Ready?... Or... NOT.

The mold in the basement had been removed, the bathroom floor was replaced. Ready to close!

Not.

We eagerly told the bank everything they requested be done was completed, ready to find out what the next steps were to get this thing in our names.

Our banker then informed us that it needed a mold inspection. If you were like me you would assume it’s someone who comes in and looks over everything in the place and takes samples. However, there I was also wrong. They came in, put a tripod in the “T” in the hallway upstairs and in the basement (the central location of each floor), and took air samples and then took one of right outside the house.

Now, WE were the ones who removed all of the visible mold. We knew it was bad. The owners knew it was bad. But not one of us could have even imagined how terrible it would come back. There was no way we would be able to get a loan on the house until everything on the mold inspector’s conclusions and recommendations were followed. This included “1. Removal of all non-structural building materials and cleaning of all structural wood and concrete materials in the affected areas, completed by a qualified contractor, 2. Cleaning or disposal of all porous and non-porous contents through the structure, completed by a qualified contractor, 3. High Efficiency Particulate Air air purification during the cleaning and for a minimum of 48 hours after clean-out, and 4. A post-remediation visual assessment and air quality sampling for airborne microbiological organisms may be performed to determine remediation efficiency.”

Our sellers were amazing. They had no idea how bad the house was and did not feel comfortable selling it to us in the condition it was in, so they decided to cover the remediation, and even used the contractor we had already used that we were planning to have help us with the house.

We also went in ahead of time for the family and got out all of the photos, personal items, and jewelry, plus anything they asked if we could find to be sure no one had any regrets about not going through it.

Thus, the clean out began!

The cleanout beginning in the purple room!

The purple room again, with all existing furniture. 

The purple room after a majority of the items were removed.

Another view after most was gone. 

Once more. 

Here we move into the yellow room. 

We had already hauled the bed out durning the city wide clean up. 

Same view but inside the door. 

The last bedroom to clean out was the teal room. 

The bags were all things that the seller’s family hack already cleaned up for us.

And then, the furniture clean out for the rest of the upstairs. 

Looking down the hallway toward the livingroom. 

The linen closest in the hallway. 

Laundry nook after taking everything except appliances and cabinets. 

The dining area from the kitchen. 

You can see where we piled up the metals to be taken separately. 

Last, but definitely not least we had to get the basement cleaned up.

INTO THE BASEMENT!

The living room. 

And again. 

Keep this dresser in mind— its one of the only things that was salvaged, but you’d never recognize it. 

The bottom of the stairs. 

Just the beds were gone in this picture but it’s the room under the stairs. 

And once again the office.  

After everything was sorted out, it was just a matter of getting all of the recyclables out of the upstairs living room. 

The organ was the last thing to go, it was HEAVY. 

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Here is the pile of the trim. 

After trim comes up, it’s time for... CARPET!

The hallways without carpet. 

The teal room, now naked. 

The purple room without anything (except my hubby).

And the yellow room with nothing. 

And then the kitchen. 

And down to the basement once more. 

The floors and wall were we knew there had been a leak were also painted with killz. 

And then the upstairs subfloor was also covered with Killz. 

In order to Killz the bathroom effectively, we had to have the paneling on the walls torn down, and remove the bathtub as well. 

Where the tub was ripped out. 

Where the countertop was ripped from. 

And that was that! The remediation went well. The mold inspector came back and did his second round. The house passed. The appraisal hadn’t run out. We were in the clear. 

But we weren’t. 

That’s for next time. 

The Second Time Around

 

 

The next time we saw the house, not much had changed. It was a month later, April 30, and the family had started cleaning up the house a bit. They started in the bathroom, which lucky for us was the room we needed to remediate upstairs. Since the problem was in the subfloor and we didn’t know how deep it was, we talked to a contractor to have him complete the task.

The flooring was coming apart in the bathroom from water damages mainly from the tub overflowing and the previous residents dripping water on the floor as they exited the bathtub. 

