The Newest Kids on the Block
06:07 PM
You people who continue to read my ramblings — for whatever reason — are about be the first and only to hear the big announcement that we bought a house. There you go, that was it. We totally did.
As a side note: I am SOOO not going to call everyone on my phone or take the time to engage everyone on my instant messaging list in tiny, awkward, five-minute conversations. Mostly because I’m not sure just how many people really care about such things, but also because there’s still so much that could change. I did make calls to my parents and grandmother but those and in-person conversations are where I’m drawing the line. Really, there isn’t any reason why everyone shouldn’t be using RSS feeds to keep tabs on each other, so I don’t think I’m being all that tight-lipped about it.
Anyway, back to the story at hand…. We almost didn’t find this place since it was listed a little outside of our price range at $305k. We took a look at it anyway since it was categorized as in need of “a little updating” and located on a gorgeous street in Glenside. Because of the “updating” we made a polite lowball offer, and after one round of back-and-forth we ended up with our $275k diamond in the rough. The whole process from first glance to offer acceptance took almost exactly one week, not counting of course the months of searching, hoping, and agonizing.
So begins the Summer o’ Renovations. We start by making arrangements for my father-in-law, Zoltan, to fly over to help with the fixing-upping, and thinning my collection of junk. The latter will be the most tedious process ever since I can’t just throw something out — I need to first document it by taking photographs and musing what it meant to me before I do. So get ready to see these pages filled to the brim in June with boring, mindless, stream of consciousness essays about microwave controls and glittery, 2-foot-tall Seagram’s 7’s.
We close on the house June 27, and afterward the renovating will begin in earnest: completely gutting the kitchen, replacing the windows and doors, and hooking up an air conditioning unit to the ducts. Once that’s taken care of we can move in and kick off the rest of the deconstruction: a systematic replacement of every wood panel, old tile, and square inch of wall fabric — especially the ceiling fabric — in the joint.
When we’re finished it’ll be like a profitable episode of Flip That House — only we’re not going anywhere for a long time.