While buying our short sale was definitely the best financial decision for us, I'm certainly feeling the negative side effects of such a purchase about now. Don't get me wrong, we got an amazing deal! Even based on the square footage listed on the realtor's site (which we thought was just the square footage of the main floor of our split level, we've since confirmed this) we got the house for less than $100/sq ft., which is pretty average around here for a 3 bedroom, but our house has 4! And if you consider the actual square footage, which includes the 'basement', we wound up paying around $80/sq ft. So the short sale hassles, waiting, and confusion definitely paid off when it came to the bottom line.
But with that said, the downsides are pretty obvious... The former home owners had fallen behind on their mortgage, so home renovations probably weren't too high on the priority list =P In fact, aside from a couple of wallpaper borders that are totally not our style, and a coat of bright-bubblegum-pink paint in one of the spare bedrooms, there isn't a whole lot that isn't original to the 15 year old house... I mean nothing is falling apart, it's just that nothing has been changed since the builders left it, not a fixture, not a door, not even a wall-plate haha! (seriously there are several plug covers that are broken off, no doubt they were behind furniture, so when they busted, they were out-of-sight-out-of-mind) We did get lucky and the house had been lived in while it was listed, at least until we put our bid in. But not by the owner, she was renting it out to some guy... We think we've determined it was him who installed wiring for surround sound in my muscle man's basement mancave(very well, I must say, it's professionally done), too bad he also ripped out the original carpet and didn't get around to replacing it with new...We've also determined he was probably single, middle aged, and didn't own a working vacuum or dusting wand... Anyway, point being:
EVERY single surface in the house is in need of TLC.
The floors need a good cleaning (check! eh, sorta)
We rented a steam cleaner from Lowe's for about $50 including the soap, and after a long and hard day of work, the carpets don't exactly look new, but they certainly look clean! As much as the steam cleaner tried, it's just impossible to vacuum up 15 years of wear on a carpet.. the fibers are all smushed down in all the paths around where furniture was.
The living room carpet is actually going to be re-purposed downstairs for the muscle-mancave, I'm getting hardwood floors upstairs in the living room/dining room! Hopefully those will come soon, we're budgeting carefully!
All the rooms need a fresh coat of paint (working on it!)
The kitchen painting project I already wrote about here: link, and the master bedroom was next on the list to get rid of this awful whitish-blue color that covers nearly every remaining wall in the house. After that we gave up and bought a 5 gallon bucket of paint for the rest of the house, we can customize the colors later if we decide that's what we want to do, but we just want the blue gone as soon as possible! It's kinda depressing, because it's such a cold color, and here's the kicker, my dad was over helping paint the other day, and came to the conclusion that it's not even paint! He thinks it's a blue-ish tinted primer! Which explains why it's on literally every wall, and was applied before the popcorn ceiling...
Several light fixtures need some help
Some of them are just not our style, some just need new bulbs... and then there's the ones outside that seem to have a short, we're gonna have to get the electrician out for those if new bulbs don't work..
In all the bathrooms, there are these pretty (silver colored, I don't know what actual finish they are, nickel or chrome) faucets on the sinks... Too bad the showers and towel racks are all brass!! We've solved this problem in the downstairs bathroom by replacing the leaky original (silver) one with a brass faucet, and it's super pretty! I think in the master we're going to eventually work on making the shower and lights match the (silver) faucets, but that's going to be a while coming because we want to do a fairly major bathroom reno.
And on top of all of that, there's still the normal moving hassles to deal with lol! The decisions about what decor to chose (I only have furniture for a one bedroom apartment, and no dining room furniture! Luckily my god-mother is on top of that one and offered us her dining set woo hoo!! =D ) Where to hang pictures/what kind of art to buy (again, one bedroom apartment, I don't own much wall art because I've never had many walls!) Plus all those windows to curtain!! In short, it's going to be quite the journey to turn this place into a palace, but I think that between my muscle man and myself, we're pretty ready for the challenge!! More updates to come!!
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