OK, I started demolition right away after closing. Things were exciting. I was working on the house as my job and we were planning for the baby and planning to sell the home we were living in.
After about 6 months of working on the house things were slowing down money wise. We had the inspections to get the power back on and the water flowing again. I had the major components of the kitchen installed. We sold our other home in April of 07 but we had to move in with Sue's sister for about a month before we could get the approval for power and water back on.
Once we moved in to the not yet completed house, we actually only had one room that was fully functional besides the living areas, the kitchen. So we bathed in the kitchen sink. Yes, all of us.
By this time we had blown through the 70K already! Partially because we had to use that money to pay the 2 mortgages and living expenses plus the repairs and materials. We moved in basically broke! I was taking on handyman projects for clients and trying to practice real estate but nothing was enough to pay the bills during this time and our mortgage was $2900/month! I will remind you that Sue was pregnant and having to bathe in the kitchen sink!
We did not have any trim work like baseboards or door casings or even paint on the walls.
May I say this was an extremely difficult time especially knowing family and friends were talking behind out backs about how crazy we were etc.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Saturday, February 7, 2009
taking you back again..
So we closed on the house. We now have two mortgages! Did I tell you we found out we were expecting our second baby girl? Well we found out around Jan. 07 that we were due in Oct. 07.
The new baby would put a kink in our fostering and adopting plan for the time being to say the least.
The new baby would put a kink in our fostering and adopting plan for the time being to say the least.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Taking you back....
Wow, the days can fly by which is what happened since my last post on Saturday. This is supposed to be a daily blog.
OK, I will start back in Sept 2006. Sue and I had just sold one of our homes and moved back in to a home that we had been renting out to a tenant. At this point we were debt free and updating the home after the renter's moved out.
We were excited to pay off our debt (except for the mortgage) and see what was next as far as God's plans for us. I was managing properties in Durham for a private investor and we had just given birth (well Sue did) to Eva. It was now Sept. and Eva was 8 months old and things were great.
Good paying job, little family starting, Sue was able to stay home with Eva, the house was nice and updated, things were good.
One day I came home from work and Sue said have you seen the historic home on the corner of Dry and Harrison downtown? I said yes I have do you want to look at it? We liked to look at homes together whether we were buying or not. I am a broker so it was easy. It was like entertainment for us. Now back at work I knew that my boss, the owner of the property I worked at in Durham, was wanting and trying to sell the apartments to new buyer. It was assumed that I would work for my boss at a new property he was going to purchase after he sold this one. The property sold and I did not go with my boss but I stayed and worked for the new owner. That relationship quickly fissled out and found myself unemployed. During the previous couple of weeks Sue and I were considering this historic house we looked for fun as I mentioned early. We had plans to foster and adopt kids in addition to our biological ones. This historic house would be perfect for raising a large family. One night the listing agent of the home called and said it is now or never to make an offer on the home since other offers were coming in. We talked it over and decided we would make a silly low offer with little earnest money and see what happens. We also told the agent to let the seller know that we planned to use the home to raise a large family. This was important because the home was zoned for a commercial use and the seller had raised her family there and did not want to see it turned into a parking lot or something. Well about an hour later the agent called back and said you got the house! We said wow how?! The agent said because of your desire to fix it up and raise a family there. We were able to get financing with no money down and I had the seller pay the closing costs etc. The home was in disrepair to say the least so on top of the mortgage we also needed money to restore the home. We talked to the bank and they informed us we could only get a loan for 20K. This was disappointing b/c we needed or so we thought we only needed 70K for the repairs. Besides I was going to do the work myself since I was unemployed. We also needed to sell the home we were living in in order for this whole thing to work. I got a call from the bank about 3 weeks later and said congratulations you can get the full 70K for repairs so a month later we closed on the historic home and began
demolition.
OK, I will start back in Sept 2006. Sue and I had just sold one of our homes and moved back in to a home that we had been renting out to a tenant. At this point we were debt free and updating the home after the renter's moved out.
We were excited to pay off our debt (except for the mortgage) and see what was next as far as God's plans for us. I was managing properties in Durham for a private investor and we had just given birth (well Sue did) to Eva. It was now Sept. and Eva was 8 months old and things were great.
Good paying job, little family starting, Sue was able to stay home with Eva, the house was nice and updated, things were good.
One day I came home from work and Sue said have you seen the historic home on the corner of Dry and Harrison downtown? I said yes I have do you want to look at it? We liked to look at homes together whether we were buying or not. I am a broker so it was easy. It was like entertainment for us. Now back at work I knew that my boss, the owner of the property I worked at in Durham, was wanting and trying to sell the apartments to new buyer. It was assumed that I would work for my boss at a new property he was going to purchase after he sold this one. The property sold and I did not go with my boss but I stayed and worked for the new owner. That relationship quickly fissled out and found myself unemployed. During the previous couple of weeks Sue and I were considering this historic house we looked for fun as I mentioned early. We had plans to foster and adopt kids in addition to our biological ones. This historic house would be perfect for raising a large family. One night the listing agent of the home called and said it is now or never to make an offer on the home since other offers were coming in. We talked it over and decided we would make a silly low offer with little earnest money and see what happens. We also told the agent to let the seller know that we planned to use the home to raise a large family. This was important because the home was zoned for a commercial use and the seller had raised her family there and did not want to see it turned into a parking lot or something. Well about an hour later the agent called back and said you got the house! We said wow how?! The agent said because of your desire to fix it up and raise a family there. We were able to get financing with no money down and I had the seller pay the closing costs etc. The home was in disrepair to say the least so on top of the mortgage we also needed money to restore the home. We talked to the bank and they informed us we could only get a loan for 20K. This was disappointing b/c we needed or so we thought we only needed 70K for the repairs. Besides I was going to do the work myself since I was unemployed. We also needed to sell the home we were living in in order for this whole thing to work. I got a call from the bank about 3 weeks later and said congratulations you can get the full 70K for repairs so a month later we closed on the historic home and began
demolition.
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