I think our loan will go through

I finally think our loan will go through tomorrow. We still won't get our money until Wednesday. Some BS 3 day wait thing.

Anyway, our contractor has been nice enough to start work (and continue for 2 weeks) without much money. We have been giving him a little here and there. But nothing close to the tens of thousands of dollars that we owe him.

I am sure he will be thrilled to get a huge chunk of money from us. He initially said it would take a month. Which would make now the 1/2 way point. I think we still have a month left. There is still so much to do, If it is finished in 2 weeks I will think he is a magic man.

We still have:
the upstairs bath (everything)
the kitchen (everthing)
drywall in the living room & dining room
crowne molding in the living room & dining room
windows (delivered today)
siding
little minor things here and there

I will add more pictures tomorrow.

Why can't we just be made of money

We are not rich people. We do not have tens of thousands of dollars in the bank. If we did, our house would have been done over a year ago.

So, we took out a home equity loan.

When we bought our house we did a 80% loan and a 20% loan. We do not pay PMI. So, when we went to apply for the home equity line of credit, we were told that they (the bank) would have to "take over" the 20% loan. This is because they can not be the third leinholder. Ok- fine. we do even more paperwork. The process seems to take forever.

Well, on Sat we found out that the "value" of our house is $60,000 less than the actual value of the house. The value is based on a drive-by of the house, comps in the area, and the housing market.

Well, since the market is so bad right now, the bank TOTALLY undervalues houses.

What does this mean to us....well it means we are SCREWED!!!!! According to the bank, we only have about $50,000 in equity in our house. $25K of which has to be used to pay off the 2nd loan (the 20% loan). So, that only leaves us with about $25,000 to do $55-60,000 worth of work.

I am so upset right now. I have no idea where we are going to get the rest of the money from. We opened a Home Depot Home Improvement Loan - which will pay for the kitchen cabinets, the appliances, the floor, and any little things that we have to pick up.

We have no choice, but some will have to go on credit cards. Exactly what we did not want to do. I guess in hindsight, we should have found out how much we could get before we started work, but we were CONFIDENT that we would get at least $70,000. This was thinking that they would undervalue our house at $30,000 under market value.

The whole thing is just so upsetting. On top of the fact that our contractor has already started and basically has not received tons of money yet (this was his choice, not ours).

Where is the money tree when you need it :(

Old bathroom

I can't believe how much more open this looks!

New Bathroom

It is not this yellow. The Paint is a goldish beige

I guess we are just beige people

OK - we painted the new bathroom. And while the color was pretty, it just was not us and totally did not match the bathroom stuff that we had.

So, over the weekend the room was re-primed and then repainted. It went from Tiffany Blue to a goldish beige. After we painted we realized that it was almost exactly the same color as our bedroom.

I guess we are not really color people - well at least not on the walls. I will post pictures tonight.

You would think Insultaion Guys would wear warm clothes

Our house is about 100 years old. And, I am not sure who thought this would be a good idea, but none of our outside walls have insulation. That's right, no insulation.

So, part of the work that we are doing is blowing insulation into all the exterior walls. The guys show up today (it is about 20 degrees) with just jeans and a sweatshirt. You would think that guys that do insulation would know how to keep themselves warm --lol.

Couple of updates: when we took the siding off the house we found out that in each peak was colored shingles - very common in older Victorian houses. So, we were left with a tough choice. We could just ignore the fact that we found part of the original house and just cover it again with the white siding. Or, we could add the decorative shingles to our budget and "restore" the house to the orignal design. The second option will add about $1000 to our ever expanding bottom line.

Well, we decided to keep the look of the orignal house. We are going with the decorative shingles. We are also actually getting the same color (or very close) as what was on the original house (kind of a teal but closer to green). We were planning on getting shutters anyway, so now the shutters will be in green instead of black like we originally planned.

I am glad we are doing it - I think it will look great.

Here is a picture of our house before and then after the siding was taken off - in the second picture you can see the shingles on the top.

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Another thing that seems like it is an issue over and over again is the previous work we already did. As many of you many know, my Dad was helping us out when we first started doing work on the house. (And Melanie - I know you read this - do not share this with Dad). We is just seems like there are a lot of little and some not so little things that were done incorrectly or a "weird" way.

Now, some of the things are minor cosmetic stuff - but others a bigger things. Here is a list of what I can think of that either had to be re-done or things that are not "right" but we will just have to deal with it.

The Washer/Dryer - the hook-up are in the wrong order. Usually the washer is on the left....not for us. This is not a huge deal, we will just have to flip the door on the dryer. But, we would not be able to get a front loading washer - you can't flip the doors on these.

The toilet - I don't know the tech stuff, but it is in the wrong spot and kind of close to the wall. Plumbing extensions had to be made and we will just deal with the closeness..

The Vanity light is not centered over the vanity. This is not a huge deal because we are going with a three bulb light - so the outlet will just be off center - but you won't see it..

The door to the bathroom - he created a non-standard doorway that would have required a custom door. We built the room from scratch so he could have built anysize he wanted. We had to take out almost all of the "new" framework just to create a new door, we also had to move the electrical because the door was in the wrong spot..

The new kitchen window - the window is not in the center of the room. We are just dealing with this.

The mudroom floor - I guess chunks of the beams were removed to level part of the floor. But by doing that the rest of the floor is not level at all. We have to rip out the entire floor and totally build a new one..

The shower head - well the placement of the shower is great......for Colin. The showerhead is so low that when I stand in the shower, the shower head is right at eye level. Again, great for Colin. There was nothing we could do here - the tile has already been done. Plus, this will only be the spare bathroom and we would probably not ever take a shower in there..

I know there is more, but that is all I can think of. It just sucks that we shelled out a lot of money on things that we have to pay more money to get done again.

I have a 2 bathroom house!

Now, the bathroom is not done, but I have 2 working bathrooms! I used the toilet just because I could. Then I realized that there was no toilet paper in the room LOL.

So, the only things that need to be done is the final sanding, paint, closet door, mirror, new window (next week) and then decorations!

These guys are working super fast! In addition to the bathroom, the laundry room is drywalled, the siding is gone, new electric in the dining room and living room....I feel like I am missing something.

They only have been working for a week! And, they have so much stuff done so far.

When they took off the siding, we found out that in all the peaks of the house was decorative shingles in a victorian teal color. After seeing that we would like to keep the look. So, now we are trying to decide what color to do the peaks. The whole house will be white, so we are thinking a nice dark brown - they darkest color available. Whatever color we do the peaks will be the same color as the possible shutters and the porch.

So, here are some pictures - note: the kitchen is now the new bathroom/laundry area.