The contractor advised us to do a surface repair on the flooring. Since the water damages were from the bathtub, and we couldn’t see underneath the didn’t know if we were going to have to replace more subfloor under it. 

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Two days later, our contractor came out to replace the surface flooring.

The flooring was just some cheap laminate that was on sale at the time. Knowing we weren’t going to keep the flooring - or even that bathroom for that matter -  the way that it was, we decided to just pick whatever would rack up the smallest bill and wait to pick something we really liked until the full remodel.

Keep in mind— this is nowhere near what we wanted or ended up going with, it was just to bring the value of the house up enough for the appraiser to sign off on it. 

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While our contractor was working on the bathroom floor upstairs, we were busy with the remediation in the bathroom in the basement.

Even though we wanted to tear out all of the drywall, we had no idea we would have to do all of it before the house was even ours. The mold spread from the North wall in the bathroom (which is left of the toilet in this picture) but we had no idea it went all the way around the closet to the office in the basement that housed the furnace, water softener, and water heater as well.

Here was when we had finished the removal of the entire bathroom, and the closet on the opposite side of it as well.

The view from the office once we started tearing out the drywall inside. The bifold door you see opens to the closet housing the furnace, water softener, and water heater.

Once we opened everything up, we really started seeing the potential the house had.

This view is from inside of the bathroom looking toward the bottom of the stairs. Ask you can see, we started moving furniture out of the way to be able to haul out the infected drywall and paneling.

After some long hours and only one day, we had all of the remediation torn out.










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We thought the worst of it was over and now we were in to the clear.


We were wrong.

The House — How We Found It.

I’ll be blunt with you here, this post is going to have A L O T of pictures, and not a lot of actual writing, as it’s only the before of the house. 

I’ve contemplated several times if I should start with all of the ‘before’ pictures, or if I should do a room by room. After much thought, I think it will be easier to go in the order of how we did the remodel. So, here goes. 

The first pictures of the inside of the house I’m going to show you come from when we saw the house the second time, when we were looking at the house to get an idea of the state of the structure itself before we made an official offer. 

Brace yourselves. 

First stop on the tour is the “teal room.” You will notice there is nothing teal about it, but I needed a way to tell you all which room is which all the way through the process. 

The teal room.

The next room that we see is the purple room. It was used as an office.

The purple room. 

The last bedroom on the main floor was the room they used as their bedroom.

The yellow room.

Another view of their bedroom.

The yellow room 2.

The bedroom we called the teal room again.

The teal room 2.

The hallway.

The end of the hallway. The purple room is on the left, yellow room is on the right. 

Again.

More of the hallway, from the “T”.
Left side closest door is the teal room, furthest is purple.
Right side closest is the bathroom, the linen closet in the middle, and at the end of the hallway is the yellow room. 

The bathroom is where the work that needed to be done for us to be able to get the house began.

Bathroom upstairs. 

And here, you can see why. The bathroom floor was coming apart, down to a rotten subfloor.

The floor damage in the bathroom upstairs. 

Just another view of the bathtub.

Bathtub in the upstairs bathroom. 

The “T” in the hallway, which shows you the back door, laundry nook, and kitchen. If you were to turn to your left, you’d be looking down the main hallway at the bedroom doors, and if you were to to turn right, you would be looking into the sitting room.

View of the back door from the hallway “T”.

A closer look at the laundry nook.

The laundry nook.

The kitchen was in need of a facelift, and definitely a tad bit of opening up. We knew we wouldn’t be able to take any walls out because they are supporting walls, but also knew immediately the soffit above the cabinets needed to GO.

The kitchen. 

Also, with us having three kids and my plans to do daycare (spoiler alert?!) that we needed at least a half wall around the stairs so we didn’t have to worry about spindles.

The stairway railing and the sitting room. 

Not only did they have carpeted stairs, they also opted to have the entire wall carpeted as well???

The stairwell. 

The basement outer walls are just the foundation itself, and the ceiling was sheets of plywood nailed up.

Living room in the basement. 

There were only two working lights in the basement, one shown here, and the other in the next photo.

Living room in the basement. 

