Crunch Time

Erik and I are moving into the house this weekend. I'm getting increasingly nervous about this for many, many reasons:

1. Construction equipment has taken up seemingly-permanent residence in our soon-to-be living room
2. Potential for cats escaping
3. Workers have been urinating in our upstairs shower (No, I didn't mean to say "bathroom" or "toilet." They're pissing in our fucking shower.)
4. Furnace (which was "fixed" last week) is blowing out cold air
5. Water is not yet on
6. Appliances, including fridge, will not be delivered until Tuesday (though I guess leaving out perishables becomes less of an issue if our furnace isn't up and running soon)
7. Anxiety about being oven-less for any period of time
8. Workers are smoking cigarettes in the house
9. Disgusting filth of house + futility of cleaning efforts until work is complete
10. Ummm... and because no progress has been made this week.

Oh wait, I lied:

It's our new, energy-efficient tankless (AKA "pass-through") water heater. Hope you're impressed, because it was the only. thing. that. got. done. this. week.

I guess they also finished our electrical upgrade, from 110 to 220V. That's the good news.

The bad news is that to do the heavy-up, they tore out more wall and broke (as in "smashed") through the basement window! Just before more rain! Yay!

Hopefully our contractor will have some good news for us in response to my e-mail (I tried to keep things simple for her):

Hi Marcella,

Erik and I are moving into the house this weekend.
We visited last night and the furnace was only blowing out cold air – this is a huge problem. Please advise.
The upstairs bedrooms and bathroom and the main floor back bedroom will now be off limits to workers, unless they need to be there for construction reasons. We will need a detailed timeline of when these rooms will need to be accessed.
We’ve found several cigarette butts in the house – as I’m pregnant, smoking in the house needs to stop immediately.
I look forward to seeing your Friday update, including a timeline of when:
- Dining room will be complete
- Windows will be installed
- Fans will be installed in bathrooms
Our priority is to finish work on the main/upper floors so that Erik and I have a space to live. The basement can wait.

Thanks,
amy

Drywall Demo

In PG County - especially in older, previously-vacant houses such as ours - it's rare to find a basement without some mold or mildew. (These basements were never supposed to exist - when people starting expanding down, they built directly on top of the concrete slab. The concrete sweats, the moisture seeps up into the unventilated space, and bam - you've got yourself a problem.) As you've seen, our home was no exception.

After we'd put in the contract, I started researching "mold remediation" and almost had a heart attack - quotes for water-proofing an entire basement ran between $10-$30K depending on the extent of the damage. We had only allocated $30K for the ENTIRE rehab process. Very fortunately, the foundation was fully intact and we were assured that the inexpensive installation of a few windows and vents would go a long way towards resolving the issue. We'd also, of course, have to tear down a few walls:

Back basement bedroom

Front basement bedroom

After seeing all the drywall down, we realized how easy it would be to combine the two rooms into a larger living space - so this wall will be coming down completely to make our new family room.

The demo continued upstairs in the dining room (where our little bitty ceiling leak had turned into possible structural damage):

Someday, this will be a dining room.

We opted to remove all of the dining room ceiling (instead of just a patch) - including the disgusting textured swirls. Yay!

Our weekly update:
Hi Amy,
this our friday/saturday update.
the tankless water heater will be install over the weekend.
once the water heater is in we will then repair the drywall.
another application of mold removal will be applied.

Rehab 101

In case I haven't already bored you with the details: Erik and I purchased our home using (all of our wedding money - thanks! - a bit from my parents, and) an FHA 203K (aka "rehab") loan. Basically, we were able to finance the price of the house plus the estimated construction costs; our contractor draws money from the allotted escrow account as needed, and anything that doesn't get spent gets tossed right back at our mortgage. The program is great in that it provides under-financed buyers with the ability to buy fixer-uppers that may otherwise sit unoccupied, and I highly recommend it to anyone considering unconventional loans (provided you have a bit of patience - the government backing means a lot more red tape and owner-initiated processes). The only catch: all improvements must be made within three months. That timeline was just fine with us, since our lease expires on Jan 31. And so the countdown began!

