Did Someone Say Fixer-Upper?

I might have mentioned my love of a fixer-upper a few times before to you.  When we moved to the city we bought a new house.  It was a front/back split level that we could afford.   This was also the first house we’d ever owned that we didn’t have DIY plans for.  And I didn’t love it.  

I tried to think of many different ways to add character into that house.  But that house –  it was what it was and there wasn’t much I could do with it.  Oh, I could paint.  And I did.  Every wall in the entire house.  Most of it twice!  I had Eric add 2 plug-ins!  Whoohooo! We were there longer than we’d planned and I was house-bored.  (Can that be a thing?  house-bored?)

So what do I do when I’m bored with my house?  I start looking for a fixer-upper!  I love looking at houses.  Kinda have to with my decorative painting/Cabinet ReStyling profession.  

I found my target areas.  I knew my price limit.   The game was on!  

It took several months of looking on the MLS before I found THE ONE!  

Eric and I decided to go see it. This house was forclosed and now bank-owned.  I could tell from the photos that it was empty.  We pulled up in the drive and thought “This doesn’t look toooooo bad.”  From the outside we could see that it needed a new garage door and the exterior needed paint.  

But when we opened the front door the smell hit us and we knew this house was going to be “special”.  lol  Noooooo, it wasn’t the odor of anything dead!  Thank goodness!!!

 It was the smell of MOLD!  

The back corner wall of the kitchen and the stairwell was black with mold.  The end of the lower cabinet was green and fuzzy.  There were little black dots on all of the living room walls.  How I wish I’d taken pictures of the cabinets, but alas, I didn’t.  

Once we got over the shock of the mold issue, we started noticing the rest of the house.  It had been built in 1998 and hadn’t really been updated.  And then there were the parts that HAD been painted….oh boy!

I noticed the mauve carpet that was EVERYWHERE, but the kitchen….the 3″ wide peach-colored trim (way too small in scale) in the room with the 18′ tall ceiling….the blue and peach wallpaper in the master bath…..the peach bathtub in the master…..the little teeny shower in the master….the bright purple dining room……the fire-truck red master bedroom…….the mustard yellow powder bath…..the burgundy back hall (where the washer and dryer should go)…..the kitchen sink was where you would look at a wall…..the area under the skylights where a tree (in a very large pot) had once been……the offset wall above the fireplace…..the kitchen was closed off from the rest of the house……

And then there was the natural stone fireplace……the screened-in back patio……the master bedroom on the main level…..and the trees in the yard.   Those were the good points.  

Ahhhhhh.  But this house!  This house had potential!

I wanted THIS house!  

Please join me as I continue the saga of my latest fixer-upper.