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| Farmhouse on Closing Date |
Over the past couple years, I would spend my Sunday morning reviewing home listings with a cup of coffee. I was ready to get out of our current home and take on a place more interesting. Kaitlyn and I were living in a pretty decent starter-style home that didn't have too many problems. However, I also wanted to make improvements and felt that they would be wasted on our current abode.
Neither of us wanted the typical 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom, 2 car attached garage on 1/4 acre postage stamp lot. We would joke, quite often, that whatever house we ended up with would likely be a week away from falling down. Not that we have the skills or money to do a complete restoration, but because we are always drawn to the old style farmhouses which are increasingly difficult to find.
I had been getting more serious about my browsing. There were a couple properties which I had my eye on for a good while that we finally decided to schedule a showing. None of those places worked out, but they served their purpose of getting us thinking about taking the next step towards a new home.
Then, one morning, I found it. A farmhouse on 5.75 acres thats foundation was laid in 1846. The interior was in the arts and crafts style and the exterior had dozens of mature trees and fields which could easily be converted into pasture.
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| Trim Details in Parlor |
After a second cup of coffee I decided to show Kaitlyn the listing. She thought it looked interesting and was worth looking into. Soon, we were taking our first walk through the house. It had been added on to numerous times over the years. We immediately knew it would be a lot of work, but the house felt really solid and we thought she would clean up quite nicely. This opinion would later be repeated by every inspector and contractor that set foot inside the place.
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| Listing Photo: Additions East of the Main House |
I was ready to sign on the dotted line that day. Kaitlyn was caught by surprise
since she thought the farmhouse idea would be a few years down the
road. I bought the home we were living in 8 years ago, so it was going to be Kaitlyn who signed off on this one. On top of the uncertainty that we could manage this kind of a house, we were also getting married within the next few months.
It took at least 2 weeks to go over the details to make her feel like this is a good idea. Everything from floor plans, to budgeting, to timelines of selling our current house, to reviewing all the listings within a 30 mile radius. Finally, after a lot of talks and number crunching, she warmed up to the
idea of buying sooner as opposed to later. The winning concept was to buy the fixer upper now and make it 'just right' instead of waiting, spending more, and getting something that was 'too hot', 'too cold', 'too soft' or 'too hard'. We kept our fingers crossed against a trifecta of getting married, buying a house and getting pregnant. Two out of three was enough.
Over the course of 6 weeks we had every inspector that I can think of look at the place; general home inspector, plumbing, well and septic, termite, structural engineer, you name it. The list of problems kept growing and the seller wasn't too keen on fixing things up. Some things the seller did very well (furnace replacement and a primary beam replacement). Others we had to fight tooth and nail for (mold, termite, and powder post beetle treatment) and some never were addressed.
After a good 5 or 6 counter offers, we finally reached an agreement with the seller. Closing came and went, and three weeks after we got married we were the proud owners of the farmhouse; trim, fields, unaddressed items, et al.
The goal of this blog is to detail the work that we do and the problems we address. We plan on providing plenty of pictures along the way and hope that it'll be an entertaining and informative read.
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| Listing Photo: From road to house |
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