If you will recall I was looking for a place that we could fix up ourselves. John and I have learned a lot from the different homes that we have owned. Out first house was in Soldier, KY. which is located in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. We also later learned that until recently it was the hot spot for drugs in the state of Kentucky and the local grocery/gas stop had some bullet holes to support that comment. We were both fresh out of graduate school and John had landed the first job so we moved 14 hours away from nearest family and he started his professional life and I got pregnant with twins. Yeah, equality of the sexes! We had spent a couple of days with a realtor and looked at everything that was for sale within a 45 mile radius of John's job, no luck. Just starting out we did not have a lot of money and knew that we would not be able to afford much of a house. As luck would have it John saw a "for sale by owner house" in the local newspaper. We decided to drive out and look at it. It was an old farmhouse that had some additions added to it, hey it had an above ground pool, I was sold. We spent about 30 minutes looking around and made an offer. You might notice that we did not have a realtor and we didn't get an inspection. This is where our learning experience came in. I am certainly not putting fault on anyone but us. We just didn't know what we were getting into. As it turned out we became very experienced in home repair. The dishwasher was not hooked up to anything, nor was there anything for it to hook up to, all the water in the house (shower, washing machine, sinks, etc.) was dumped directly into the creek behind the house, the sewer lines were not connected together under the house, and what we thought was an airconditioning unit just happened to be the shell of one. You would think that we would notice that it was not even attached to the house. I actually came to love this house, it had some old parts, new parts and a lot of our sweat equity in it. I was not initially fond of the shotgun pellet holes in the siding but later learned to appreciate my husbands "personal touch". From this experience we felt pretty confident that we could take on some moderate home projects. I was working as a biology instructor at a local university and that gave me summers off. I'm pretty handy and I have a really good book on how to fix common household problems. I'm not sure that there is a chapter that covers this.....
It became evident that if we were going to pursue this project we were going to need some help. We both got busy gathering information. I went to the yellow pages and John went for someone he had been on a church committee with. The restoration people I talked to were familiar with the house and were not interested, could it be done, probably, are they interested in making a bid, NO.
One of the things that I really like to do is ask for advise. This used to make John made, why can't I just make up my own mind? It is not like that for me. I really do like to hear insights from other people, that is, the ones I solicate for advise. The feedback I was getting was not good. I was having lunch one day in the faculty lounge and started talking to my boss about it. I did not know that he had his house nearly burn down. He detailed the restoration process to me and gave me some leads and finally finished with "If I had to do it again and I would have just torn it down". I talked to my dad about it. He is very good about giving as little advise as possible and letting me make my own mistakes. I refer to him as "Sage Butch" because he can generally sum it up in one statement that you want to write down, something so profound that you want to embroider it on a pillow and put on your couch so you can read it every day or possibly tattoo down your arm. He thought that it might not be a very good idea, especially considering the goal. Oh yeah, remember that? Reduce debt, have more fun! Which brings me to John's contact, he was positive about it, thought it could be done, and gave us a ball park estimate. Hmm......do I like to gamble?
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