New House Sneak Peek!

For everyone that doesn't know, we officially have a closing time! Tomorrow morning at 9AM we will be signing papers for our new to us house! We will still have a couple months of tiny house living since our loan is a rehab loan. The house has sat vacant for around four years, so there is surface mildew on some of the trim work, the plumbing is stripped out, the furnace needs replaced, the electric is shut off, and the carpet is coming up in places, not to mention there are raccoon tracks going from the open dryer vent to the toilet (and that raccoon enjoyed playing in that toilet!).

Once we sign Friday morning, we are heading straight over to the house to change the door locks and start ripping out some carpet and drop ceiling. This weekend is a little messed up, because Luke has a photo shoot Sunday, and Avery and Henna's birthday party is Saturday afternoon, but we are hoping to get as much ripped out as we can before our contractor officially comes in to start working. That means we'll be bouncing all over the place this weekend. It really doesn't help that it gets dark at 5PM, and with no electricity, we'll have to drag dad's generator back up there with extension cords and lights so we can see if we do anything in the evenings.

While the demo is going on, we also plan to get a box truck and empty our storage units into the small garage, and grab as much of our outside stuff from dad's yard as we can before it freezes to the ground. We also hope to move Luke's Fieros from dad's yard, but that will require us to push all the crap that's in the big pole building (nicknamed "The Toybox) out of the way. There's china, a dresser, a wood totem, craft stuff, VHS cassettes...just a bit of everything in there!

I hope to have a lot of blog posts about the house progress, but in the meantime, how about a sneak peek of the property!

This is the fireplace in the living room. Technically, we are going to call it the library, since we plan on using the formal dining room as the living room with the TV. This room will have bookshelves, the piano, and probably a table for games.

This is creepy Halloween Tree. It's in between the house and the driveway, and looks to be wrapped around a windmill base. It's super neat, and it had orange flowers sprouting from it earlier this year.

This is facing directly East when you stand in the driveway. You can see the little deck and back entrance into the kitchen, the concrete patio area, the toybox (red building) in the far distance, and lots of trees. 5 acres is massive after living on a city lot for 11 years!

This is the two car garage where the driveway is. I guess it can be my garage since Luke gets the big one LOL!

This is the view facing Northwest from the driveway. The overgrowth shrubby areas are on our property. The nicely manicured field is the next property over. We can see a lot of sky. Perfect for the Observatory we want to build.

Here's the Southeast view from the driveway. You can see the front porch on the other side of Halloween Tree, and it's nothing but farmland and sod farm fields in front of the house.

Stay tuned! We'll have a lot of in progress pictures from demo work coming up in the next few weeks!

Hurdles of Buying the Homestead

Closing on our new house is supposed to happen Friday. Late last week we were hit with the fact that the loan people need a water test done, to check for E. Coli and coliforms. Generally that wouldn't be a problem; call the realtor, get in, turn on the tap, and BAM, sample. Not so easy with a rehab house that's been vacant for about 4 years and owned by a bank in like California. The power is shut off, and it can't be turned on without an inspection from the utility company. The inspection would fail because of wiring (that will be fixed in the rehab loan). On top of that, all of the copper piping has been stolen, so you can't even get water from the sink!

It's a good thing we are so handy. We had loan people and realtor people saying it was impossible to start the well pump with a generator (why do you think people buy generators in the country!?!). We spent all Saturday-Monday visiting the house each day to turn on the well pump and let the water circulate for a bit.

It started off with a nice yellowish brownish tinge, with sulfur and iron smells, but after running it for a few days, it has cleared a lot. On Monday I couldn't smell the sulfur anymore, but it definitely has iron, which we figured, since the bathroom sink and tub both have iron stains on them.

Luke got up nice and early this morning to run back over with the sample bottles from the water treatment plant and get a sample, then run it to the plant, since they do testing today and it needed to be in by 10:00AM.  We should know after noon tomorrow what the results are, and we believe this is our final hurdle!

We'll see what tomorrow brings!

Tiny Updates...

There has been so much going on this summer, that I still haven't gotten Lexi and Lilly's birthday party put up, or any holidays for that matter. Luke has been busy with weddings, and I've been busy trying to organize and pack up this house. We still haven't sold the house, and we are actually considering renting in out. No matter what we do with the house though, it is time for a change. We currently have a plan that involves my dad buying a barn/shed to put in his backyard. We will finish off the inside, install a small bathroom/kitchen, and move in. It will be extremely tight to fit a family of 6 in to a rectangle that is probably no bigger than 12 feet x 36 feet, but in the long run we will save money, pay down debt quicker, and that will make it easier for us to buy the house of our dreams!

With that current goal in mind, Pinterest has become a major inspiration for minimalist living, tiny homes, loft bedrooms, and how small can I make a bathroom ideas! Hopefully things will slow down enough in the next week or so for me to get caught up with blog pictures, and then it will probably get super crazy as we move!

House Showings

Selling a house is insane! I don't know how real estate agents sleep dealing with clients all day! We've lived in our house for 10 years, and we've gone from renting the upstairs to friends, to turning the house into a single family home and bringing our 4 daughters here to grow up. Now it's time for change. We don't want to raise our girls in the city, so the house is for sale!

We've been on the market since October, and we had a buyer in December which kept our house off the market until mid February, when he got word he may get deployed, and didn't want to deal with having a new house and being overseas for a year.

Now we are back on the active market, and even though more than half of our stuff is in storage, it's still just as stressful keeping this place clean. Dishes, papers, candy wrappers, toys, laundry... I cannot wait until we finally sell!

This week we are focusing on getting ready for an open house (plus Lexi and Lilly's party). It's supposed to rain most of the week, so we are cleaning out the basement. We hope to put up some waterproof basement paint to help with the leaky spots (it's gonna leak, it's old, like 1869 old!)

On a better note, the weather is supposed to be in the 60's! Spring is finally starting to arrive in Ohio!!