Well, Brandy and I finally were in the right place at the right time.
On the evening of Thursday, October 6, we drove out to Ottumwa to look at a house that had just hit the market that day. It was listed as a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom 1100-plus square foot house listing for $109,000. It looked like it needed some updating, but it appeared the bones were good.
We contacted our real estate agent and asked how quickly we could view the home. With the market as volatile as it is right now, things are selling same-day so we wanted to jump on this. She told us she could meet us out there at 6:40, which was perfect, that’d allow us to leave immediately after work and get there just in time. Brandy rallied the troops (being her parents and her friend Hilary) and they said they’d meet us there at that time.
Just as we left though, we got a text from her stating that she’d gotten a nail in her tire and that she wasn’t going to make it. She told us she’d contacted the selling agent and he agreed to show the house for her.
We arrived right at 6:40 and there were already a couple cars in the driveway. We pulled in behind them and just then, the selling agent pulled up in the street behind us, telling us the home was being shown by another agent. We backed out of the driveway and parked across the street at a pre-K school and chatted with Hilary and the in-laws. Finally, the other agent and his buyers left. We pulled into the driveway behind the selling agent and went in.
The House
There is a small porch/deck leading to the front door. It felt pretty solid and stable, so that was a good sign. (come to find out later, Brandy tells me there’s a hole in that deck, so that will have to be fixed.)
We walked in to the small front room, attached to what we can only assume is supposed to be a small dining room. The walls are painted a horrendous mustard yellow and the carpet is a faded and pet-urine-stained pink. Just inside the front door must have been the pet’s favorite place to pee as the subfloor has a soft spot. In the living room is a somewhat outdated looking gas fireplace.
Just beyond the front room is the kitchen. It’s a nice, open kitchen with all the appliances still there. I asked if they’d be included in the sale of the house and that was confirmed, yes, they would be. That piqued my interest as the fridge is a stainless steel double-door with a bottom freezer drawer and an ice/water dispenser in the door. Kind of a dream fridge for me.
The countertops are an awful Formica with an odd bevel on the front edge. They’ll have to be replaced, for sure.
The cabinets are a dark-ish wood, but all seem to be in fine shape. The stove is electric (yuck) and there’s a built-in microwave to free up some counterspace. The floor looks to be peel & stick vinyl. There’s a small breakfast nook in the kitchen as well.
Beyond the kitchen is a sliding glass door that originally went to the back yard, but there’s a large four season room that’s been added on. It’s a good size room with a ton of windows that will be a great spot for a living room. There isn’t a lot of actual wall space, it’s mostly windows, but there is a ton of wood paneling under the windows all the way around the room. The room is carpeted in berber.
As soon as you walk into that sun room, there’s another slider that goes out onto a deck in the back yard. The deck is a lot more study than it appeared in the pictures; it looks like it just needs to be refinished.
The deck empties off into the actual yard, which is sectioned off by a fence that bisects the yard. Beyond that fence is more yard that is not fenced, but is bordered by a row of bushes.
Also in the back yard is a good sized shed, with a roll-up door. We didn’t go in there, so I can’t say what shape it’s in, but I assume it’s fine.
Across the deck from the door out of the sun room is the 2 car garage. It’s an unfinished 2 car garage. Nothing exciting. There is, however, a super long driveway that leads to it from the street. The driveway could easily accommodate at least six cars, if not eight.
Back in the house, the two bedrooms and top-floor bathroom are accessed by a hall from the dining room. The bedrooms are quite small. There are two “standard” type closets in the master bedroom. The spare bedroom is even smaller with a single closet.
The bathroom is a standard bathroom, nothing too exciting there.
Around the corner from the kitchen is the stairwell down into the finished basement. There is a third non-conforming bedroom built in down there, and a small room with a kind of workshop built in (there’s a small workbench and pegboard hung around the walls.)
Also down in the basement is the laundry hookups and the second bathroom.
There is currently no flooring downstairs – it’s bare cement. Evidently the selling agent advised the seller to tear up the carpeting that was down there as it had been ruined by the pet that made the soft spot in the subfloor up above.
The Offer
This house seemed to perfectly fit our needs. It’s enough room for us to be able to live and work, it’s well within our budget, and it needs some work that we are not only able, but EAGER to do.
After reconvening at the school with the Ottumwa crew, Brandy and I decided to go ahead and make an offer. As I mentioned, the house was listed for $109,000. We decided to make an offer for $115,000 and asking the sellers to pay closing. I texted our agent asking her write up the offer. An hour later it was in my inbox. I signed it and sent it back, then we waited.
As the day dragged by Friday, I kept a hawk’s eye on my inbox, waiting for word on if our offer had been accepted. At 4:30, I got a text from her saying that we would have a response by 7:00. At 7:15, I got a text saying that she thinks they would accept. Thirty minutes later, we got the confirmation that our offer had been accepted.
I’d never seen Brandy cry as much as she did right then.
What Now?
The tentative closing date on the offer was November 11. That throws a major monkey wrench into our plans to go to Colorado and New Mexico at Thanksgiving time. We decided to move our trip to next weekend, Leaving October 14 and coming back the following weekend on the 23rd.
When we get back from that trip, we will be just weeks away from closing. There will be a good amount of work that will need to be done before we can move in. Our plans are:
- Pull up the existing carpet
- Replace the rotting subfloor
- Seal the entire subfloor
- Have new carpet laid
- Possibly pull up the vinyl flooring in the kitchen and bathroom
- Possibly have new tile laid in the kitchen and bathroom
- Paint the entire interior
- Possibly replace the baseboards
- Replace all window treatments
- Replace all light fixtures and ceiling fans throughout the house
- Update the fireplace
- Refinish the decks
- Move the fence in the back yard from its existing location to the back property line
- Replace the kitchen countertops
- Tile a backsplash in the kitchen
- Put laminate flooring in the basement
- Refinish the small workshop in the basement into a spare closet for Brandy
We do plan on doing the vast majority of this work ourselves. The flooring will be the big one that we will let the professionals do. I have replaced light fixtures many times before so I’m confident in my ability to do that, as well as tearing up carpeting, painting and a lot of the other stuff on the list.
To be frank, I am super excited to do all of that work listed above so by the end of it, we can make the house our own, and be able to say, “We did this.”
The Foreseeable Future
As I mentioned, we were planning a trip to Colorado and New Mexico at the end of November, but with the impending closing of our house, we want to be home as much as possible so we can work on it. We will be paying the mortgage on that house as well as the rent on our current house for a few months. The lease on this place is up at the end of July, so we don’t have to be in a hurry to move into the new place, which will allow us to at least get the flooring and painting done before we move in, but we don’t want to make two house payments for very long. We do have to talk to our landlady about getting out of the lease. We’re hoping she’ll let us “sell” the fence to her, let us give her a few hundred more dollars and call it good, but if she doesn’t agree to that, we’ll have to try to sublease this place.
The goal is to be moved in to the new house by March 1. That will leave five months at the end of our lease. Hopefully our landlady is reasonable and lets us out early.
With all of the work we have to do, as well as the money we’re going to have to spend to do it, traveling won’t be in our future for some time to come. That said, I will be temporarily shifting the focus of this blog to the house as we renovate it. I plan on taking plenty of pictures and videos, documenting everything we’re doing along the way. I hope that doesn’t bore y’all to tears, but with nothing else able to be done, especially in the dead of winter in Iowa, that will have to suffice.
I will be making one last travel post talking about our trip out to the southwest, then get ready for some home renovation projects!
I hope you enjoy the journey as much as I know we will.
As always, thanks for stopping by here, I appreciate you all!
-Phil