Inspection - and photos!

panorama of the backyard

We are performing our own inspection, for two reasons:
1.  We've done this before and feel confident that the things we find are things we will be repairing.
2.  We have a previous inspection (done less than a month ago) to go by.

So, today we had access to the house for a couple of hours.  Dale climbed all over and got filthy, while I took photos and measured the heck out of everything.  We've remodeled/restored several projects in the past, and I've always regretted not taking more 'before' shots - so I took about 200 pictures of the house today.

I'll be posting photos as we go, so I'll only put a few on today of each room.


Bathroom

 

This is the first room we're going to be working on - we plan on doing demolition the day after closing.  There's nothing in here we like - slick melamine walls, ugly pinkish tan toilet (with lots of cracks) and tub, crummy sink, terrible medicine cabinet/light, non-functioning wall heater.... the list is long.  There's also a nice long crack across the tile from the toilet to the tub.


We were worried about that until our agent brought us to a house down the street that is the identical floor plan, just reversed (and listed for 80K more than ours, although they added on a bathroom).  The same crack was on the floor in that bathroom, too -- so it must have been a builder design problem.  After Dale went into the crawlspace and checked it out, there is a section that could use some reinforcing that seems to be causing it.

Studio

This room is the first bedroom as you enter the house - it's going to be my art studio.  It's airy and light, big windows that look out the front of the house.  I won't be doing a lot of work on this room at first, except that this is the one room with obvious termite damage.

The previous owner had carpet in the house, and it looks like this area progressed with termites for years.  We'll be pulling this up and replacing the floor and any damaged subfloor areas (Dale looked while in the crawl space, it's not very extensive).  It's a big room, 10 x 13.


 Guest Bedroom

This room won't be getting a lot done right away, either - although we'd like to replace the windows and remove the very ugly window air conditioner.  But we do want to make it inviting for guests!

It's not huge, the smallest of the three bedrooms at 9 x 11.  But plenty of light with bright windows and a roomy closet.


Master Bedroom

This room will also be fine for just a while - but it's the room that will be getting most of the remodeling in the future.  We will be adding on to the backside of this room, out about 12 feet, and adding in an en-suite bathroom.  The house we looked at down the street added the bathroom on to the back of the room, but we'd like windows that overlook the backyard from the bedroom.  By extending the bedroom back, we'll also be able to add french doors out onto our future patio.






It's not a big room as it is now, only about 11 x 12, but when we get around to remodeling this one, it will be more like 15 x 12.  Another icky AC unit in the window.

We do plan on putting in central heat and air in the next year, and replacing most of the windows as we do each room. 


Living Room

The wall on the far left will eventually be opened up to the kitchen.

We really like the way this room flows into the backyard.  Huge 10' long sliding glass window!  Dale would like to replace it with french doors (2 sets) or bifold glass doors to open the whole space up.   It has a very awkwardly placed fireplace - in the corner, which will give us some issues about where to place furniture and all --

The other side of the room has a long, blank wall that we plan on building bookshelves floor to ceiling.  The floor heater you see will eventually be replaced when the central air is installed.  Through the doorway, you can see the built-in hall storage closets, which are pretty cool, and then the bathroom is to the right of that.  The doorway holds a pocket door, which we'll probably take out (but I love pocket doors!) so we can make this doorway wider.  We'll use the pocket door to replace the bathroom door so we'll have more usable space in the bathroom.

What you can't see in these pictures is that the back wall here has painted over paneling, which we may or may not remove, since we're installing bookshelves along that wall.  The ceiling is also covered with acoustic tiles, so I assume the plaster ceiling will need repair.  Luckily, Dale's a plasterer, so this doesn't scare us one bit.  The room measures 16 x 18.

Kitchen

Oh, I saved the best for last, ha ha!

This is a panorama of a long, narrow room.  On the left is a small eating area, which I have BIG plans for (built in benches, cozy dining space), we are planning on replacing the window with the AC unit with a door (there's a door at the end of the galley kitchen we'll be removing), and the rest of the kitchen will be completely removed when we get to the big kitchen remodel. 



The kitchen has some lovely 1970s era brick-look linoleum - ick - and yellow tiles that are pretty much cracked and chipped.  The one retro things that both Dale and I do like is the wall-mounted kitchen faucet and the breadboards built into the lower cabinets.  We'll save both those things, but the rest of it will be gone.  The wall on the right, here, will be mostly removed to open the kitchen onto the living room, to create an open concept space.  Rather than being a galley kitchen, we'll probably be making a U-shaped kitchen which we'll be able to do by removing that back door and replacing it with a window.


This space is large, 9 x 21.

That leaves the backyard, the garage and patios for a future post.  After spending the day crawling around the attic, the crawl space and touching disgusting stuff all over the place, we were glad to come home and take a shower.  We'd also met with our mortgage person to sign all the necessary papers there, and went through all the disclosures and tax info.  I still have a pile of papers to go through and return to the title company -- it's been a real change, buying in California, compared to our previous purchases in the midwest.