Househunting Adventures

The "after" pictures are slowly coming together. Here's our repainted, no-longer-popcorn-ceilinged living room.

Scroll down to see the "before" pictures...

More coming soon!
(This weekend we're retiling and putting in a new vanity/sink and repainting the first of the two bathrooms. Fun fun fun!)

Popcorn ceilings are down!!! (mostly)

What an awful job. To give you an idea what we've been through, here are some photos of the mess. We've basically spent over a week straight scraping, sanding, painting, all the ceilings in the house. It created such a mess it's incredible. What a filthy job! But the results are worth it, I'll be posting pictures once we're done with the painting.
Here's the floor where the ceiling droppings fall.

Here are some before and during pictures of our main room with a vaulted ceiling and skylight (all were covered in popcorn).

That was a hell of a lot of scraping and sanding!! We've since then painted that ceiling to look like a sunset (orange and yellow). It looks much better and feels more like home! I hope I never see another ceiling with popcorn again ever!

Well, of course our closing was delayed by a day because the stupid lenders couldn't get it together. It was stressful but we closed today and now own our first home! Of course everything cost more than they estimated at closing, but at least it's done. This blog will soon become a "before and after" home remodeling blog as we tackle all the major and minor projects to make the place feel like ours.

-Jordan

Well, we're supposed to be closing tomorrow! Hopefully everything comes together...I can't believe how many headaches the lender has already given us. I've spent hours faxing over bank statements, checks, leases, etc all in an attempt to prove something obvious, that we have been renters for 2 years! So annoying.

Anyway here are pictures of the lot/floorplan/etc for the curious family members who asked.

Will everything be done by our closing on Tuesday???

It's coming up fast. We're still waiting for the appraisal, still dealing with getting the financing, had a little trouble finding insurance but that seems to be under control now. Mortgages are so confusing...we had to move to stated income verification since we're pretty much self-employed. That means a higher interest rate which bumps our payments up a little, fortunately not too much and the numbers still work. Everything is such a headache! I can't wait until it's done and we start with the fun stuff (remodeling!).

Turns out we will have to get the plumbing changed but the price and time required is not too bad considering. Hopefully that can all be taken care of before we move in and then we have to decide whether to scrape off the popcorn ceiling or live with it. I've heard horror stories about the work involved with smoothing out a popcorn ceiling.

Anyway, we keep moving forward.
-Jordan

Well, the inspection was nothing if not thorough. They found one major problem and a bunch of simple DIY-type cosmetic issues. The major problem could possibly be a blessing in disguise, we're doing more research to find out. Apparently the plumbing is polybutelyn (something like that), popular in the 80's but prone to leaking and bursting. The inspector described it like a ticking time bomb, meaning all the plumbing needs to either be replaced or repaired in some way, even though no problems are apparent now.

The possible blessing is that the class action lawsuit against the manufacturers was reopened 3 weeks ago, and they are paying claims to replace plumbing systems. Since this would be reimbursible and we wanted to change some sinks and maybe rearrange a bathroom it could make that possible for us. But of course our case might not qualify (I remember after 9/11 living in NYC when we qualified for an air purifier which we were never reimbursed for!)

Anyway we'll keep our fingers crossed until we learn more....