Loren and I are officially homeowners! After six-and-a-half weeks of negotiating with a seven-hour inspection, two basement contractors’ estimates, a couple engineers out at the house, five addenda to our initial purchase contract, and an eventual agreement on price, we had the owner’s signature a week ago last Monday—and at that point heard for the first time that two additional heirs would need to also sign the papers. That was supposed to happen that Monday evening, then Tuesday…then eventually Friday, less than a week before we were tentatively scheduled to close. We had locked our mortgage rate in—at a great 3.875%--till April 1, and rates had risen so we were looking at a deadline. Everything has worked out very well, though. I am very thankful for everyone who was so very supportive through these past several weeks, asking about the house, and caring about us. Thank you!
Our home is about a block-and-a-half south of Burns Park and Burns Park elementary school—an incredible, historic, and close-knit neighborhood. We’re also a mile to the University of Michigan central campus so I’ll be able to walk to work each day. Our 1921 house is full of character, much charm, and lovely details. You can see where coal was stored in the basement during the Depression years, evidence of three eras of phone systems, and an ancient-looking cistern hidden under our back porch and that is no longer used. Our home has a renovated kitchen, a full bath on both the first and second floors, and one of its four bedrooms on the first floor (i.e. our office/study space)--all of which are tough things to find at our price point in Burns Park. Unfortunately, knob and tube wiring is still being used, the basement is full of radon and asbestos, windows may need to be replaced, the plaster in the walls has cracks, it has a steam heat system with no vents already in place to easily put in lacking AC, and the foundation walls are bowing. We’ve carefully priced out and researched each of these and are looking forward to initiating many much-needed updates, and making this house our own. We have a busy year or two ahead, but we can work hard and be creative! We would love visitors—especially those who are painters, movers, and landscapers. (We pay well with both hugs and beer.)
When we closed on Thursday, we asked the sellers if they could share “fun history” about the house since they were brother and sister, who had grown up in the home in the 50s or 60s. They talked about how there are still saw marks on the mantle from when their mother had passed through a small door, now no longer there, in the coatroom closet and accidentally hit the head of her baby, one of the sellers, on the corner. The angry mother proceeded to saw off the mantel--but didn’t get very far cutting through the brick. The brother shared how he would jump out his second-floor bedroom window to catch a tree branch several feet out, which slowly lowered to the ground after he jumped on it after his parents were fast asleep. He’d climb back in through one of the basement windows when he got back, and he even told us how he could avoid having the door to the upstairs squeak in his attempt to avoid waking potentially very unhappy parents. The sellers also told us that the front overhang protecting the entrance to the house once was a full porch. When the sellers’ dad saw that the family’s taxes had gone up one year because they reportedly had both a front and back porch, he decided to tear down most of the front porch to avoid such a situation moving forward. After papers were signed on Thursday, we also talked about how in the Depression our house probably held four floors of families because both the attic on the unfinished third floor and the full basement have details that lead us to believe people lived there. We know that the house was once a duplex with a full kitchen, now long gone, on the second floor.
The lease on the house we are currently renting isn’t over for another few months, but this is good news as our new home needs all the floors refinished, LOTS of painting, some boiler fine-tuning—several radiators appear to not be functional--and other acts of tender, loving care. This will give us time to price out contractors, get some things done, and eventually have (what I hope is) a somewhat leisurely move a few blocks from where we are now into our new home.
