We had planned a trip to Puerto Rico for January. I can’t remember exactly when we planned it but it’s been on the calendar for awhile. For some reason, when we planned it, early January seemed like a good time for a vacation. Then it turned out that by the time January rolled around with Christmas vacation and Frank’s birthday and my birthday and each of us having a few days off work…well, we were totally not in the mood for ANOTHER vacation. Or that’s how it felt. We knew we would have fun once we got there but it just seemed like we needed to get back to normal life. Anyway, the day before the trip (as I’m sure you’ve heard on the news) Puerto Rico had a big earthquake! We called the AirBNB that we were going to stay at and they said they had no electricity and she was concerned that the stores had been cleared of most of the food. Ugh. Obviously the biggest concern is for the people dealing with this tragedy but it didn’t sound like a recipe for a relaxing vacation. So, the day before the trip, we cancelled. Frank spent so much time getting it all arranged and places to stay and car rentals and flights…and it was all cancelled within an hour. I was a bit surprised at how quickly he made the decision to be honest. It was definitely for the best because they had lots of aftershocks and stuff and I’m sure it would have been a nightmare to be visiting during all of that.
Another reason it was good that we didn’t go was that we did something crazy only 2 days before the vacation was supposed to happen…we made an offer on a house. It’s kind of a long story but with Frank getting some money from his Dad’s life insurance, he was looking for an investment. Not super active looking…just in the back of his mind. We had a house come up for sale in our neighborhood so we went to look at it. It was a disaster inside so we decided it wasn’t for us but it did get the wheels turning in Frank's head and he started actively looking for a rental property. We had a previous rental house in Provo for about a year. We worked like dogs getting it fixed up and then sold it a year later. I’m not sure what reasons Frank would give for the sale, but I think he was missing having a Jeep! But since he now has a Jeep again, he’s ready for a new project I guess.
Anyway, a week or two after we saw that first house, I got an email from a realtor site that a new house was on the market that day. Somehow I started getting realtor emails, I don’t remember signing up for them! I told Frank about it and we went right over. So it had been on the market for a few hours at this point.
It’s actually an old house (1931) with a detached garage that was at some point remodeled to be another house. So two houses on one lot. It’s considered by the town to be a duplex but it’s two separate houses. The original house is occupied by renters and the garage house was unoccupied. We were only able to tour the empty house. Well, it’s such an unusual thing to find two houses on one lot that Frank decided to make an offer right then and so we did. It was only slightly more expensive than the piece of junk in our neighborhood…but it’s two pieces of junk! The owners were not comfortable with accepting our offer since we hadn’t seen inside the main house so they said they would accept it after we toured the house Monday (just remember…we are supposed to leave for Puerto Rico on Wednesday). So they accepted our offer Monday morning after Frank had a tour (I was at work). Turns out later that day they got 3 or 4 more offers! Too late though since they had accepted ours.
Both houses are a bit dilapidated. For some reason we love a project…and this is going to be a big project.
I don’t think the owners have done ANY upkeep. And we were surprised to find during the home inspection that the main house was at some point on fire! The attic is charred. They say it’s structurally just fine though but that was a shock to find. The outsides both need painting badly and the kitchens and bathrooms are really old and probably need gutting. I’ve never actually seen a bathroom as small as the one in the original house. You could shower, use the toilet and wash your hands all at the same time it seems! Good times.
So we will be fixing up the garage house first since it’s empty and then we will hopefully rent it out. Then later we’ll figure out what to do with the original house.
There is also a small shed on the property as well as another building that we thought was a shed but turned out to be a root cellar. Frank’s pretty excited about that…no idea why! haha He just likes that it’s something weird and different. They both look like they are about to fall down, so that’s fun.
Anyway, we would have had to do all the financing and inspections and whatnot while in Puerto Rico which would have been so stressful. So that’s one more reason that we weren’t too sad to cancel the trip.
We closed on the houses last Thursday and we have spent every possible moment over there ripping stuff out. We've gone back and forth (and back and forth) over how much to change/fix and what to leave. But both Frank and I are on the perfectionist side of things and it's hard for us to let things be subpar...so we're changing a whole lot.
It has already been SO MUCH WORK and we've really only just begun.
I'll probably keep updates here just for remembrance. Someday we will probably be amazed at all the work we were able to do!
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