Home Sweet Home

We finally have a place to call home!

I'll try to keep this long story somewhat short.

We had a break between jobs this summer, and decided that it was time to buy a house. We had Nora on the way and stuff all over the place intruding on other people's houses. While we were in Georgia during the spring time we looked at houses online. Eli's mom Lynne checked out a couple houses for us so we could narrow our search once we were in Idaho. This house was one of them, she liked it. We got to Idaho, called our realtor and said we are ready to go look. He took us to 8 or 9 houses that afternoon. This house was the biggest square footage with the cheapest price. The next day we looked at 2 more houses that were great. But still more expensive and less space. This house is a foreclosure. It was dingy, dirty, stinky, moldy, leaky, unlevel, undone, unloved, and needed some serious TLC.

The catch with this house was that it was being sold by an online company based out of India!!! And I don't just mean India like, really far and out-sourced. Our realtor talked on speaker phone to Amid Mahad something or another while we were in his office. Our realtor asked "So where are you guys based out of?". The response was simply "India" then immediate change of subject without even a pause between words. We laughed so hard! We bought our house from India.

But because of the online buying, we really didn't have a person to talk to or negotiate with. Everything just took longer because it was over the internet through a website. However, it all worked out because we got the house at a great price and it is now OURS! Yay.

 

It is 2300 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 2 bath, 2 living areas, 1 car garage, corner lot with a decent sized yard with apple trees, awesome neighbors, and in the cute lil farm town of Shelley ID.

 

Eli and Aaron spent a week on the roof of the house completely tearing out and re-roofing our house. It was in the 90s every day. They turned very dark, and did a spectacular job. Eli updated all the plumbing, which was very badly needed. All the main electrical had to be updated also.

We had a ton of help. Thanks to everyone who volunteered, and spent time helping us out. We would still be painting and cleaning without so many helping hands.

The after picture of exterior will have to come once we landscape and paint the facia/trim.

These are before and after pictures. Kitchen before... broken tile counters, nasty cabinets that were molded out under the sink, missing doors and drawers, and grimy dirty!

During Demo

Every plumbing fixture in the house leaked. I'm pretty sure (actually positive) the prior owners were super high on drugs to not notice or not care how nasty things were.  eww

And after

No backsplash yet, but next summer that will get done! I forgot to take a picture of the tile floor that Eli did, its beautiful. A friend/associate did the cabinets and Eli did all the rest. He is pretty much amazing! and worked his tail off, I love him :)

Dining room before...super dirty, cracks in ceiling, and water damaged.

Dining room after...clean, fresh, light, and a little cluttered now with all of our stuff sitting out because it doesn't have a place yet.

Living room before...again super dirty, cracks in walls, ceiling, and window casings. Super stinky too, prior owners had pets that I'm positive would pee and poo everywhere!

Living room after...light, bright, and my favorite room in the house.

Bathroom before...super nasty, pink and black 50's tile, nasty toilet, and again, molded out cabinets.

 

Bathroom after...beautiful tile (thank you Eli), fun, and clean.

Bedrooms before...not so great hardwood floors, ugly wall paper and paint in both rooms, cracks in walls and ceiling, and again covered in dirt and grime.

 

 Bedrooms after...clean, carpeted, and fresh.

 

 

This is what the inside of our pipes looked like. Talk about gross, and clogged.

Here is a picture of the downstairs bathroom. Its covered in mold. This is after the bulk of the mold was taken down. This was under it.

This is what most of the basement looked like. We have only demo-ed the basement. Maybe next summer we will get to finish it. We need more money and more time to do more work.

Even though some of the pictures look scary, the house really was beautiful. It was just very poorly taken care of. We have a ton of space, and once we get to finish all the things we'd like to do we will have a beautiful house!!! I'm just so so grateful for Eli and his working hands, creative mind, and ability to just do what needs to be done and doa great job. We still have a long road ahead, but I'm so happy to have our own things and our own space. The journey of buying, cleaning, and fixing the house was actually quite fun. It would have been much more fun for me if I hadn't been 10 months pregnant, waiting for Nora to come. And then crazy tired and sore after having her. Maybe next time we do this we can plan better and not have a baby in my belly so I can do more and enjoy it more.