Beginning

We closed on the house and the work has begun, so we thought it was time to start a blog.  If you care to, you can follow along and see what we hope will be great progress.  If you don't care to, at least we will have some sort of record of all of the crazy things that we'll be up to in the near future.

A brief history of the house:

Built in 1935, it is a sort of converted colonial with 3 floors, 3 or 4 bedrooms (depending on if you count the finished attic) and 3 baths.  At some other point in time it must have been beautiful, the layout is very nice and there are beautiful details under all of the layers of paint and dirt.

Currently, however, it is a bit of a mess.  It has been sitting vacant for two years after what seemed to have been a quick and angry exit.  There is no heat because somebody bashed all of the radiators on the ground floor.

It was never properly winterized (they just let the water drain onto the floor), so we aren't entirely sure what surprises await us with the plumbing.

The previous inhabitants tried their hand at painting but clearly didn't know what either drop cloths or painter's tape were.

They also seemed to think that nobody would notice if they didn't paint behind the radiators (did you notice?).  The kitchen is terrible - we hope to completely redo it as soon as possible - really? barn siding?

The closets are unusable because of freakish ideas about framing.

Then there are things like the porch that's middle support sways with a good gust of wind (sorry - no picture).
We rolled some repairs, such as the heating and things required by FHA, like the porch, gutters, replacing the very sketchy basement stairs  into the mortgage (otherwise there would have been no way we could have gotten this house).

We're pretty sure that the piece of barn siding on the right side of the photo is an integral part of the structure of the stairs.

  All of the rest we plan on doing ourselves (or with family members or friends that we can persuade (or con) into coming to help us).  We're excited to get to work.  We may have to live in what feels like a construction zone for a while, but we're pretty sure it will be worth it.