This has been over a two year long process. I honestly think we are either crazy, or ridiculously patient. I don't think I've ever shared the full story, so back story first, then lots of pictures. Sorry this is going to be long.
My bf has a goal to buy a bunch of houses cheap to flip and either sell or rent. So while looking for houses to flip we decided to start looking for a house for ourselves. We found a few we liked and had put it an offer on a townhouse that was move in ready. While we were putting in an offer on the townhouse, the house we ended up buying was listed. Based on its location, it was the perfect rental. It ended up being a competitive bid, so we over bid and also submitted a letter about it being a perfect starter home. We won, but it was a foreclosure through Fannie Mae so it came with a contigency clause that the owner must live in the house for a minimum of one year or be fined $10k. So we canceled our offer on the townhouse. This was November/December 2013. We were supposed to close January 30th, 2014.
When the bank went to turn everything on for inspection, the oil tank had a leak. We told them they had to replace it. They agreed, but because it is the government our closing date was bumped to March, then again to April. They get the tank in, and we have an inspector come. There were several items that were flagged (broken/boarded up windows, termites in addition) and the bank refused our mortgage. So we had to search for another bank. That bank told us they would give a mortgage only if the flagged items were repaired. So again, we told Fannie Mae that they needed to fix those items. They did, but again took forever, so our date was bumped to June. When the contractors went in to replace the broken and boarded up windows they found that the copper piping in the basement was stolen; luckily all of the water was shut off so there was no damage. All of the basement plumbing had to be replaced.
We finally closed on August 28th, 2014 and thought we only needed to do a little cosmetic work. We had planned to paint over the paneling. After burning myself trying to remove wall paper, my bf decided to see how easy it would be to remove the paneling. That led to revealing crumbling plaster lath, horrible electric work, and bowed/damaged major support beams. We ended up gutting the entire house and starting from scratch. My bf redid 98% by himself, I helped where I could, but I'm not great with power tools. My big tasks were picking out paint and floors, and then painting everything.
All we have left to do is the upstairs bathroom, the addition, and repaint/repair the exterior.
Now for pictures:
This is what the house looked like when we got it:
ding room
kitchen
master bedroom
living room
Construction pictures:
This is what it looks like now!! (My kitchen pictures are from the party, I'll take more tonight after cleaning up so the changes can really be seen).
Guest bedroom (for some reason I don't have any before pictures of this room, but it was just as ugly as the master)
Master bedroom
After everyone left yesterday, my bf and I kicked off our shoes and ran upstairs. We then just laid on the floor to soak in that this is actually ours and a place to live. We will probably be in this house another year or so, until we can move into the next house and rent this one out. But here we are soaking in the moment.