors asked the same thing. It's really more of a lavender than a Barney purple, with grey and black accents, but I can't say the colors were ones I would have chosen.

I can't say I love the colors and I don't really think they are historically right for the house, and the previous owner didn't even do a great job on the painting, but it is freshly painted. It's definitely better than nothing and gives the house some protection from the elements.

There are plenty of other things for us to spend money on, so until it absolutely needs repainting our neighbors are just going to have to get used to purple. I think it will look a lot better once I dig out some flower beds and get my hands dirty with some landscaping projects.

Laundry

Unsurprisingly with four children, I do a lot of laundry. So while we are planning the arrangement for our the laundry room, master bathroom and all, I asked that we find some way to put a pass-through door from the master suite into the laundry room-- sort of like a sideways laundry chute. So our architect added one to our plans. I'll be able to stick clothes from the master closet right into the laundry and send them back the other way.



Also dropping into the laundry room will be a laundry chute for the clothes from upstairs. We had one in the house I grew up in in Ohio and I loved being able to through my clothes down, although I confess to often stuffing too much down at once and having to find a broom to unjam the thing. Maybe it will encourage the kids to pick up their laundry, at least until the novelty wears off.

What Kind of House is It?

When we first started looking at the big purple house, we called it a Victorian. But it didn't really seem all that Victorian. It's almost perfectly symmetrical and the window and door casings really seemed more like those in a Craftsman house. It was also built in 1909. Some folk Victorians were still being built, but it was really the end of the era.

So we started researching the style. First, we went to the Metropolitan Historic Zoning Commission's website and pulled up their documents about guidelines for the area into which we were moving.

In their guidelines, they refer to the purple house's style simply as a "Turn-of-the-Century" which is an unsatisfying name, to say the least.

We wanted to find out more and see if another name existed. So we checked out A Field Guide to American Houses by by Virginia and Lee Mcalester. And there it was -- our house is an eclectic Neo-Classical cottage. Also, worth noting, it is essentially a one-story Foursquare.

So now we know.

The Big Renovation Project

Work at the Big Purple Money Pit continues. We got the rest of the hall bathroom demolished and pulled out the bath tub. We had considered leaving the tub in place, but are happy that we pulled it out. The joist under it had been cut at some point and it was essentially unsupported. It would have really sucked to start a bath on the first floor and finished it in the basement.

We've almost got our ideas hashed out with the architect for how to finish the back of the downstairs and rework the upstairs.

I must admit that I'm feeling beaten down by the process. It seems like we'll never be able to put the house back in order and live there. Right now, with no working plumbing and several walls ripped out, it may arguably be less valuable than it was when we bought it, despite have a firmer foundation and new wiring.

I know it is now a sounder place and we're getting to the point where we can start putting it back together again, but it still feels like it's not coming together. Sigh.

Coal Miner's Wife

This is what you look after you take down a ceiling in a house that was heated for many years with coal.

And of course, should you try this in your own home -- wear a respirator.

About That Tree

As I mentioned below, we had to take down a very large, very rotten tree. It wasn't a particularly nice tree -- just a hackberry, but it was huge. We got the best price on taking it down from a guy known to some as "Crazy Billy."

Crazy Billy might not be what you'd call an educated man and looking at him just might make you think of Deliverance, but he knows trees and he knows how to cut them down safely.

So Crazy Billy and his guys were roping up and cutting the large limbs off the giant hackberry when one of our neighbors to be came running up, demanding they stop immediately and come down. Apparently the neighbor started demanding their license and taking photos of their trucks to document what was going on and when words were exchanged, they went inside and complained to our carpenters about the incident.

Then the neighbors called Justin, saying that it was a "historic" tree and would irreparably change the skyline. They wanted to know who diagnosed that the tree was rotten and noted that "the tree guys didn't seem very educated."

We hate to make enemies with neighbors we haven't even met yet. The other three neighbors we've met have all been extremely nice and neighborly. At least this couple doesn't live right next door. Of course, since they aren't even right next door, one wonders even more at their extreme concern over our tree.

We took pictures of the rot just in case we ever hear any more about it. But I'd rather have angry neighbors than a rotten tree in a yard I hope to let my kids run around.

Update

Things are still moving along at the purple house. Of course, we originally hoped we'd be moving in right about now, but naturally that was over optimistic.

Anyway, here's what's been done to date:

• all new duct work and a new upstairs HVAC unit
  
• new wiring, new wire from the street, wiring to the garage and a 200amp service
  
• new metal porch roof and new soffits around the porch with vents (three rotten layers were removed)
  
  
  
  
• a foundation around one room of the house, where we discovered the studs were sitting in dirt
  
• one room jacked up and no longer sloping crazily
  
• new doors on the garage, termite damage removed
  
  
  
  
• jungle in the back yard cleared
  
• hall bathroom gutted
  
• back utility room gutted
  
  
  
  
• flammable 1970s insulation removed
  
• 130 foot tall, 5 foot in diameter tree with significant rot from base up to five feet taken down
  

I think that about covers it. Today we meet with our architect to go over his plans to put the bathrooms, laundry room, kitchen and upstairs back together.
Later, I will share the story of the tree.

