We recently purchased an entire "estate" in our small town which includes a three bedroom, two story house with a two car garage and full basement. This "estate" also included a full size 1996 Dodge Ram pick up truck with a snow plow, a tractor, a riding lawn mower, a 25 ton log splitter, a fishing boat and trailer, a canoe and the entire contents of the house and garage. The garage was filled with high quality wood working tools, as well as many usual garage type items you would find in any household garage. The house was filled with many, many treasures.
This "estate" belonged to a 52 year old gentleman who passed away in October of 2009. His only living relative, who is his sister, lives several hours away and is in a home with Alzheimer's disease. Her husband had taken over handling the affairs of the estate and really didn't have time, energy or resources to devote to cleaning up and tending to this home and it's contents. He just wanted to be rid of it after almost 10 months of dealing with his brother-in-law's estate. None of the distant relatives wanted it either, and maybe you will see why in just a minute.
The brother-in-law had someone lined up to purchase the entire estate, but after several months of that person dragging their feet he decided to offer the estate to the next interested party, which was my husband and myself. The asking price for this entire estate...$15,000.00. It's not everyday that you are offered to purchase a three bedroom home for $15K so we jumped at the opportunity to turn this into a frugal adventure!
Structurally, the house itself is in great condition. It is an older home but has been well cared for throughout the years. The problem is that this man could have been labeled as a "hoarder". These are photos of the house in the condition it was in when we walked in the door:
And yes, the entire house and garage looked like this! The floor was covered in newspapers and mail that had to be from the last 10 years. (It killed me to see all those unused coupon inserts!) Some of this was the result of intruders breaking into the house while it sat vacant, but most of it was just the way this man lived. Now maybe you can understand why no one that knew this man wanted to take on this huge task. The refrigerator still had food in it...from October 2009 (just trying to add effect here so you could imagine the odors that went along with these photos). My husband literally had to take a snow shovel and "shovel" a path through the rooms so that we could get in and move things around. I have always considered myself a "dumpster diver" and to me, this was the ultimate "dumpster dive" if you know what I mean!
Today we closed on this property so it is officially ours, but three weeks ago we were given permission from the owner of the estate to "treat it as our own" so we have been working diligently to clean it up and start our adventure. So far we have filled two 20 cubic yard dumpsters and put most of the papers out for the recyclers. It's going to take a lot more work, but we have come a long way already. Here's what those same rooms look like now:
With the help of some family members, I am quite proud of the progress that has been made in just three short weeks!
I am a country girl and would never leave my 5 acre farmette out in the country to move into the city, so we won't be living in this home. Our intention is to fix it up and rent it out. We have had plenty of experience with "fixer-uppers" after rehabbing two farm houses, so I know we can do a lot of what needs to be done ourselves, and in case you didn't already get it, we aren't afraid of a little hard work. :)
So, now here's the challenge I have come up with - between having an "estate" sale to sell off the items that we are not going to keep for ourselves and rent I plan to turn this into a FREE house - that's right, I am going to keep track of all expenses including purchase price, closing costs, clean up costs and repairs and see how quick we can make back our money on this adventure! I'll bet it won't take long at all - I am even guessing that we can do it before we get the house rented out.
So, as you can see, I have been very busy with new frugal adventures and that's why I haven't been out in the stores very much. I am so grateful for our stockpile because it has kept me from having to run to the store for groceries when I needed to be helping. I have a huge box of paper towels from a past Jewel deal that are going to be put to use with all my FREE cleaning supplies once this place is ready for a good scrubbing.
I will post updates as the clean-up and rehabbing progress, and I will also post about how close we are to meeting our "challenge". Any guesses on how long it will take?
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