New York State of Mind

I had planned to live in a one-bedroom apartment for a few months while our house was on the market. We never expected it to sell in one day. We were thrilled and got very focused on finding a house. We knew we were not apartment people. We have renovationism and you cannot renovate property you do not own.

We had no idea how difficult buying a house in New York would be. We knew it would be expensive. We knew we'd have to buy a smaller house than we had before. But, we did not expect what we went through. We were seasoned home buyers, or so we thought. We were really taken aback when the first realtor we worked with asked who our attorney was. What? We'd never even met the closing attorney until we were at the table before, so what is the rush. Then we learned. In New York you have to have a lawyer draw up contracts. There are no legal sized carbonless forms to fill in the blanks on and work through a deal. We also learned that once you have a contract, which normally requires a 10% deposit--that's right 10% of selling price, which is serious 5 figures around here--and anything that goes wrong after that is tough luck. The first house we found was in the construction stage. We did not know that appraisers were not appraising properties for what anyone else in the process thought they should sell for. So, there we were with a contract and an appraisal for $40k less than the negotiated price. Well, back where we came from you just tell the seller they have to come down or it is over. And that could have worked had we been only marginally able to qualify for the loan because not being able to get a mortgage is a way out. Oh no, not us. Apparently, we are quite the qualified buyers. Long story short it took over six months to fight about this and we still lost several thousand dollars.

That might have driven others to rent, but we've got renovationism and those few months in that apartment had us on our last nerve. We were jonesing for some demolition and rebuilding bad. We found another house and it didn't appraise either, but we had learned to drag our feet on the contract until the appraisal came in so we were only out the inspection and appraisal fees. Finally, we found the house we bought. There were a few bumps along the way, but to be expected and all satisfactorily resolved.

After all that you might think we would take our time and recuperate from our trauma. No, within two hours after closing we were in the house ripping out all the tiny baseboards. We had already arranged to have all the hardwood floors refinished and the crew would be there the next day. We also started tearing off the vinyl wallpaper. That first step makes it easier to get the paper and glue off. Or so they say.

Here is a look at those first few days:

The fireplace was nice, but the room has no molding, is dark, and has no lighting other than those eyeball spots on the fireplace.

The entry hall had small dark moldings, a mix of stained and painted doors and pink walls.

You can really see this pink and all the tiny moldings were all painted pink to match. The stairwell is a nice feature, but it was all dark wood.

Gotta love that light fixture and those vertical blinds. The floors are the real gem in this house. There is not a thread of carpet and never was. But, you can see how shiny the surface is. And while the floors were well maintained and of very high quality, we just wanted the fresh start and the satin finish.

This is the living room. Yes, even more pink. That baseboard heat is pink too. The room has no character and once again no light.

You can see the new floors in this photo. We had already moved stuff in and had to juggle the boxes as we renovated each room. The floors really lightened up once all those layers of poly were removed.

This made it look like it was going to be easy to get this wallpaper off. What a nightmare. Couldn't get the backer paper off in this hallway or the kitchen. We still have flocked walls, but those are coming down when we start to renovate those rooms. New drywall will be cheaper and easier. Did you notice the robin's egg blue ceiling? Yikes. It is in the kitchen too.

We picked out this tall baseboard so that the height would match the baseboard heat. I saw that in a trim molding book. We also added garage stop to the bottom to finish. It is a beefier solution than quarter round for molding this tall. Saw that in that book too. I get a lot of ideas from looking at books and magazines.

This is the crown molding we chose. We really liked the antique look. It looks like it might be too weighty for 8 foot ceilings, but it was perfect and we just love it.

Now that the floors were done and the wallpaper stripped, my next job was painting nearly every ceiling in the house so we could get all that trim molding put in. Come back to see how that turns out.