I have kept you waiting faaaaaar too long for an update! My apologies! Been a little preoccupied, you know, renovating a house, getting my coaching certification, and starting a business. 😉
Perspective
For the people that get annoyed when they see someone flip a house and then list it for $100k more and whine that the price increase is too much, please allow me to offer you a scene…
You’re crouched in the bathtub, bathing yourself from the tub faucet rather than the shower. You can’t use the showerhead because it’s leaking into your garage below. You can’t take a bath because the drain is bent and won’t take a stopper. So you’re huddled by the tub faucet, dumping bowls of water over yourself to get clean.
Let’s add to that your intense shivering despite the hot water because it’s about 55 degrees in your house, and that’s with the 2 space heaters running. Yes, the furnace died and the warranty woman you spoke to had zero urgency about the situation. As your frustration came through with “Have you ever experienced a Minnesota winter?! Where do YOU live?! Probably somewhere nice and warm!” She didn’t answer the question. 😛
Sounds purely delightful, right? Ha.
Possibly based on a true story. 😉 By far the worst week of the reno.
So if you’re getting all feisty over a price of a renovated house, keep in mind all the issues that were dug up that you don’t see. I promise you, there is never a shortage of frustrations or curse words. Or if you’re really brave, go try one! 😉
How It Started
My parents have been in real estate pretty much my entire life. And as annoyed as I would get with it as a child, here I am! Following in their footsteps!
If you didn’t catch my original purchase story and see my beautiful new home in all its glory, you must check it out! Because you need to see where this all began!
And now, I will share a couple of my favorite stories from this venture!
The Sealed Freezer
In the second bedroom, there was a giant upright freezer. Odd. It was still plugged in and running, so we weren’t afraid of a stench overpowering us when we ventured to open it, but I was also CERTAIN there would be body parts. Because obviously, that’s the most logical thought! My dad was the brave soul willing to unveil the contents. Eh! Just kidding! Wouldn’t open. So he tried harder. And harder. And was sure he was going to break the door handle in the process!
I had no plans to keep this thing, so out came the crowbar!! It still took him a long time to bust into that beast of a freezer! And when he finally pried the door off, he discovered why! Solid. Ice. That (ice ice) baby hadn’t been defrosted in its entire lifetime! Clearly confirming we were going to unearth body parts!!
So why didn’t we just throw the whole thing out you’re asking? It was too big to fit through the doorway with the freezer door on. It was also absurdly heavy, which upon opening and finding the solid ice, we realized why. So my saint of a mother spent the next however many hours chipping the ice out of that freezer!!!! She would fill bucket after bucket of ice and dump it out in the front yard. A neighbor came over to introduce themselves. It was fall, so she looked at the pile of snow in the front yard very quizzically. I said, don’t even ask. This house…so many questions.
And THANK GOODNESS, my mom did not discover any body parts. I mean, not human ones… But multiple whole turkeys! And lots of blueberries. Weird.
Mystery in the Kitchen
The kitchen…oh, the kitchen… White bread and buns everywhere that looked just like the day they were purchased, except they were hard as a rock!! What appeared to previously be a bag of peaches that had become one with the countertop. Dirty dishes that had been sitting for a questionable amount of time. Nasty.
As I cleared out cabinets, I kept finding what looked like rice. It was everywhere! And in very strange places like there had been a massive rice explosion in the kitchen. I’m thinking, does mouse poop turn white after so long?? That would be a looooooot of mice that had taken over, but I was just racking my brain!
My dad was standing over the stove at one point and started laughing. “What’s so funny?!” I asked. He was too busy laughing to answer. He pointed to the top of the stove, “Look!” There was more rice…but with trails…??? GAH!!! Maggots!!! They were all dead at that point, but…gag! They were everywhere!!!!
Everything in that kitchen was going into the dumpster, except that my dad managed to convince me that a few of the kitchen cabinets would fit perfectly in a nook in the garage above my garbage cans. Uhhhh…that mean’s I actually have to clean them…
So there I went, scrubbing off maggots, dust, grease, grime, candle soot, and who knows what else. So much grossness. But they did fit quite nicely in the garage and provided some great storage! I will eventually get around to painting them and covering all the ick they once wore.
So Satisfying
I will admit, there is a wonderfully therapeutic aspect to destroying things. While you don’t go smashing cabinets off walls like on HGTV if you want any semblance of a wall left, you do get to smash them once they’re down! I mean, I had to – it saves room in the dumpster! And those dumpsters are expensive! So guess what that means…smash everything!!! Quite enjoyable. 🙂
Also doubles as a decent workout. Not to mention hauling all that down the stairs and chucking it into the dumpster, then back up the stairs for more. A therapeutic, satisfying workout. Highly recommend.
Destruction…then construction…
After all the enjoyable destruction, one must start to reconstruct a house! Definitely a bit more planning and detail and work than the former! Haha. But also incredibly fun to see the creation come together!
Stay tuned for the rebuild…!