As in, before the crazy people get all their crap out. So you'll have to look past the rather large amount of clutter in these pictures and imagine what it will be like when it's cleaned out. But first, some tidbits from the adventure:
- The house is being sold because the owners are divorcing. They're divorcing partly because the man has taken up with his former secretary. The two of them are now living in the house, and she (the girlfriend) doesn't want him to sell. The house had been on the market over 4 months when we went to see it. At our initial appointment, the girlfriend locked us out of the house and refused to let us in even when their agent banged the crap out of the front door using the lockbox as a knocker.
- The owners' agent consistently referred to the girlfriend as "that bitch" in our presence.
- When we finally got into the house, the girlfriend sat in the dining room glaring at us and tried to report our realtor for harrassment.
- The whole upstairs of the house emits the fragrant aroma of years and years of pot smoking.
- The owners' agent was almost criminally incompetent, unable to walk her client through a purchase agreement, help them make a counter-offer, or even fill out and submit the requisite paperwork for putting the house on the market in the first place. All of this was ultimately taken care of or initiated by our realtor.
- The owner's dog, a huge rottweiler/doberman mix, was housed primarily in the basement, where it "marked" the crappily-installed wall panelling to the point that it was starting to warp and pull away from the basement foundation. (All of the panelling will be removed before we move in. Though the owner had a really hard time understanding why on earth we'd feel like we had to remove that stuff in order to make the house livable.)
So, yeah, it's been interesting! We're just keeping our fingers crossed that nothing too insane happens at the closing, which is on the 27th. But it's looking like the house is ours, and I think with a little TLC it will be a wonderful first home. Anyway, here are the pictures - remember to look past the clutter!
This is the living room - behind all the crap there's a fireplace with built-in bookcases on either side:
This is the dining room - more built-ins and that awesome wood panelling on the walls.
Here's the ceiling in the dining room:
Here's the kitchen, which as you can see was "updated" some time in the 1970s:
And here's the extreeeeem pink bathroom:
So, yep, we'll have plenty of remodelling projects to keep us busy! But it sure will be nice to be doing them in a place of our own.