An Old Milwaukee light for the second working fixture.

Living room in the basement. 

The view from the bottom of the stairs into the bedroom in the basement.

View of the bedroom in the basement from the bottom of the stairs. 

There were two cutouts to get to underneath the stairs, one in the living room, and the other in the bedroom.

Bookcase blocking the hole to get under the stairs. 

The bedrooms had extra furniture strung out.

Inside of the bedroom in the basement.

They “finished” the walls in certain areas of the basement by gluing carpet samples of all colors all over the walls.

Bedroom basement 2.

Basement bedroom 3.

Basement bedroom 4 - under stair access. 

You can begin to see the mold on the bottom of the drywall tot the bathroom.

More of the living room downstairs. 

View of the bottom of the stairs. 

Living room/Bathroom in basement. 

The inside of the basement bathroom was the worst, and what the appraiser initially said needed torn out.

Basement bathroom. 

The cement wall was covered with vinyl flooring that was glued up.

Basement bathroom 2. 

There was a water leak that the owners were both completely unaware of due to health issues prohibiting both of them from going downstairs.

Basement bathroom mold. 

A buffet table which also happens to be one of the only things that was salvaged out of the house. (When I make that post, I’ll link to it here.)

Dresser left in livingroom. 

The back room is technically a nonconforming bedroom but it was the only room in the basement with no carpet or flooring on the floor.

Basement office. 

Basement office 2.

Basement office 3. 

Basement office 4. 

Our work was certainly cut out for us, which worked in our favor. We knew going into this that we wanted to try to do as much of the work as we could ourselves, and with the amount of work that needed to be done to the house we got an amazing deal!

I cannot wait to post the entire finished product, but I will be working on it so it will be out hopefully soon!

The Beginning of Our Home

Growing up in a small town has had many advantages, one of the most prominent being that everyone knows everyone. I could walk down the street as a kid, point to just about any house in town, and tell you who lived there. Even the people who didn’t go outside often, we knew because our family knew them. This was one of the factors that ultimately lead to us owning our home. 

The summer of 2018, Justin and I were just starting to look for houses and my mom happened to text me that there may be a house coming available in town. She asked if we would want to go take a walk through of it. It was in pretty rough shape, having had an elderly couple living in it that couldn’t entirely care for themselves, but we said we were up for the task if they would work with us. They had just moved their dad into a nursing home, having lost their mom recently and weren’t quite ready to begin the selling process yet at the time, though.

We knew upon seeing the house, that as it was, it was NOT okay, but that we would have to do a total remodel, upper and lower floors. We knew we wanted to get rid of the bathtub/shower combo in the main bathroom. We knew we wanted to get rid of the rail around the stairway that was missing every other spindle. That the carpet was horrid from age. The place was in need of a serious facelift. 

March of 2019. I receive an email from their daughter saying they are ready to begin the selling process and want to know if we have an offer. March 21st, 2019 our offer was officially accepted with almost no negotiating. Thrilled and ready to move fast, we put in for our official loan application that evening. Everyone wanted to move as fast as possible on the sale, that’s what I am bound determined sealed the juju that we were to entail. Our first official closing date: May 15, 2019. 

We officially applied for a conventional loan. We knew we had the means to put the lofty 20% down, and that the house was in no shape for a first time homeowner loan. If you’re not familiar with the first time homebuyer program, you have to have a move-in ready house. The house needed enough work to classify as everything other than move-in ready. Somewhere along the line, wires got crossed and our loan got switched over to a first time homeowner loan, and that was only the beginning of the spiral. 

Once the loan went to NIFA, they need an appraisal, a surveyor, a mold inspection, a pest inspection, and every possible financial form with your name on it. Remember the work I said? The appraiser immediately gave it a no-go due to the bathroom floor being a tad destroyed and lots of visible and fragrant mold in the downstairs bathroom. Our first mission: Remove all of the mold in the basement, remediate, and replace the bathroom floor. We knew we could handle the remediation but neither of us knew anything about how to replace a subfloor if its under an existing wall, and not knowing for sure that we wouldn’t have to replace that part of the subfloor, we hired the bathroom floor done. 

