I've never blogged before- not great with computers (not to mention I have poor grammar and now all of you will know about it =p). There's a first time for everything, I guess.
I decided to give this blogging thing a try since it seemed I was telling the same stories over and over again to my friends and relatives every time something came up with our "new" house/fixer-upper. So.... here goes
We moved to Montana from Idaho in August, 2010. Since home prices were so much higher here than in Boise, we decided to purchase a home that (we thought) needed some minor cosmetic repairs but had the square footage we needed and "good bones" as we like to call them. Not to mention, we got a great deal on the price.
As far as cosmetic blemishes go, we had never seen anything quite like it. The selling realtor's facial expressions spoke volumes when she tried to explain some of the "problems." Her mouth twitched a bit and one eyebrow occasionally rose into her hairline as she stuttered out the words, "a-a-annnd, y-y-ou might have n-n-oticed there are no baseboards." I hadn’t noticed. “Oh, and d-d-don’t w-w-o-o-rry, he is g-g-oing to r-r-eplace the r-r-oof”. And then she tilted her head and smiled.
I should mention this selling agent put me off on even seeing the place at least two or three times because the house needed to be "cleaned up a bit" and "furniture needed to be moved out" and I think the word, "de-cluttered" was used about twelve times, not to mention she had to "hire professional cleaners" more than once. But I was intrigued. Her description of the place on realtor.com was quite captivating: 'VIEWS VIEWS VIEWS!' and something about a large deck off of the open kitchen and living area. Plus, I had already looked at 60+ homes I didn't like and this one was in our price range.
So, the baseboards... We were told this house was in the middle of a nasty divorce. Poor house. All the selling realtor said to us (under her breath, face twitching) was "divorce situation," "wife took the baseboards and did some ‘painting’," "husband got the house." Ouch. I didn't know whether to laugh at the wife's clever revenge tactics or to feel sorry for the poor guy stuck with trying to sell a house that now looked quite beaten and messed with.
I took lots of pictures. Mostly because my husband was still living in Boise while I house-searched and I wanted him to see what we might be getting ourselves into. Later that night, I emailed him pictures of the missing baseboards; giant shredded hole (are those teeth marks?) in a wall in the basement- hamster gone crazy? giant mouse? small horse?; dark paint splattered on the ceiling, carpet, wood cabinets, base-heaters, light fixtures, light switches, toilet lids, windows, linoleum, vents, etc.; missing closet doors (well... she (was it her?) left the ugly ones- half of them); missing closet rods, shelves, etc; and (my personal favorite) a row of lightbulbs above the basement bathroom vanity where someone (more revenge?) cleverly placed one giant lightbulb the size of a basketball at the end because they were too lazy to go to the store to find the proper-sized-bulb or for some more clever "staging" of a house they didn't get in the divorce... hmmmm. mystery, but funny =). The walls had some bizarre texturing because someone had removed wallpaper and not cleaned the glue off before painting the walls a new lovely pink/dark brown/puke-green/orange- oh the colors were lovely! One of the rooms had been textured extra-special because behind the royal blue paint I could barely make out raised letters for the words "m-o-m" and, I think either a mixed-up alphabet or irish/welsh profanities of some sort- hard to tell- why welsh? someone had plastered permanent stickers that read "Pog mo thoin" to the mirror in the bathroom. The vanities had been replaced in the two upstair bathrooms with tall skinny ones leaving no counter space and the toilets had been replaced with midget seats that, to my three-year-old-son's delight, were just his size! The kitchen cabinets were interesting- 3/4's of them didn't open and the other 1/4 opened 3/4's of the time (they were the kind you have to push in to pop out except they didn't pop out and the faces of all the doors/drawers are flat so there's no way to open them without using a creative prying tool of some sort). The light fixture hung in the entryway was so low it skimmed the top of my head (and hit my husband’s face when he finally came to see this treasure weeks later). The carpet was the perfect setting for my boys to play war on with their miniature GI Joe’s because of all the rolling “hills” and bunkers- did this happen because of the missing baseboards? And on and on... and this was just my first visit =) All these flaws and I still left the house smiling. After days and days of searching, I had finally found our home. Now, I just had to convince John (my husband) to come and see it.
To be continued.....
Okay, so now you have to finish the story!!!!
ReplyDeleteBrie