90 day review

October 21, 2010

We have officially had the house for 90 days (although it seems like MUCH longer). So, today we'll do a 90 day review to see the progress. First though, we have good news. We CLOSED on our condo in Chicago!! For those of you who don't know, we had issues with several buyers and it was very stressful. With all the work that we are doing/that needs to be done on the house, it's nice not to have two mortgages. Now the money pit can be the full recipient of our income.

The second piece of exciting news is that we proceed to uncover the area where the possible second staircase was hiding. I went to the house, and the hole that I started earlier in the week was now bigger:

The bigger hole

I assumed Alok made this hole bigger and looked inside. Guess what I saw. STAIRS! Yes, fully intact stairs. (I tried to take a picture, but it didn't work, so you'll have to take my word for it).

Alok then stopped by the house and was shocked to learn about the stairs (needless to say, he wasn't the one who widened the hole). He decided to explore more:

Alok in his work clothes banging open the wall (my camera battery died, so sorry for the bad cell phone picture)

Here is what we found:


OK, that picture isn't too exciting, but there are stairs there. We'll get better pictures when we open it up more and can actually see it better. The bad thing is that the stairs were definitely cut off at the end to make the closet, but hopefully the rest are in good shape. More pics to come on this over the weekend.

On for less exciting news, we are also having a bit of a leaf problem here:

Not so exciting, but ridiculous... this was just cleaned out

We also recently had someone come out and check our foundation. Concerns were raised about a massive crack in our basement floor. The foundation people assured us that it was fine, actually foamed a few basement areas that were leaking, and just suggested that we tuckpoint the inside of the basement. We'll do that soon.

Anyway, let's check out the progress of the last 90 days. This will be a picture tour, comparing the house when we got it to what it looks like now. Which pictures look best? (We'll let you decide)

Front of the house

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Back of the house

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BTW, this picture looked so different that I actually had to look at it again. WOW!

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FOYER

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Front parlor

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Front room

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Dining room

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Kitchen

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The apartment area

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Bathroom under the stairs

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Wow, so much change!!

Upstairs hallway

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Master bedroom/bath

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Second upstairs bedroom (next to the Master)

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Upstairs hall bathroom

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3rd/4th bedroom upstairs (with bath)

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Laundry room

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The attic

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5th bedroom/bath

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So, we've done a lot of destroying and we are finally starting to rebuild (although, of course, there will be more destruction). Not to shabby for 90 days, if I do say so.

Yesterday, I also found a few videos from our first day at the house. Here they are:









On another note, people keep asking when we can live in the house. The answer is we don't know. We could potentially live there now, but that would be a major health hazard (for anyone, but I also have horrible allergies). When we bought this house 90 days ago, there is no way that we thought that we wouldn't be living there now. That's nothing like having a few termites, structural damage, mold, etc throw off your plan. That's just how these old houses go.

Today we are announcing our new goal: To be able to at least host a party at the house (i.e., be ALMOST ready to move in or moved in) by February 11, 2011. Why, you may ask? That is my 30th birthday! That's also a little over 3 more months. Given the amount of work that we've done so far, do you think it's possible? I guess we'll see!!

More to come soon!

Jessica