Once the bathroom floor was finished the mold was remediated, and we called the bank to let them know everything was a go. Immediately following, we received news the owner of the house had passed away. Thankfully, with a purchase agreement already in place and all three children also agreeing that they wanted the house to be sold to us versus any of them trying to buy it from the estate, we only had to wait for the attorneys and everyone to make sure the POA on his estate was on all of the paperwork now. 

The next week, we believed we were near closing. Everything that the appraiser said needed to be done was done, and the estate was at the point where the house could be sold. The bank calls and says they need a mold inspection. Long story short, they tested the mold spore count outside the front door, in the hallway “T”, and in the basement living room. The house failed MISERABLY. We knew it would. We knew we were in for a complete remodel. But the mold inspector said that all drywall in the basement, and all of the doors, trim, flooring, throughout needed remediated. 

Our hearts sank, knowing deep down that the family could decide to back out. They didn’t  have to wait for us, and they undoubtedly didn’t have to spend their own money on the remediation. I explained to their daughter everything that the bank had said and sent them a copy of the mold inspector’s findings report. They were certainly aware of how the house looked, but none of us were prepared for how bad it actually tested. Instead of pulling out of the sale, their daughter responded to me saying that they had no idea how terrible it actually was and they wouldn’t want to sell it to us and our young family with it like that anyways, and that they would pay for the entire remediation. She even decided to hire my sister’s father in law to do the remediation, knowing we were using him as a consult for the end remodel. 

Finally, the end of July, the remediation was finished. We got the contractor report of everything he did, updated our bank statements for the fourth time, and headed into the bank. Remember the NIFA loan? DING DING DING!! The house was totally remediated, but hadn’t been remodeled. Thus, wasn’t move in ready. Disqualifying our loan. Once again, scared and with a pit in my stomach, I text the daughter the news. Awaiting her to finally be done waiting on us and sell it to someone who just had the money on hand, she surprised me again. She replied with two options for us; she would hire a contractor to come in and do the entire remodel and then we would put the total cost for the remodel on top of the home purchase price thus increasing our loan payments, or we could pay for the remodel ourselves with a contract stating that if the sale were to fall through, the sellers would reimburse us for all material, labor, and fees associated with the remodel. We jumped for joy and chose the second option, thrilled to be able to do the remodel ourselves without increasing our mortgage. Plus, then the remodel would be done how we wanted it and we wouldn’t want to change anything once it was ours. 

Now, I’m not going to go into extreme detail about the remodel here, those are all stories that will unfold soon enough. But I will let you in on the fact that the remodel did indeed take through the second week of December. Justin and I did a huge majority of the work, with my uncle, and some of his family coming and helping when we needed it. 

The beginning of January we went back to the bank, scheduled a new appraisal on the house, updated all of our financials AGAIN, got an addendum to the purchase agreement stating we would be closing on or before March 10, 2020. After what seemed like forever, on February 5th, our loan officer called us to tell us I needed to come in the following day to sign a pre-closing disclosure so that we would be able to close on February 10. I did, of course. 

Monday, February 10, 2020 we officially closed on our house, and immediately after we closed we went to the trailer, loaded all of our beds and furniture we could fit, and started moving into the house. Now, here we are. Five days later, almost settled into the upstairs, telling you about this process and trying to collect my thoughts on how to go about the remodel posts. 

If you’ve made it this far, congratulations.. and also thank you. I hope you come back to read more, and that you’ll leave feedback for me. 

Did you have any surprises come up when you were buying a house that either extended or ended the sale? 

Did you choose to buy privately or through a realtor? 

The Hiatus Has Come To An End

Finally. That’s what first came to my mind when I sat down to write. I’ve had all of these ideas, all these plans of what to post and now that I’m sitting down to do it, they are all flooding me. Soon I’ll have lots of new content, you’ve just got to bear with me, as there’s a lot of digging through content to get through! Above all else, I’m glad to say I’m back.