house

Here are a couple of pics of the house that I am hoping to come to terms on. It sits on 1.5 acres, north of Bangor, ME. I had a friend check it out, as it is very affordable and listed "as is"... it seems like it will need lots of work, but I am up for it. In other ways it doesn't sound much "worse" than the place we are renting right now... where the roof leaks and the landlord's solution -- after the sheetrock fell into the bathtub -- was new sheetrock and a bucket in the attic to catch the leak! LOL At least when it's ours we CAN fix it!

My friend said:

• First is a mudroom or breezeway, with two bench seats, one on either side of the door. That leads into the kitchen.
• A right turn takes you to the living room. The front area would have been a really large living room 20'X25' except some idiot has thrown up a sheetrock partition dividing it in half. The sheetrock is not taped or plastered and it is ugly. The ceiling is fairly low, maybe 6'2", it has some plywood with some sheetrock over that and then open rough cut 2X4s. Being a 25' long room there is visible sag in the ceiling. The walls are a very nice wood grain wainscot, hung in diagonal stripes. Wood grain walls with rough-cut 'beams' it could be a nice look they were going for. No closet.
• Up-stairs are two In-complete bedrooms that again some idiot recently tried to divide in half, and they left the sheet rock un-taped and un-plastered. If you pulled down the sheetrock, you would have a large bedroom up there. A full bathroom is off the hall. The bathroom has a skylight. There are floor registers that are not connected to anything, rather that look down into the living room. No closet.
• Back to the kitchen, what a mess. The stove is gone, much of the cabinets are gone, the floor tiles look like multiple layers and mis-matched. A sky-light is in the middle of the kitchen, but it was covered over with plywood to try and seal the leak. The kitchen has a partial cathedral ceiling in wood grain, with that sky-light. Rough-cut beams run across it horizontal at about 6'2".
• Right now the kitchen walls are dry, but then the interior of the house is well below freezing. Once the house was brought up to warm, it may well begin leaking again. The roof between the kitchen and the rear bedroom form a 'V'. The skylight is on the kitchen side of the 'V' not far from the gully. Once the snow and ice are gone, I would consider looking very close at the shingles and flashing. Some idiot ripped down the cabinets and began tearing apart the wall chasing the leak. Which I view as stupid. Go fix the roof. If it had a good underlayment and shingles leading onto flashing then the water should be gone. Unless this is an issue which arose from an ice-dam. I can not tell what it is from with so much snow pack on top. Possibly to remove the shingles from both sides of the 'V', a plywood underlay, rubber sheeting on top with the peak ridge caps laying right onto the rubber sheet. Then even if it did ice-dam again in the future, it would not leak.
• It gives the appearance that many people have re-modeled this house, many times.

and his wife said:

• It's cute. It's an old house that has gone through a lot of remodels, and you can tell. When windows were added, or closed off, you can see the seam. The same goes for the inside of the house.
• You can see all your neighbors, the land is very open. The barn is set behind the house. I didn't go in it, the snow is over my knees, and my boots don't go up that high :) There is no fencing. So if you wanted to bring in animals you would also need to bring in fencing.
  
• This would be a rough move...basically you are purchasing a shell. There is no way to close off any of the extra spaces for heating purposes this time of year. Having said that it is do able, I saw no other damage than that one spot in the kitchen. It would be A LOT of work. I think it would be a great place to show/use your creative talents.

Since I don't have a job and am not established yet and don't have the $40k they are asking, we need the owners to carry for a bit... and they are willing... we are working on terms now.

I hope they are not going to insist on seeing a credit report as no one yet has managed to pull one on me! My name screws it up, I guess... but I am more than willing to open my books (both personal and business) for their scrutiny and I did get a glowing letter of reference from my current landlord, as they had requested one. Luckily I managed to find him home on my second try yesterday.

Here at the studio life TRIES to go on.. I had better get busy on client stuff today, though it is hard to concentrate...