Today I close on the house! I am very excited and very freaked out. I’m doing the final walkthrough at 11am and closing later in the afternoon. I’ll update this post as the day progresses.
Noonish
Here it is. The most expensive piece of metal I will ever buy:
Evening
Papers have been signed. Champagne has been consumed. Dayton even gave me my first housewarming present. In other words, it’s official: I’m a homeowner. HORAY!!!!
This project literally is giving me nightmares and keeping me up at night. There is no reason for that to be the case. Overall, this will not be difficult nor expensive. It seems to simply have become the project to absorb my anxieties.
This house was advertised as having a fully fenced back yard. However, there is a missing space in the fence toward the back corner of the yard:
You can see the end of my neighbor’s fence on the right. It starts up again behind the trees on the left. The whole gap is only 16 feet, so it really isn’t a big deal. However, it’s the most urgent of the projects because I need the full fence before π and K can go play in the yard. I need to install some fencing on my side so they can’t get out through there. I do not want to dig holes or put in posts. I do not want anything complicated. No cement. No post hole diggers. Why must fences be work to install? So last night when I went to Lowes, I found this great setup that will be easy and nice looking. First, are the fence sections (apologies for the poor cell phone pictures):
Notice that there are rings at the top and bottom on both sides of this section. Those rings are used for the posts:
So the spike separates from the pole. We pound the spike into the ground, slide the pole through the rings, and fit it into the spike in the ground. How easy! It was a big relief to find these.
This will be the first project we do next weekend. This summer, I think I will get another pine tree to put in front of this spot for more privacy.
Have I mentioned how small this house is? If we are generous and count all the hallways, it’s under 950 square feet. The basement is finished, so that adds a lot, but the main house is tiny. Perfect for me, but small.
The bathroom situation reflects that. The main house has one bathroom, upstairs. Man is it small. I dont’ even have any good pictures of it because it’s so small. Here is the layout (not to scale)
It’s not to scale because the real bathroom has way less space than this. When you open the door, it passes within an inch of the sink.
Of course, there really isn’t any way to make the bathroom much bigger without expanding the house. I do need to work on making it more functional, though. Thus, the bathroom project will have two phases.
Phase 1 (the Urgent Phase): I’m going to replace the medicine cabinet with something much much larger. I will also put a cabinet over the toilet. Michelle brilliantly suggested a glass shelf above the sink, under the cabinet, and hooks on the back of the door. I’m going to add a train rack in the shower if possible. Then, I might put a folding shelf on the wall so I have a little bit of work space when I’m getting ready in the morning. Finally, I don’t know if there is even an outlet in this bathroom. I assumed there was, but Michelle said there might not be and I don’t see one in the pictures. If that’s the case, I will have to add one.
Phase 2 (Renovation) - Again, I’d like to keep this bathroom authentic to the house. The floor tile, for example, is a very typical pattern for a cape cod of this period. Even if I keep it, there are some other major changes. Most important will be putting in a vanity in place of the pedistal sink. I could put one where it is, or I could reconfigure that room. We could make the door open from the opposite side (so it opens toward the wall instea of toward the toilet. Then, we could move the toilet to the wall where the sink is, and move the sink to the other wall. This would allow me to have the sink in a vanity on the corner with a longer cabinet area under the window. I don’t know about plumbing or how difficult this would be, but at least the water hookups are in the right place. Remodel Phase will also see new tile on the walls at least. I don’t dislike what’s there now except that it is cracked in spots and uneven. I need to think more, obviously, but this is not the first major project on my list to do. I have time.
As I mentioned, I bought this book on cape cods by Jane Gitlin. It’s really great, and has given me some ideas. Here is the first one: a tin ceiling in the kitchen. I have always loved tin ceilings, and this picture from the book makes me think that my little house may be able to pull it off. (note - that curve on the side is because I photographed this out of the book - buy a copy to see a nice version!)
Unfortunately, I don’t have a close up picture of the front steps to my house. Here is the main shot:
There are a few things here that need fixing. First, you can see the rail ties next to the driveway. You can see there is a sidewalk that goes from the driveway to the front door. Those rail ties do not have a cut out for the sidewalk. You need to step over the ties. In other words, it is a death trap for a clumsy person like me. Picture me, at night, with groceries and a computer, in the rain, in 4″ heels, walking from my car to the front door.
