Appraisal Becomes a House Tour

June 2012

An appraisal in pictures, and some words- because it is a blog.

The living room from the front door

After we finished the stairwell we went ahead and decided to refinance the house.  To do this we needed the house to appraise for roughly 30k more then we had bought it for exactly two years before.  The good news is that we had easily spent that fixing the house up.  So, we felt pretty confident that we could reach that number.  Still, I am a planner and a worrier and I wanted to make sure the appraisal was seamless.

 The Living Room and Dining Room Looking North

  Our Dining Room from the kitchen doorway

 With the help of a hired maid I cleaned the house top to bottom.  I even mopped the entire basement floor, reorganized the junk in the basement and put down rugs so that it looked more inviting.  It was a lot of work, but in many ways it was a good chance to spring clean the house.  This marks the longest time span I have lived in one space since high school.  It's amazing how much I relied on moving every year to act as a catalyst for donating junk and cleaning spaces.

 The view of the Kitchen from the dining room and mudroom beyond

The hallway from the kitchen doorway looking into the guest room

We also had a round of smaller projects that we needed to complete.  Josh installed the remaining base shoe in the bedroom. I touched up paint in the living room, kitchen and dining room as well as pressure washed the front steps. We mowed the lawn, edged the sidewalk, and pulled the hundreds of weeds growing the sidewalk cracks. We were attacking our to do list.

The guest room from the hallway

Once again, overkill- but it was a good excuse.  After the house was fully clean I walked around the house and de-cluttered.  Nightstands were removed of books, tissues and clocks, the family room tables lost their magazines, pens and various mis-matched coasters. I ended up filling two boxes with each room's 'extras.' It felt nice.  I added back some fresh flowers and then turned on every stinking light in the house.  I was once told that you should do this whenever you 'show your house' because it makes it feel cleaner and more welcoming.  Seriously, the only thing I didn't do was bake cookies.

 The stairwell from the landing looking towards our bedroom

I am so glad that the morning before I walked around the house and shoot some quick pictures of most of the rooms.  The fact is- our house would probably never look this good again until we sold it. The good news, we appraised close to 40k over what we bought the house for!  The appraiser had great things to say about our house and neighborhood and even offered some ways we could raise the number even higher.

My little corner of the world in our bedroom

It was great!  We could finally relax about the mad house rush and maybe even enjoy it??? But wait, I still had a HUGE pile of dirt and concrete in my backyard. Darn. 

 

There are a few rooms you did not see, these are because they are part of our current and/or soon to be remodels.  The bathroom, the upstairs office, the basement, and our back yard. Don't worry- this will continue.

Our happy abode

Changing Priorities

May 2012

So I haven't written in over a week because my next post should be more about our depave efforts and the work on the driveway.  But honestly, I can't get motivated to blog about gravel and digging.  Also, I am currently STILL dealing with this project so motivation is low until I can truly cross it off my list.  Luckily, we never stop remodeling so there is always another project to talk about. 

We had big plans for house in the spring and summer, all of which had to do with us working in the yard.  We wanted to build a back patio cover, enclose our patio into a screen in porch, add raised beds, install fences and gates, and put in a fire pit.  All of these things were exciting, but we knew that none of these things would really help our resale value. They would be nice additions to our house.  The problem is.... we really need to think about the resale value of the house and make some priorities. 

Before you get too nervous, we are not planning on selling our house.  I hate a half-finished project and could never turn my back on the Castle now.  However, several houses in our neighborhood started going up for sale and selling for above asking price.  It appears that the Portland real estate scene is back and our neighborhood is a hot place to live! Yay!  That coupled with even lower interest rates then when we bought two years ago made us think about refinancing.  We started talking our mortgage broker who was great!  If you live in the Portland area Gary Boyer is where it's at, and he encouraged us to think about it as well.  The goal was that we could refinance and actually have a mortgage that is lower then what we used to pay in rent in downtown.

The problem I saw was that there were a few GLARING issues in the house that might make an appraiser a little nervous about the house.  These were not big deals to us, but I know to an outsider they showed some red flags.  1. The stains in the basement from a few small but persistent winter water leaks, 2. Small outstanding issues from past work, missing trim, unpainted windows, etc.  and last but not least.... The staircase.  This is one of the worst parts of it all.  Just to give you a reminder see pictures below... Scary!

There was no way anyone was going to give us a positive appraisal with the current state of our blue trimmed, cracking plaster, water stained ceiling, poorly lit stairwell.  It looks like we had a new project and it was a big one.