Family of Five

In honor of our two year anniversary in Richmond, we decided to do a post on our fixer upper adventure!

In December of 2014, Bruce was considering a job at VCU in Richmond, VA. I started looking at houses online and saw this house and fell in love. Bruce thought I was a bit touched in the head, but he eventually came around. The biggest selling point was the double lot (1.5 acres) in a great location. We wanted more land but were thinking we'd have to move to the outskirts of town to get it. It was also a lot of square feet for the price, granted, very outdated square feet! And it was a ranch with a basement and a garage--all things we wanted and all things that are hard to find in the Richmond market in our price range.

In February, I went with Bruce on his second round of interviews at VCU and saw the house with a realtor the university set us up with. The next day, the realtor and I took Bruce to see it. Bruce spent over an hour walking around testing every faucet, flushing every toilet, analyzing every water stain on the ceiling, looking at every inch of the property to make sure he knew what he was getting himself into. Bruce usually likes to think about things for awhile and mull them over, so I didn't push him and didn't expect to make a decision about the house until after we got home. To be completely honest, after walking through the place I wasn't sure I wanted him to be on board! The next morning as we were getting ready, Bruce turned to me and said, "Let's do it." And so we put in an offer that day.

Below are the photos from the MLS listing. Notice there are no pictures of the bathrooms or the pool. Wonder why, lol.

These are the videos Bruce took of the house when we went to see it with the realtor.

We closed on the house in April, but didn't move in until May 25th. It was kind of a tricky move timing-wise because my brother was getting married in Florida on June 6th but the kids didn't get out of school until the end of May. We were also concerned about the house being livable when we got there, so were tossing ideas around, like me flying out early to have contractors come out to do some of the work before we moved in. But in the end, we just decided to wing it. We got there and the next day started ripping out carpet. It was seriously disgusting--I wouldn't let the kids walk on it without shoes on. The AC was on its last legs, so I also got on the phone and started calling contractors to get estimates. Bruce started fixing important things like the kid's shower that wouldn't work and the hot water handle on the faucet in the master bathroom. Our boxes wouldn't arrive for another few days, so no beds and it was pretty hot so we were all camping out in the bedroom with the window unit.

Our original plan was to rip out the carpet and then move our stuff in and worry about refinishing the floors later. But thank goodness the hardwood floor guy convinced us to have the floors refinished while we were in FL, before moving all of our furniture in. But that still meant we had to move our stuff somewhere, so when it arrived the movers stacked it in the sun room and kitchen, which made life even more crazy. We also had to hustle and take out all the staples from the carpet and remove all the baseboard heating units so the floor guys could do their magic.

Bruce took the carpet to the city dump and the employee there told him contractors couldn't dump carpet. Bruce said he wasn't a contractor but a homeowner. The lady said there was no way that carpet came out of a house that someone actually lived in--carpet that bad only came from contractors. Bruce assured her that he did live in the house that the carpet came out of!

Dog poop we found in the wood storage box in the fireplace. Yuck!

After ripping up the carpet we found a bunch of stains from where the dog must have had accidents while waiting to be let out.

We got back from a week in Florida and the floors were done, but the house reeked from the varnish. The windows were so old that most of them wouldn't open so the house hadn't been aired out. We had to go to a hotel for a couple of nights because the smell was so bad. After that we camped out in the laundry room for awhile because it was an addition to the house so the windows were newer and some of them actually opened.

Hallway and bedrooms after the floors were refinished--waaayyy better than the carpet.

We got the AC estimates back and chose a company to install new duct work and replace our one non-working and one barely working AC units and electric baseboard heaters with a heat pump (which heats and cools). Unfortunately, we had to wait until mid-July to get the work done--all of the companies had waiting lists. Then the one AC unit that half worked completely died and we were with no AC for about 3.5 weeks. We were so thankful for our neighbor who let us borrow another window unit. It ended up in the laundry room because we couldn't get any other windows to open!

While the AC guys were installing the new duct work, one of the workers lost their footing and fell through our ceiling. He was ok, but our ceiling and a can light were not. Thankfully, we weren't at home, but I knew there was something wrong when I pulled up and there were three guys walking up to meet me before I could even get out of the car! They had someone come out and fix it the next day.

After returning from Florida, another big priority was to get the pool up and running so our children wouldn't run away from home. It was hard for them to go from a very nice, organized, air conditioned house, in a neighborhood with all their friends, to a dirty house full of spiders and no air conditioning and no friends and no promised pool. I called around to see what the pool guys could do about the leaves at the bottom of the pool and they basically told me there was nothing to do but fish them out like we were already doing. Once we got them out then they could help us balance the pool chemicals. So that's what we did for hours and hours every day for weeks. We would each take a turn, including the girls, fishing nasty, smelly leaves out of the pool.

The boys did their part by rescuing all the frogs and tadpoles in the pool.

Green was a favorite color of the previous homeowners.

Master bathroom after I removed the wallpaper and skim coated. I never got a before picture of the lovely wallpaper.

Kids bathroom. That toilet was one of the first things to go--ick!

Basement bathroom. Eagle wallpaper--very patriotic.

When we bought the house, we knew it would be hard and a little bit crazy. We knew we would have to do big projects gradually and do some of the smaller things ourselves. I remember thinking, it might take awhile to get all the rooms painted, maybe even all summer. Oh man, if only. It's been two years and I'm still not done painting! But we have gotten a lot done. Bruce replaced 1 toilet, 2 doorbells, 3 sinks, 16 light fixtures, lined the crawlspace with plastic, and added thresholds under the doors going out to the sun room. He also replaced all the switches and outlets and made the aluminum wiring safe, saving us $8,300 by doing the labor himself. He added a swing to the tree, built a zip line, made storage shelving in the basement, ripped out the wood paneling in the family room, added faux shiplap to the bathroom, rebuilt the bathroom vanity and added a butcher block counter top in the bathroom and on the fireplace, installed caps on the chimneys, and probably a hundred other things I didn't think about. YouTube has become his best friend. I became the family painting and drywall expert, patching holes left by the baseboard heaters and thermostats and damage from the leaky roof, removing wallpaper and skim coating over the damaged walls, painting ceilings, baseboards, crown molding, shoe molding, bead board, cabinets, shelving, etc., staining the mantel and stair railings, staining the deck, power washing fences, brick, pool deck, front walk, etc., and prepping and painting the exterior railings, trim, and shutters (still not done with the exterior painting either!). Together we've planted over 60 plants, often having to tear out overgrown foliage and make new beds, plus raspberries, 6 fruit trees, 4 crepe myrtle, a magnolia, and a raised vegetable garden. We also rebuilt and stained the pool fence and made hook boards for the sun room and mud room. Thus far we've had contractors replace the roof, refinish the hardwood floors, replace the duct work, install a heat pump, install drywall in the family room, replace most of the gutters and the windows, and install bathroom fans. We hope to eventually add a paved driveway, update the basement, and replace the tile in the bathrooms and flooring in the front entry, and you know...finish painting!

This is the next room I'm going paint. We're also planning to rent a sprayer and do all the doors this summer too.

I'm definitely going to paint the small door black, and the trim cream, but can't decide about the garage doors. I'll probably leave them green--less painting!!!