Buying the duplex

Well...before we got the apt. we were looking at homes to buy and found a duplex that we liked. It was newly remodeled and in a great neighborhood. Our house in MO was still not sold or rented so we got cold feet and passed on the duplex. The other half of the duplex was in foreclosure but was not available yet. After we got moved in the apt. and our renters got moved in I was surfing homes for sale, which I do often and love to do, and I found that the foreclosure was now on the market. I called my friend Staci who is our realtor and she got me in to see it. Larry was in meeting and couldn't go with me but I gave him the 411 on it. I told him I thought it would be a great investment and he wanted to buy site unseen. We did put in an offer without him seeing it but I insisted that he see it for himself. OK, the condition of the duplex...needed updates! The carpet was ikie, the walls were dirty, the wall had dings everywhere...etc etc etc.


SO, our offer was countered with an amount slightly over ours. We got a home inspection which gave the bank the things they would need to fix prior to closing and what was our responsibility. Of course the majority was on us.


Fast forward...closing...We closed on a Friday afternoon. Larry went back to work and I went to the house. I started removing light and socket covers and minor things like that. Saturday morning, bright and early, Larry started scraping the popcorn ceiling and I starting pulling up carpet. Larry had to be at work by 2pm on Sunday (I'll get to that later). From Sat. am to Sun. at noon we had scraped ALL the ceilings, pulled up ALL of the carpet and padding, hauled out the carpet/padding and started working on the dinged walls. Wheeeew...if you've never done remodleing...let me just say, that's a lot of work in a little time.


So, the ceilings are scraped and time for me to paint the ceilings. We took the worst of the ceiling off to leave a bit of a texture to cover imperfections. I started painting but there was a slight problem. It started to peal! Oh my goodness, what a pain! I tried to putty and prime it but it still pealed. I had a guy come in to quote replacing some exterior doors and he quoted finishing the ceilings. We jumped on it and left that up to them. They scrapped down to the sheetrock, primed and painted it. I was painting the entire house and I was just not up to doing any more.

The rest of the story tomorrow...goodnight!