Good Times

Starting on saturday Rick and his dad started putting in posts for the joists. Then Rick and I came and installed all of the joists and the support wall for the center of the room. We also put in the space for our soon to be trap door. The space below the kitchen is really perfect for storage and a future wine cellar :) Rick and I had a pretty funny time installing the joists it was a good thing Rick put up with my shanagins :)
On Wednesday my dad came and in and used some of the adobes left over from our shed to fill in the door between the kitchen and Master bedroom. Looks great!! Next week we will be fixing the floor in the master bedroom and insulating the exterior of the North side of the house.

Kitchen Floor

After an easy closing on December 21st we first started cleaning the house out.
The first big piece of work came from cleaning out the house of old insulation, plastic on floors and sealing up windows and openings to discourage the sparrows from entering the house. The third week we started moving cabinets out of the kitchen and pulling up the old Oak floors that had been left in by the previous owners. Once we got under the kitchen floor through a small opening outside the house, we realized that there really was no support for the cabinets and appliances that will eventually be in the kitchen. Also there was great potential for a crawl space/cellar. Rick got to work pulling up the floor boards and this week we started digging out a ton of dirt in order to make a storage space under the kitchen. Next week we will be putting in the beams to hold up our floor joist supports. This replaces the joists that were balanced on a shifting 2 x 6. The same will be done for the living room floor which has no support in the middle of the room.

Candles Lit

For months Rick and I had been discussing and researching building a house out in Rowe on my mom's property. We had plans in the works and had started building a very nice 12 x 12 shed to store our "stuff" while working on the house. Weeks into the process we realized that we had our work cut out for us and weren't quite ready to jump into the fire. So we got onto the real estate pages and started browsing Santa Fe real estate properties.

Rick found a listing in Santa Fe. We couldn't believe the listing price and figured it was to good to be true. The next day we headed into town and drove around to look at the other listings that we might be intrested in. Thinking that the Lorenzo listing was probably already sold. After taking a look at a couple of properties I decided what the heck we would call about Lorenzo and go and drive up to take a look. The real estate agent called back to say it was still avaliable and she would meet us there to get in. We drove UP Lorenzo and reaching the end of it we crested a little hill and looked upon our new house. This casa is definitly a fixer upper. The previous owner had started renovations and completely gutted the inside removing all fixtures, started new plumbing and electric, installed a new roof and added a couple of small additions. We put our earnest money down and went home to light a candle, hoping that no one had put a bid in before us.

As we all know now a days bank owned properties can be tricky in that you never really know what the bank is looking to get for the property. Also you hear stories of people getting out bid or not being able to get financing. Also we had concerns about Liens on the property, issues with foundations, electric work and still had a list of issues that could make us back out. So for two weeks if not more we had our candle lit sitting on top of our Little Adobe house book. Which also contained our deal breaker/issue list and as we started ticking those things off we got to work planning what needed to be done first on the renovations.

This blog is to be used for our friends and family to see our progress and to keep people updated on what we are doing at the house. Hopefully we will know in advance when big projects are coming up so we can invite people to come and help us out or just come visit. We are loving this casa already and it is pretty much gutted. So we know it will be a fantastic space when we are done with it. Right now Mondays and Tuesdays are working days so please feel free to stop by for a visit. Text or call to make sure we are there or feel free to drive by.