Wednesday, April 09, 2008

New house!

There's something to lift our spirits after Zeke's death--we found our new house! We made an offer yesterday, and it was accepted today. At just under $90K, it was a real steal. The house was built in 1880 and has a newer addition in the back. It has 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms and is around 2,000 square feet. There's a new 2-car detached garage in the back of the property with an attic room above the garage, perfect for a writing studio for Eric. It's in a nice neighborhood with mostly well-kept historic homes and--get this--is only 2 blocks from campus! It's just what we were looking for.

Barring any major flaws discovered in the home inspection, we'll close in mid-May. Since this new place is just 2 1/2 hours away, we'll take a carload of power tools, dishes, and clothes over when we purchase the house. Our plan is to renovate the house before we move all of our furniture later in the summer. What a novel idea! I wish we'd been able to do that with our other houses....We'd like to strip all the wallpaper, repaint the whole interior (walls & trim), pull up the carpet, and refinish the wood floors.

After we move in we have a few other bigger projects in mind: fencing in the back and side yard, putting in gardens and landscaping, and updating the bathrooms a bit. Some long-term possible projects include removing the vinyl siding and restoring/repainting the original wood siding.

The addition in the back does not at all match the architecture of the original house...sigh...but hopefully a privacy fence will hide the worst of it!


Although the inside does need some work, it has many beautiful features, including a spiral staircase, leaded glass windows, and built-in bookshelves.

18 comments:

  1. Wow. How do you guys find these awesome places time and again!? It looks wonderful...congrats and I'll send good-house-vibes for the inspection :)

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  2. Fantastic! That looks like a gorgeous house, and you certainly can't beat the price. Man, I hope we can find something that fabulous when we're ready. Maybe I'll ask you to do the house-hunting for us. :)

    Good luck with the remodel.

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  3. Oh, it's fabulous! And what a deal. A place like that in Saskatoon, so close to the univ, would probably be $400,000.

    Have fun renovating!

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  4. How do we do it? We do crazy things like buy houses we haven't seen in person! We did this with this new house, and with our IC house. This one was a foreclosure so we had to act quickly. It's good that we did, since there was another person from the college who was just about to make an offer when ours was accepted.

    Now I need to choose paint colors for the entire house! Well, I'll probably keep the dining room red, but I don't know if I'll keep the dark tan ceiling. Other than that room, everything needs to be repainted. Most of the house is beige. So boring and definitely not historically appropriate!

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  5. Rixa... what an amazing house! I just LOVE old architecture! Do you ever watch "If Walls Could Talk"? It's a very cool show. Sorry that Zeke won't be going with you, but I'm so happy that you have a new home! After seeing what you did to your other home, I can just imagine how gorgeous this one is going to be when you're done with it!

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  6. oh my gosh that is a steal! our home went for 150k and isn't nearly as large! we have 12 acres of land though, so thats the trade off. Great find! I'm so sorry to hear about Zeke. You guys are such a sweet family and it shall be sad to see your life without him. Again, I'm so sorry.

    Great house to move on to though! what an adventure!

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  7. Wow, sight unseen? Crazy, but apparently it works great! I love what I see on these pictures, too. Good for you that you don't have to rush the move so you can do the basic renovations first! Make sure to take lots of those 'before' and 'after' pics like you do :)

    Still thinking about you all and Zeke all the time. Peter could tell you. We'd be sitting around and out of the blue I sigh Poor Zeke:(. He just pops into my mind a lot--I guess I'm grieving him too. Be well!

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  8. i'm super jealous of the price! we bought our home here in CT for way higher than that price, yet it was built in the 1890's, only has 3 rooms and no garage!

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  9. Rixa, it is gorgeous. That would be about 5 times that much here, and here isnt even that expensive. What a find, it is just splendid. I am so happy for you all!

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  10. Beautiful house! What fun to get to do some fun projects--and smart to do them beforehand.

    Can't wait to see the upgrades.

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  11. CUTE! And man what a steal! The best you could find for that price around here would be a shack by a trash dump!

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  12. That is beautiful! And what a great idea, renovating the house before one moves in! You mean I didn't HAVE to put three revolving rooms of furniture into our bedroom for four months?! Boy, that was fun though!

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  13. Goodness! I need to move to where 2000 square feet in a historic home near my campus costs $90,000....

    Let's see, that in Orlando would be...about $450?

    Yikes!

    Best wishes to your family as you make this house your new home.

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  14. Congrats! It's GORGEOUS!

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  15. Congratulations! What fun. Maybe we'll come work w/ you for a weekend and think of it as training. :)

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  16. What a gorgeous house, and what a steal!!! I told my husband that we need to move out of California. LOL You'd *never* find a house like that here ( where there are jobs ) for that price. Awesome!

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  17. What a BEAUTIFUL house! Around here, your place would be more like $700,000, maybe more! Apparently we need to move! We've renovated two houses and although tons of work, it was a lot of fun. I definitely recommend doing as much as you can before the next baby though :-).

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