What Happens When You Are in the Middle of a Big Renovation?

We all know to expect time delays and unforeseen costs, right? Naturally those things are happening. Although things are moving right along and we've had very good luck getting people to come work on the big purple house, but when you clear away brush and find a quater acre of trash, a five foot in diameter rotten tree, and a destroyed fence where you thought it to be intact or when you pull off fake panelling and find studs sitting in dirt, well, these little surprises take time and money.

And when one of the family cars decides to die on the side of the interstate? You just have to be glad it is the ancient Volvo and not the vehicle that can carry the whole family.
In other words, things are progressing as expected in our renovations of the purple house. The HVAC work is finished. The electricians are mostly finished. The porch roof is just waiting for its metal. The back jungle has been cleared and leveled. A foundation guy is going to be taking care of the room that had studs sitting in dirt. One bathroom has been demolished.

Our original plan saw us hoping to move in some time in January. I suppose it should be obvious that that is not going to happen. However, the bright side of moving it a little later is that we'll be ready to put our current house on the market when more people are ready to start house hunting.

I didn't think it was my first priority, but at a certain point you take the contractor who can get to you first. We have a roofer we already knew we were going to use and he could start removing the porch roof today, so there you go. It was, of course, worse than we realized. It had three layers on it and they were all rotten.

Getting the porch roof off means that the electricians can wire for ceiling fans on the porch without tearing up the beadboard ceiling, so that's a big plus. The electricians start next week.

We've closed. The house is ours. Doom begins.

There's so much to be done and I wish it were all finished and behind us. The place needs to be rewired. We have a lot of plumbing to do. The kitchen isn't finished. We need a fence to keep our dog and children in. The HVAC system apparently needs $10-15,000 worth of work and not the original estimate we got of $2000.

Ugh.

Oh, and we need to get enough done to be living in the place within 60 days.

Certainly, one can live in a construction zone and we will be living in one, but I want to get as much done as possible before we move. Life with four children, one husband, a dog and homeschooling is already enough to keep one busy.

Pictures!

Note that none of the stuff is ours. These are from when we were looking at the house in late summer.

Today is closing day. We're going to actually own the money pit. I hope we love it or at least don't hate it.

The House I Have Now

About four and a half years ago, my husband and I were moving back from Alaska to Tennessee, buying our first house and expecting our second child. We flew down from Fairbanks on a whirlwind house hunting trip, found a house we really liked on the first day, made an offer, and closed on the deal within a month. It was easy. We loved our completely renovated "older" house. We loved our neighborhood. We swore we were never going to move again.



Over the course of those four years, everyone else in the city seemed to decide they loved our neighborhood too. Prices shot through the roof and we were now living in a house we could never have afforded to buy. And of course, everyone else's houses gained as much or more value. We couldn't afford any other house in the neighborhood either. But that was fine, because we were never moving.

Unfortunately, for that plan, over the course of four years we welcomed not only that child I was expecting when we bought the house, but two more children and a dog into the family. And the children didn't stay little. They kept growing bigger and bigger.

Suddenly those 1800 sq. ft. and three bedrooms were a tight squeeze. We weren't about to move, so we downloaded SketchUp and started playing around with plans for an addition. But nothing pleased us. Nothing seemed like it would do everything we wanted it to do.

And then my husband's siblings started house-hunting. It seemed like the thing to do and so I started casually browsing the listings. Our wishlist was very specific. The house had to be older. We prefered something Victorian. It had to be close to downtown. It had to be bigger and have a layout that would suit our family. It had to have some yard. It had to...well, you get the picture.

Nothing on our side of town met the first (and unmentioned above) criteria -- we had to be able to afford to buy it. So we started looking on the other side of the river. That side of town was, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, the place to live. But it became very run down and though it has been coming up for a long time, still has cheaper houses than where I live now. One day we were tooling around and saw a FSBO house that looked promising.

We stopped and knocked on the door and they let us come in to look around. The first few rooms were really pretty, but hmmm...that bathroom leaves a lot to be desired. And there isn't a kitchen! And well, you say the electrical system isn't working right and half the lights won't turn on? Well, isn't that special?

Naturally, we came back and looked around again a few days later. We made an offer and got a contract. We had a certain number in mind for how much it would cost to finish up the place. Then we had an inspection and talked to some contractors and electricians. We cancelled the contract and the homeowner put the house on the market through an agent.

We looked at some other houses, but nothing worked out. We decided to stay put, but the house still felt cramped and crowded. We kept thinking about the big purple house and we kept watching the asking price steadily drop. Finally the asking price reached a point very close to the number in our heads for where could afford to buy the place and do the things it needed done.

We made an offer and after a lot of back and forth and refusals on our part to pay all the closing costs normally carried by the seller, we had a new contract. We knew, more or less what we were getting into this time around. We know upfront what many of our costs will be and we're fortunate that we can continue to live in our current house while the new house gets a complete electrical overhaul, some new plumbing and the kitchen gets more or less completed. I'm some what overwhelmed to be leaving my nice cozy, finished home for all the work the new place will need even after those big things are done, but I'm looking forward to the space and the more historical house. The rest remains to be seen.