What do you think of this house?
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Just finished up with the house inspector. As I predicted, it鈥檚 in great shape. There is some very minor settling at the front corner of the garage and one of fine old pine trees is too close to the house.
Other than that there isn鈥檛 a damned thing wrong with it.
In it gets better. There is a gas line already run to the stove so it doesn鈥檛 have to be electric, the windows are all Anderson dual pane and appear to be quite new, the attic insulation is R-38 and it looks like the day it was was installed. The washer and dryer are Whirlpool direct drive units - probably the best laundry equipment Whirlpool ever built and they鈥檙e simple to fix. They鈥檙e old but should get the job done. The sump pump is six months old and includes a matching battery backup pump.
Yahoo!
Yay and congratulations!!!
@Steve-Miller said in What do you think of this house?:
the windows are all Anderson dual pane and appear to be quite new,
There is a date (MM-YY) stamped in the lower right hand corner of the glass, as you look at it from the inside out. Gives you an idea of the age of the windows. We replaced the original 1960 vintage Andersens in this house with new Andersens in the late 80s. And we had Andersens installed when we built the vacation home in the early 90s. They're still going strong.
The only problem we had was this negative pressure problem, in both houses.
https://www.houzz.com/discussions/2629481/andersen-glass-failure-due-to-negative-pressure
We discovered the problem because we had the oval condensation problem on the outside of the glass. We could also see a concave bow in the window glass when looking at the outside. Trying to squeegee the window dry was a hoot. Andersen repaired all the windows at no charge; the glass had a 20 year warranty.
edit: We've also had two sash balances fail on the double hung windows in the kitchen. One crapped out maybe four years ago, and another did last year. Our handyman replaced both balances on the bad window. If the sash is already out you may as well replace both sides.
I ordered a pair to replace the ones in the second window but haven't gotten around to installing them.
Link to video -
Great info.
Thanks!
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Houses closed today. I have contractors lined up for tomorrow to start the renovation. Previous owners came back and cleaned up the leaves/grass. It looks a lot better than I expected - Yahoo! I鈥檒l get a picture when the rain lets up.
Meanwhile, the fun part! Picking paint colors, flooring, wallpaper, curtains. I like where she is going with it.
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Temps climbed to a sultry 51 degrees and I started cleaning up the yard at Kim鈥檚 house. A few highlights:
Hidden in some trees I found this yard art. Paint it? Let it rust?
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Cool beans! I could see painting it if you want a pop of color, but my gut reaction is to leave it as is.
A shade garden. I am in my element.
I don't think it necessarily needs to be removed, but best to keep an eye on the ivy and keep it in check with regular pruning so it doesn't overwhelm the trees.
She probably has everything she needs, but let me know if she wants any hostas next spring. I'm doing a major remodeling project in the yard and will be in digging mode. (aside: There is no shovel emoji that I could find....)
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Here鈥檚 the pond. It appears to include some sort of waterfall. Have yet to find a switch for it.
https://share.icloud.com/photos/03fQ5PrylNgvscqT8cI7EMQlg
Ivy is climbing all of the trees. I can get up high enough to remove it from some of the trees but not these. If I cut it off at the base it will die but will look like hell for years. Might rent a boom loft over the summer to strip it off.
https://share.icloud.com/photos/0983BHRZt9JlcSUXDdF8mL_AA
Doesn鈥檛 look like much in the picture but it鈥檚 the crown jewel of the landscape. A camellia! My favorite shrub. I鈥檝e been informed many times that they will not grow here but that鈥檚 obviously not true. Apparently there are cold hardy hybrids and this is one of them.
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Here鈥檚 the pond. It appears to include some sort of waterfall. Have yet to find a switch for it.
https://share.icloud.com/photos/03fQ5PrylNgvscqT8cI7EMQlg
Ivy is climbing all of the trees. I can get up high enough to remove it from some of the trees but not these. If I cut it off at the base it will die but will look like hell for years. Might rent a boom loft over the summer to strip it off.
https://share.icloud.com/photos/0983BHRZt9JlcSUXDdF8mL_AA
Doesn鈥檛 look like much in the picture but it鈥檚 the crown jewel of the landscape. A camellia! My favorite shrub. I鈥檝e been informed many times that they will not grow here but that鈥檚 obviously not true. Apparently there are cold hardy hybrids and this is one of them.
@Steve-Miller said in What do you think of this house?:
A camellia! My favorite shrub.
