Alright, so as many of you know, I closed on my first house on June 19. [MENTION=19833]g36 monkeys wifey[/MENTION] also paid her car off on the same day, and will be coming to grace me with her presence!!
Anyhow, found this house on the other side of town, about 30 mins from where I have lived all my life. The area is pretty nice, and it had a garage and they were not asking an outrageous price.
Major pros:
Brand new roof
New carpet
New paint inside and out
New garage door/opener
Cons:
A/C - has to stay on almost all the time to keep the house remotely cool, it runs and runs and the temperature steadily rises. A/C techs estimated it to be a 6 SEER unit. By comparison, in my area you cannot buy anything less than a 14 SEER. On average, every SEER you increase will save approximately $25-$30 per month in energy; with that math this could save $200 monthly. Several A/C guys gave me that number.
Water heater is old
Water softener system is old and needs to be bypassed/removed or replaced
Trees need to go
Concrete porch needs to be removed and replaced
Front lawn is toast
There is an HOA in this neighborhood; however they are very lax from what I can tall. You will notice a lack of grass in the area.
My realtor and I were out looking at houses, the first place I made an offer on went with a higher offer, so we were out looking around again. This ad happened to pop out while we were already out anyhow. We went over there and I made an offer that night with a few contingencies and they accepted. So, all the fun paperwork stuff in between and here we are.
Anyhow, I will post up the pics from the ad, and then go into some of what we have done so far:
Alright, so as you may notice, the previous owners LOVE almond colored power stuff. I hate it. Decided that would be something I would do right away. I found out, this house has a lot of outlets and switches. We went with white throughout the house and stainless with black insert (switch/receptacle) in the kitchen.
I am getting really good at these though and learning quite a bit. I have made a few mistakes along the way (3-pole switch, switched outlets) but it’s not too bad. Some of the stuff in the kitchen was more difficult mostly from the PO doing a pretty poor job on the tile work on the counters and then the metal plates are not nearly as forgiving as plastic. Anyhow:
As far I can tell, the fridge and stove are new, as well as the vent over the stove. The dishwasher here is recalled by GE, they are offering $150 to get a new GE, so we found a really nice stainless one on sale until the middle of July. I will probably be jumping on it because the recall is for a fire hazard. No thanks.
Sorry some of these are so blurry!
Alright, this was mine and my father’s first good day to work on the house. He was pressure washing while I mowed. I know it looks like mostly dirt but the weeds got tall while waiting for the closing and such. He pressure washed the whole driveway, front walk area, garage and the sidewalks.
I made that giant pile. The person who lives behind me has some vines that were taking over the fence and growing over my shed. I took care of that and got rid of most of the already downed palm leaves. There is still a lot to be done in the yard.
Since we can see the mail box here, let’s talk about it. Of course it is an old crusty metal box. There are a few bottle rockets inside it where kids lit them off at some point. Hopefully I do not have that issue with the new box you will see later!
As you can see in the garage, they did not want to do the pipes correctly for the water heater, so they put it up on pavers. It was worse than this but I was able to remove the other 4 pavers. This will be corrected soon.
Anyhow, found this house on the other side of town, about 30 mins from where I have lived all my life. The area is pretty nice, and it had a garage and they were not asking an outrageous price.
Major pros:
Brand new roof
New carpet
New paint inside and out
New garage door/opener
Cons:
A/C - has to stay on almost all the time to keep the house remotely cool, it runs and runs and the temperature steadily rises. A/C techs estimated it to be a 6 SEER unit. By comparison, in my area you cannot buy anything less than a 14 SEER. On average, every SEER you increase will save approximately $25-$30 per month in energy; with that math this could save $200 monthly. Several A/C guys gave me that number.
Water heater is old
Water softener system is old and needs to be bypassed/removed or replaced
Trees need to go
Concrete porch needs to be removed and replaced
Front lawn is toast
There is an HOA in this neighborhood; however they are very lax from what I can tall. You will notice a lack of grass in the area.
My realtor and I were out looking at houses, the first place I made an offer on went with a higher offer, so we were out looking around again. This ad happened to pop out while we were already out anyhow. We went over there and I made an offer that night with a few contingencies and they accepted. So, all the fun paperwork stuff in between and here we are.
Anyhow, I will post up the pics from the ad, and then go into some of what we have done so far:
Alright, so as you may notice, the previous owners LOVE almond colored power stuff. I hate it. Decided that would be something I would do right away. I found out, this house has a lot of outlets and switches. We went with white throughout the house and stainless with black insert (switch/receptacle) in the kitchen.
I am getting really good at these though and learning quite a bit. I have made a few mistakes along the way (3-pole switch, switched outlets) but it’s not too bad. Some of the stuff in the kitchen was more difficult mostly from the PO doing a pretty poor job on the tile work on the counters and then the metal plates are not nearly as forgiving as plastic. Anyhow:
As far I can tell, the fridge and stove are new, as well as the vent over the stove. The dishwasher here is recalled by GE, they are offering $150 to get a new GE, so we found a really nice stainless one on sale until the middle of July. I will probably be jumping on it because the recall is for a fire hazard. No thanks.
Sorry some of these are so blurry!
Alright, this was mine and my father’s first good day to work on the house. He was pressure washing while I mowed. I know it looks like mostly dirt but the weeds got tall while waiting for the closing and such. He pressure washed the whole driveway, front walk area, garage and the sidewalks.
I made that giant pile. The person who lives behind me has some vines that were taking over the fence and growing over my shed. I took care of that and got rid of most of the already downed palm leaves. There is still a lot to be done in the yard.
Since we can see the mail box here, let’s talk about it. Of course it is an old crusty metal box. There are a few bottle rockets inside it where kids lit them off at some point. Hopefully I do not have that issue with the new box you will see later!
As you can see in the garage, they did not want to do the pipes correctly for the water heater, so they put it up on pavers. It was worse than this but I was able to remove the other 4 pavers. This will be corrected soon.
