House Contract and Shop Remodel

Last post, we dropped some pretty big news that we’re selling our Loxahatchee house and will be moving up to Lake Byrd. As part of listing our house, our realtor highly recommended that we remodel the kitchen. So we did. I mean what’s better than remodeling one house?……..remodeling two houses at the same time! Unfortunately, that meant not a lot happened at our Lake Byrd house during that time. The good news is that I got the kitchen remodeled while Oceana tackled some odds and ends around the house. We finished just in time to get our house listed. What an adventure that has been. But we’ll discuss that soon enough.

Kitchen pics

First, I’d like to share some finished pics of the kitchen. Last post we showed just the cabinet boxes mounted in place. It kind of looked like the open concept (which works for some people but I’m not one of them). Well I built and hung all of the cabinet doors, side panels, fillers, and scribes. I then fabricated corian countertops using the color witch hazel which is similar to marble. Lastly, I used the same corian as the backsplash. The end result turned out great and our realtor was thrilled. She said the kitchen would sell the house.

Gator spotting with my parents

With the house listed, I had to handle a few business items before heading up to the lake (Barbara, I haven’t forgotten about you!). During that time there were regular showings. My parents came into town to get away from to cold assist with the pending workload of rehabbing the old shop at Lake Byrd. While still in Loxahatchee, and when there were showings, one of the things they like to do was go alligator spotting. There’s one canal in particular that we were normally successful at spotting some type of wildlife – including the gator pictured below.

The long way to getting under contract

So now the house is on the market, and there have been a ton of showings. But, there haven’t been any offers. At this point our realtor, who up until now had been very communicative, kind of fell off. She would let us know when most of the showings were but we never received any feedback regarding the showings. Finally, after a week of lots of showings and no offers (or feedback), I asked her what the problem was. She said the price was too high. This bugs me a bit because she increased the listing price when the house first went on the market without our consent. Not cool. And now no offers. Very not cool. Based on the feedback, we made an immediate price reduction. Wouldn’t you know it, within two days we had multiple offers. Imagine that. So at this point our house is under contract with a scheduled closing date near the end of February.

Heading back to the lake

As all of this is going on, my parents and I headed up to the lake to start the most pressing project for me – the shop remodel. My parents are staying in the nice bedroom and I’ll be staying in the old rear bedroom. My first priority was to bring the bathroom off of the back bedroom online again. With a little creative plumbing, I had the cold water hooked back up. With that the toilet and pedestal sink (yes, my favorite pedestal sink) will function. I didn’t run new lines for the hot water – that will come later during the remodel. For now, the important bits work.

The shop remodel begins

So now it’s on to the shop remodel. The shop has a great footprint but it is in disrepair. There’s lots of old termite damage as well as rot from previous water damage. There’s rat droppings everywhere. Yummy. The goal is to remodel the existing structure and get rid of the bad framing and then do new siding and roof sheathing on the whole thing. I’ll be reusing the majority of the metal roofing but I’ll be replacing the 1×4 and 1×6 runners with sheets of plywood. I’ll also be installing a self adhesive waterproof underlayment below the metal roof as a second waterproof barrier. This is basically a backup incase the metal develops a leak.

The inspectors abound

With a bit of demo and a bit of framing, the shop is really starting to take shape. My parents have been very helpful through this project. Also, Mark came over and helped out so thank you Mark. Now, if you’re not aware, Lake Byrd has their own unofficial quality control inspection committee. They’ll sneak up on you with their silent golf carts when you least expect them. Except Bill’s, he’s got the sleigh bells on his cart so you can hear him coming. The sleigh bells have been in his family for a few generations and were used on a sleigh that was pulled by horses. Very cool. It’s enjoyable having everyone stop by and see the progress.

The wall of memorabilia

As we pulled the paneling off of one of the walls, we found a wall full of old comic clippings and other interesting reading material. I documented each piece and we did our best to save them but the paper was super frail. Tom enjoyed seeing the wall of memorabilia as he had spent a lot of time in the gun shop. It seem to bring back some good memories for him.

Water leak in Loxahatchee

So while all of this is going on, I get a text one morning from Oceana. It’s a picture of our water system spraying water everywhere. Wait, didn’t this just happen? Yes, but it was the well pump, and it’s been running great thank you very much. Well, one of the clips holding the bypass valve to the water softener tank rusted out and fell apart which allowed water to spray everywhere. Bummer! However, huge props to Oceana. She was able to get it rigged so she could still take a shower before work (and all her clients said Amen) and then she sourced the broken piece and was able to get it back together and running again. Just incredible.

Odds and ends

We finally got a mailbox installed! Watch out, it’s big! Also, we finally got internet hooked up here. This is the first blog post coming at you from Lake Byrd. That’s all for this week. As always, lots happening. Thanks for following along and have a great week.