When you buy a new home for the very first time your expectations are high. When you buy a new fixer upper home there is a little bit of terror that goes along with the price tag. It didnt enter into our heads at the time that neither of us new anything about remodeling a house. My husband and I and our two children moved into our fixer upper home. The money we saved on picking this particular home verses one that was completely remodeled was astronomical. Our new home was on one floor, three bedrooms and two bathrooms with a huge fireplace in the living room, just what we were looking for. There was an attached two car garage and a laundry room. The kitchen really needed work and in a few months, we hired a man that cut and pasted our counters into a functioning work space. With a new tiled floor the kitchen looked just like we had spent thousands of dollars instead of just the opposite. The hall closet was small and had shelving that needed to be removed. I let my son karate kick the shelving off the walls. He thought that was cool. Having lived in apartments for several years, owning our own home and being able to paint the walls to our preference, ripping out whatever we wanted was a fantastic feeling. Upon entering the hall bathroom, I was hit with this putrid shade of dark green walls. I thought it was paint. A friend of mine came over and walked into the bathroom. Before I could stop her she had pulled off a strip of wall paper. I said, "Let's go for it," and between the two of us we stripped that putrid wall paper off the walls. Thankfully, it was a really thick paper and peeled easy. The walls were instantly lighter just sticky. The huge backyard was completely fenced in which was a plus. But the yard itself looked like we had just walked into a flourishing jungle. There were overgrown plants and rosebushes everywhere. In the middle of the yard were two old metal sheds without doors. These sheds were filled with trash from 20 years ago. In the midst of all this mess was a huge tree shedding leaves as we watched. I was younger and had plenty of energy. So I started pulling out plants, weeds, and everything in my way. After we were all settled in our new home, we headed to the Humane Society to purchase our new family member. We all fell in love with this large Australian Shepard. We brought her to our new home and she became a part of our family. Her coat was of many colors and we named her Patches. Patches loved to be in the back yard. She would run around bark and just have a wonderful time. It was the night before Memorial Day. My husband and I were sound asleep in our bed when and excited Patches started barking, running around the room and jumped up onto our bed. We tried to calm her down but she would not be calmed. I put her out back and went back to sleep. The next morning the kids opened the door and in ran our loveable Australian Shepard. As soon as she came bounding towards the bed I smelled a horrible stench. She came right up to me and her back was wet. I put my hand on her back and put my hand in my mouth to taste the liquid on her back. I gagged and ran for the bathroom. I literally washed my mouth out with soap. In all the chaos that followed our beautiful Patches was once again put out back. I had never smelled skunk pee before but let me tell you I never want to smell it again. The whole house stunk like skunk and I was sure the smell would never leave. We opened all the doors and windows and by evening the house was smell able again. Meanwhile, it was Memorial Day and all the Veterinarians were closed. I did manage to find one that was open. The Vet said to bathe the dog in tomato juice. So my husband made a trip to the store and bought six (6) large cans of tomato juice. He scrubbed poor Patches it seemed for hours and rinsed her off with the garden hose. Once she dried, she still smelled slightly like skunk. Poor Patches was not allowed back into the house for a week. After the skunk fiasco, we made an examination of the two sheds. The sheds were housing skunks and rats at night and that was not to be tolerated. The two sheds had to go. My son and a friend once again karate kicked and tore down both sheds. We called a trash man and he hauled the two sheds and all the junk from the sheds away. Good Riddance. On television now you see all these programs about people buying houses remodeling them and then selling them for a huge profit. This is called flipping a house. I say go for it, make all the money you can from this project. I will give you one small piece of advice, YOU HAVE TO KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING BEFORE YOU START THIS ENERMOUS PROJECT. If you have the money and you can afford to hire people to do all the remodeling work and still make a huge profit go for it. But if you are unknowledgeable about the cost of remodeling or cant peel paint or whatever else is required to flip your home for a profit re-think your options before you spend your hard earned money. When we bought our fixer upper we remodeled it over a number of years. I never regretted our years as a family together in our home and in the end we had a home we created. Please check out my other articles. I would love to hear from you just leave a comment on this article. Copyright 2006 Linda Meckler |
