OMG **commence screaming while jumping up and down**
A few months ago, Justin and I closed on buying our first house! And let me say.. it has been an unexpected and interesting journey. There was so much interest in this house so we never really expected to be the winning bid.
The house is an early 1940s Tudor style home. She’s a real cutie but she needs A LOT of work. (Seriously…it’s A LOT! No day is a boring day with this house.)
But we loved this house from the first time we saw it because it is truly such a wonderful little piece of land. The neighborhood is beautiful. The town is quaint and exactly what we were looking for. The house is filled with charm and potential. We truly believe that we can make this our dream home someday.
And as the cliche goes….they don’t make ’em like this anymore.
This house has truly stood the test of time. It is so well-built with a solid foundation. Even the floorboards barely creak, which is rare for an old home!
BUT the interiors are a disaster. The house is completely is disrepair and has been for a long time.
The plumbing and electrical need to be completely redone, and the entire house is dirty and disgusting in every possible way, so we have our work cut out for us with gutting and completely rebuilding this house.
What we’re doing
I honestly think the better question is… what are we NOT doing? Truly…. 99.9% of this house is going to be completely redone.
And because we are fully redoing our plumbing and electrical systems, we are going to be tearing down every single plaster wall and replacing it with drywall (currently we only have about 3 outlets that work in the entire house. oh and they’re all tied to the same breaker….and it’s all a major fire hazard so it needs to go ASAP). We will be installing HVAC while our walls are open.
We also plan to completely redo the exterior of the house (although that will likely be a years long process since we need to focus on making the interiors livable first!)
Unlucky for us…one of the previous owners of the house planted bamboo in the backyard. And although it may look super cool, bamboo is an extremely invasive species (and also illegal in the state of NJ). It’s extremely difficult to get rid of and has the potential to damage your foundation AND takeover your entire yard because of how quickly and widespread it grows.
The bamboo in our yard has grown into a literal jungle with all the free reign it’s had to grow here. It’s hard to even walk through our yard with all the overgrowth. So our first course of action will be to hire an excavator to clear out the bamboo so we’re able to restart with a blank slate in our yard, and eventually start a garden.
Follow our progress!
We have SO MANY projects that we’ll be working on and we’re so excited to share our progress each week. Renovating is a long journey, especially when you’re doing it all on your own.
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