The adventure continues...
This week we had the bushes and other undergrowth cleared from the
premises. There was evidence that there was some brick facing on the
house, but needed a machete to see it. Turns out that the house is
actually halfway attractive now and MUCH larger looking. With garage,
it's 3250 square feet of large. The "monobrow" look is diminished
because you see more than just the atrium and a couple of garage
doors. Fortunately, a ton of weed-and-feed and grass seed should help
matters a lot. The lawn is a disaster area. The unkempt bushes (about
7 years worth of no trimming) covered up huge portions of lawn. Ugh. I
gladly paid to have that stuff removed.
As the place is 29 years old, it's at that point where it needs a
little bit of overhauling. Some has already been done, but some major
things remain. The bathrooms had been updated about 10 years ago, so
they're good for a while. The kitchen is in good shape too. All
flooring, except the carpet in the bedrooms and upstairs hallway is
new. Siding is shot, though. The lack of care and feeding over the
past few years have taken their toll and had dramatically reduced the
value of the house. Not including the economic downturn and depressed
real-estate values, the general condition of the house was somewhere
around a $50,000 hit. There is the issue of the ceilings, which I'll
get into another time, but there was a little bit of an error during
construction which caused cracking along the seams of many sections of
drywall.
I chatted with the former owner and found out a few things about the
house that weren't revealed during the purchasing process. As
mentioned, the house is passive solar. From everything I could "see",
it was a contemporary house that had solar features. However, that is
not true. This house is actually a true passive solar house that was
close to 1983 state-of-the-art. In fact, when it was built, this house
was featured in several articles and was the showcase house for the
college (it was a college built home). It's like everybody knows about
this house and when it was built, half the town traipsed through it
during the "open house" where they showed it off. As we're new to the
community, this was not known to us and our Realtor wasn't living
there at that time.
I haven't spoken to the original owners yet. They now live two doors
down. They moved because of all the stairs, but I know they are a
little ticked at the intermediate owners because they ignored all the
recommendations about the solar system and then also let the place go
to weeds. I was going to talk with them on Saturday, but I was pretty
sick. I am puzzled about a few things which I'll ask them about. For
example, the outer walls are a bit thicker than normal outer walls in
stick-built construction. I don't know what's up with that. Several
other mysteries abound--especially as it concerns air circulation and
the solar. Even the garage (which is fully insulated) has some design
oddities which don't look like "accidents", but I can't figure them
out without knowing what's inside the walls. I did open up one access
panel to the fireplace chimney...
As to the important things... The darkroom is now half painted. It's
going to be painted two different colors. I have to put a ceiling in,
along with an exhaust vent. Electrical work, plumbing work and one
small wall are to be added.
--
Ken Norton
ken@xxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.zone-10.com
--
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