I'm not super familiar with camellias, but I looked them up and it appears there are cold hardy varieties. The leaves on that shrub look a bit like an azalea to me.
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Front yard trees. I think they are some sort of Maple. Reddit arborists say they are a hot mess and need to be either bolted together do they don鈥檛 split or be removed entirely.
They鈥檙e not coming out. Let鈥檚 see what bolting costs.
https://share.icloud.com/photos/092OPdV2wyUVpsR91uWslJ61Q
More yard art. Not sure what it is. Box on top is wood and there are hinges that appear to have attached a cover at one time.
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I鈥檝e been told that ivy will eventually kill a tree. Might take a while and it鈥檚 kind of picturesque. Maybe I鈥檒l keep it.
That may well be an azalea or a rhododendron. That would be disappointing but not heartbreaking. I like those too and they won鈥檛 grow in my very sunny yard.
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Front yard trees. I think they are some sort of Maple. Reddit arborists say they are a hot mess and need to be either bolted together do they don鈥檛 split or be removed entirely.
They鈥檙e not coming out. Let鈥檚 see what bolting costs.
https://share.icloud.com/photos/092OPdV2wyUVpsR91uWslJ61Q
More yard art. Not sure what it is. Box on top is wood and there are hinges that appear to have attached a cover at one time.
@Steve-Miller said in What do you think of this house?:
More yard art. Not sure what it is. Box on top is wood and there are hinges that appear to have attached a cover at one time.
My guess is a pole with hangers for bird feeders or suet, with a squirrel distraction on the top? People do hinged boxes that have peanuts in them. Like this:
Or deluxe accommodations:
The arms on the pole might also be a place to hang whole ears of corn from, like a chain with a screw eye hook on the end.
@Steve-Miller said in What do you think of this house?:
Here鈥檚 the pond. It appears to include some sort of waterfall. Have yet to find a switch for it.
I saw the pond in one of the photos of the listing. There was mention of a koi pond in the description of the property.
I love the idea of a pond but have shied away from the work, namely fall cleanout and pump removal, and then setting everything up again in the spring. And I would probably avoid stocking fish. Around here that ends up being a sushi buffet for herons, raccoons, and skunks.
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I鈥檝e been told that ivy will eventually kill a tree. Might take a while and it鈥檚 kind of picturesque. Maybe I鈥檒l keep it.
That may well be an azalea or a rhododendron. That would be disappointing but not heartbreaking. I like those too and they won鈥檛 grow in my very sunny yard.
@Steve-Miller said in What do you think of this house?:
I鈥檝e been told that ivy will eventually kill a tree. Might take a while and it鈥檚 kind of picturesque. Maybe I鈥檒l keep it.
I see mixed opinions on ivy. It probably does need to be kept in check which means it's one more gardening chore. I love the look but probably wouldn't plant it because of the extra work, especially since it could involve getting up into the tree to prune the stuff.
Kind of like ground cover. "Vigorous" can be a good thing or not, depending on how much work you want to put into keeping it in check.
From a distance, those trees look like they might be silver maples. My neighbors have a bunch of them in their yard, all cabled. And they've been cabled since we moved in here in 1980. One or two cables needed to be replaced a few years ago when they finally rusted through and snapped.
Silver maples aren't the best trees, but they are there and provide a lot of shade. I wouldn't take them out either.
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Temps climbed to a sultry 51 degrees and I started cleaning up the yard at Kim鈥檚 house. A few highlights:
Hidden in some trees I found this yard art. Paint it? Let it rust?
@Steve-Miller Very cool. I would leave it just the way it is.
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Wow @Steve-Miller that looks like a lot of work but with beautiful potential! We had winter camellias in our house in the south, they were beautiful! The leaves are waxier than rhododendrons, IIRC (we had those too).
And ivy, we had that too, in the back and sides. It looked nice but always made me nervous. I'm glad we don't have any here. (yet! knock on wood and all that)
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Ivy IMO is awful stuff, covers your brickwork and damages it, suffocates your nice planting.
Camellias on the other hand are beautiful evergreens. We were so fortunate in our previous house to have two, planted we guessed in 1952 when the house was built. About 15-20 ft high one flowered near pure white and the other a dark pink, they flowered either side of Christmas filling the garden with a mass of colour. Just fabulous when mature.
I would go out on Christmas day and fill a couple of vases with the flowers. They only last a couple of days once picked.