By the time we got back from Florida and called our contractor with the happy news, we were down two weeks. Everyone was in agreement that the roof was our first priority... unfortunately, you can't tear down a roof in rainy weather, and Maryland Januarys aren't exactly famous for their blue skies. After two heavy rains and many nights spent pacing through the apartment as I worried about the flooding that was surely taking place at our house, the roofers were able to start their work. Here's what our roof looked like before:
Everything - from the shingles to the sheathing - was rotted straight through and had to be replaced. Erik got this shot on Jan 13, while they were replacing the underlayment (dig all the technical terms?):

We got our first bit of bad news when it was discovered that the dining room leak (which originated under the left dormer) had caused more than just ceiling damage - the window frame was rotted through, and the structural beams were also in jeopardy. This whole wall was going to have to come down:

And I just like this last picture because it showcases our Pepto-pink wall so nicely! (Plus it was really nice, after 4 1/2 months of watching our house sit there and deteriorate, to know that things were finally getting done.)

Here is the update I got from our contractor on Jan 17 (she's a builder, not a writer):

hi amy, just to give you an update.
your roof is done. we purt out the drywall in the basement and remove the drywall in the ceiling. i waited until sunday. because i wanted to make sure when i gave you the update the roof was completed.
you had a lot of rotten boards on the roof. we completely rip off the entire roof and replace the entire roof. you roof was a little more steep then we has thought so it took a little longer.because we had to be very careful.
all the damaged drywall has been removed from the basement.
the ceiling in the dinning room has been removed.
we removed the old appliances from the basement and kitchen.
this week we will be working on the
gutters.
heating system. water heater.
plumbing
i did speak with jim if once you order the windows then i will install them. so as soon as you can order them i take care of it.

A Side Note:

I would be remiss in my recollection of all things house-related if I did not provide the following warning: DO NOT GET A HOME LOAN THROUGH BANK OF AMERICA. Due to misplaced paperwork, rampant miscommunication, and a particularly bad speller by the name of Ahalia, the original Nov 4 closing date (from our Aug 27 contract) was extended a total of five times. As each closing date passed, we'd submit another extension to the selling bank and keep our fingers crossed that they wouldn't rip up our contract and wait for a higher bid.

Finally, after four months and enough work to qualify me as a mortgage broker, we closed on December 23, mere minutes before we began our long drive to Florida for Christmas break. We wouldn't see the house again until 2010... but I'd taken some pictures to remind us of the work ahead.

Blue roofing shingles do not good doorsteps make.

Dining room ceiling water damage

One of the better windows in the house

Kitchen and super-lovely back door

Scary basement shower

Even scarier basement mildew (inspection found no problems with the foundation, but our fingers are still crossed that the mold doesn't become a recurring problem)

...and last but certainly not least, our creepy "downstairs kitchen," complete with old nasty fridge partially blocking the only point of egress. (We get to spend double money - haul away and demo of this mess + reconstruction as a laundry room.)

Adventures in House Hunting

After two years of dealing with the paper-thin walls of Hyattsville House (no joke: we could hear our neighbors sneeze), Erik and I decided that we'd had enough of apartment living - it was time to try our hands at home ownership! With the lovely and talented Linda at our side, we began our foray into Prince George's County foreclosures... which was exactly as dismal as it sounds. The first few houses we looked at were down-right scary - bad neighborhoods, busy streets, crumbling facades, basement mildew you could smell from the street. (Did I mention the hoarder with the flooded basement who tried to sell us a Michael Jackson cassette tape for five bucks? We saw his house, too.) Three weekends and 20+ walk-throughs into our search, we were starting to wonder if a crack den in Riverdale was really the best we could do with our budget.

So it was with admittedly low expectations that we entered the dilapidated, turquoise-rimmed Cape Cod off of Kenilworth Avenue. The roof was a mess, the front stairs were made of blue shingles, and the front gate had CAUTION tape tied to it, sure... but the house had good bones, compared to many of the homes we'd seen. (It certainly beat the Woodstream townhouse that was advertised on MRIS as "some work needed.") Our opinions were further skewed by the fact that the power was still on, and the air conditioning (central air!) and tiled floors (ugly tile, but still: tile!) provided a welcome reprieve from the late August heat. There was some mildew in the basement, but the three full bathrooms (three!) made that minor flaw easy to overlook. We were sold, and asked our Realtor to write up a contract that night: we were on our way to buying a house!