This past month has been a whirlwind of sprinting to get things ready for the floor refinishers who began work this week on Monday. Amazingly, by the skin of my teeth everything was ready to go by 8am Monday for the sanding, staining, and sealing mayhem to begin, but not without a few hiccups along the way. When we last left off, the two smaller bedrooms upstairs had nearly been fully painted, with only some trim and touch-up work left to be completed. The shelves for the built-in bookcase in the medium, and Kit’s favorite, bedroom still remain to be painted (hopefully I will get around to finishing them before September 1st when my not so new housemate moves in), but otherwise the rooms look finished and the colors have grown on me.
Moisture Problems
Well, I guess you should always expect that something needs to go wrong during the blissful first months of new home ownership to bring you back down to cold hard reality…and MPLMP was not gonna let me miss out on that experience. Amid the craze of summer activities, the tank mounts on the second floor bathroom toilet had begun to give way. Drip by drip water made its way down the outside of the toilet bowl and beneath the toilet where there was a concealed hole in the ceramic tile floor. The water passed through the hole to the plaster ceiling of the kitchen below building up to a point of saturation when it began to drip to the kitchen floor, and that’s when I got the phone call from Josh letting me know there was a large puddle of water on my kitchen floor and drips coming from the ceiling. He quickly shut off the water to the toilet, but I was to find out that would not stop the flow. Continue reading
Eligible to Register
As I mentioned in the last post, I had some visitors over to see the house in the hopes of pursuing listing on the National Register of Historic Places. You might be asking why…so I’ll tell you.
The National Register of Historic Places is the federal list of districts, sites, buildings, and structures deemed worthy of preservation. Established in 1966 as part of the National Historic Preservation Act, the register is an honorary distinction that does NOT prohibit a property owner from altering their property in any way they see fit (including demolition). What it does protect is any listed property from being altered or adversely affected by any project that utilizes federal funds without due-process and oversight from the State Historic Preservation Office and National Park Service. Also, your property does not have to be a building of national significance, instead the whole goal of the register is to instill pride and spread knowledge of communities’ cultural heritage at a local level. Where it gets more enticing are the Rehabilitation Tax Credits offered at the State and Federal levels. The rehabilitation tax credits seek to incentivize the revitalization of historic properties and communities. In New York State the combined tax credits available for the rehabilitation of income producing properties that are listed on the National Register is a whopping 40% of the construction costs. This rehabilitation tax credit system is one of only a few government tax incentive programs that actually nets a significant return on investment, but don’t take my word for it, check out what others more knowledgeable than me have proven about it.
Let the Games Begin
So, many things have happened these first few weeks (I started writing this post over two weeks ago…life has been crazy). MPLMP has a full time resident, but it’s not me…and I had some visitors come to study the house in the hopes that I might get it on the National Register of Historic Places. During all of this and to continue on until who knows when, work has begun in earnest on making this perfect little money pit, my perfect little money pit.
Kit and I, with much appreciated help from MPLMP’s first resident, Joshua (more on him later), have begun the process of repainting all of the rooms of the house. Many of the rooms either feature near colorless beiges, flaking and peeling paint, or just plain dirty old walls in colors I could do without. The first room we decided to tackle was the medium bedroom.
Seen here right before we started painting.
Drinking the Kool-Aid
Well the showing went well (obviously, why would I have this blog?). The key of course, and perhaps when others went through the house they found it hard to do so, was to look past the decorations and see the house for what it was. So what was it???
An outright time capsule wrapped in an unfortunate vinyl and aluminum wrapper…with a LOT of needed tender loving care, especially the garage (asphalt shingles that should have been replaced at least 5 years ago, paint peeling off all surfaces). The flow of space felt right. For its 1450 sqft, it certainly had some generously sized rooms, especially the living room and master bedroom, there definitely was no shortage of natural day light from all of the windows, and boy were there a lot of original light fixtures! The plentiful gumwood woodwork, built-ins, stained glass, archways, and McKinney Wrought Iron hardware (I know this because my parents house has this unique hardware) were just icing on the top.
My Perfect Little Money Pit 