Thing #2 - the steps themselves. You can see in this picture that the first step is really small and the rise to the second step is really big. That rise is too high - even my inspector pointed it out - so I need to bring up the first step. I will need to get in and measure it, but I’m thinking that I may be able to correct this by removing the first step, putting down a layer of bricks, and then placing the step back on top of them.
Thing #3 - the steps are ugly. The sidewalk is nice - it’s flagstones set in gravel. I was looking at the Capes book that arrived yesterday (it’s an amazing book, by the way), and it showed flagstone steps on lots of the houses. I think that would look great here. Something like this, but with grey flagstone instead of red:
However, I have not ruled out brick facing either. The issue, I think, would be getting brick to match the house. These are a nice example, though I would just face the existing steps, not expand them.
Finally, a longer term project is the driveway. Right now, it’s part asphalt and part gravel. My neighbors across the street have done a beautiful job with their house. Here’s a close-up of their driveway, zoomed from a photo I took during the inspection. That might be something I’d like to try.
This is the first big project that I’ll be undertaking at the house. The paint is in bad shape. If it were just paint, I am brave and capable of scraping and painting on a ladder. However, what is that weird siding? Oh, right - it’s asbestos siding, i.e. that stuff ain’t never coming off. You can’t remove asbestos siding without major bureaucracy, permits, money, etc. I don’t do bureaucracy. Luckily, you can put new siding over it without contacting anyone. That’s what I’m going to do.
So, once my tax return comes in, I’m immediately putting a big chunk of it toward new siding and stripping and repainting of the woodwork around the windows. For the siding, I’m still debating what type to get. Vinyl would be very low maintenence, but I don’t want it to look bad. I could do wood siding. That would need re-painting, but the wood around the windows will still need repainting from time to time, so I could do it all at once. I just don’t know. It is important to me that I keep this an authentic kind of old house. I don’t want someone to walk past and think I have committed a crime against my house. But you know, I want it to be authentic without the cancer causing authentic elements. So we’ll see.
I have a round, 4-person metal and glass dining table from Crate & Barrel. I’ve only once in my life needed an 8-person table. While I eventually plan to get a bigger one, my furniture spending will be on pieces I’m lacking, not pieces I want to replace. That said, I will certainly need a rug for in there. I think a big square one would be nice for the round table. Will a red rug be too much red with the walls? If not, this one from Home Decorators is nice. It is a bit more Asian feeling than I’m looking for, but it’s cool.
I’ve been reading a lot of blogs on house renovations, not because my house needs real renovating, but because I’m really interested in what people are doing to old houses like mine to make them authentic and beautiful and comfortable. From these readings, I have learned a few things. The most important is that I really do not want a big old broken down house to renovate. Take, for instance This Old Crack House, a great blog about a couple who has been renovating a big victorian home in Dayon, Ohio that had indeed become a crack house. They are doing a beautiful job all on their own and have been since 2001. It’s not quite ready to move into yet. 2001. That’s 7 years. Yeah, way too long for me.
However, there will be some renovations I do to this house (kitchen and bathroom), so these books will be interesting. One is on Cape Cods and the style for renovating them.The other two are “The Not So Big House” and “Creating the Not So Big House”. My house is about 1100 or 1200 square feet. That is tons of space for a single person like me + 2 dogs, but it’s still small. When I go home to Crystal Lake, I see these monstorous houses being built, sometimes for only 2 or 3 people. Who needs 8,000 square feet? Or even 4,000 for that matter? Maybe a giant family, but not the families that are moving into these places. This is not isolated to rural Illinois, though. Out here in Bethesda, for example, there is a big issue around small houses like mine being bought up and torn down, replaced by huge houses that take up most of the little lots. I would hate to live next to something like that.
So when I found these books that have my same attitude and embrace living in smaller (reasonably sized) homes, I had to get them. There are actually a lot of books in this “Not So Big House” series, but I’m starting with two and will work my way through the others if I like these.
So in 2 days I will have around 600 pages of books to give me more to think about with my house than cleaning and moving.
