This is Tanglewood! As you can see it is a tangle of old cedar shake siding and a rear addition that was literally caving in. My profile picture is of me holding a slab of concrete that we pulled off the floor after discovering that some previous owner had "leveled" the floor with concrete over the wood subfloor and the weight was causing the middle to buckle which was why our floor was sloped.
We bought this beauty two years ago with the intention of doing some light renovations and using it as a summer cottage since we were living in Florida at the time. Fast forward one year, we decided if we were going to start a family we should probably live closer to our own families so we had the extra help (and babysitters) nearby. We sold our southern home, packed up and trucked due north. This is of course the simplified version, but this is a blog not a novel!
A word to the wise, if you are doing a full scale renovation where the house will not be habitable, PLAN AHEAD!!!!! We have built a home before and did not realize how difficult it would be to secure a loan for a full scale renovation of an existing home. Here are some quick stats:
Year Built: 1930
Purchase Price: $40,000 (Foreclosure)
Years owned: 2
Payments missed: 0
Credit: Excellent
Appraised Value: unappraisable
Loan amount: $0
It's funny how readily banks will appraise a home for purchase, but not for a renovation. We were told if we put a temporary floor down (over the water rotted subfloor) in the bathroom, patched the exploratory holes in the plaster (where live wires had been buried), and rebuilt the wall in the upstairs (which was taken down to create a larger bedroom), then they bank would come back and reassess the value to see if we could get a loan.
We were disheartened, but decided the only way to move was forward. The next post will touch on the architectual process and deciding what our priorities were.
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