As mentioned in my previous post, Is There an Escape from the Rat Race?, my husband and I have purchased a delapitated old farm house in an effort to get back to the land and begin our journey to tranquility.  First thing is to get the house reno’d before working the land.  Ok I know most would not think of renovating a beat up house as a tranquil experience, but oddly enough the thought of it actually brings me great joy and peace.  At least the thought of it does… now reality is a whole different story as I am about to learn.  I am about to learn that this house has a story and it is a neglected one.  But this does not scare me away.  It is a challenge.  As you see, I look at houses as living beings that need love and care.  So to see a house in need, makes me feel I can save it and bring life back into it.  Which gives me great happiness. As my husband says “you can make it look nice!”  No pressure.  I mean how hard can it be?  I have watched 100’s of renovation shows!   I guess I am about to learn if 10,000 hours of HGTV watching will pay off!  Hopefully it does.  The problem I am about to learn is when we bought the house, the thought was we only needed to clean it and make it look nice, as people say ‘spruce it up’.  Right up my ally.  Not much skill required for the inexperienced renovation husband and wife team.  Little did we know this idealistic optimistic view was about to be flipped entirely on its head.  

First, I guess I should introduce our little farmhouse to give some context before I go into the beginning of our journey.  The house is on an acreage that overlooks beautiful rolling hills of agriculture.  The house is said to be built… well we are not quite sure… anywhere between 1900 and the 1960’s.  Maybe this should have been our first clue?  It has five bedrooms (two up and three down), 2 baths, living, dining and den.  It has a massive deck that overlooks the beautiful view.  It is extremely dated and probably hasn’t been touched in over 40 years.  Can anyone say… shag carpet!  Now just to set the story straight, so you don’t think we are completely insane, we did have a full home inspection done and knew there were some issues and work that needed to be done by professionals.  Like upgrading the heating system from oil to gas, siding the house, and replacing a few windows; but otherwise the inside needed just a lot of hard work and some blood, sweat and tears on our part.  I can see so much potential in this place.  We knew a lot of work needed to be done to bring this house back to a loved state.  I guess we just did not plan on how much….

And so we begin…. We haven’t even received the keys before our realtor contacts us.  “The house has a leak in the basement bathroom”, he says.  “But not to worry it has been fixed”.  Well that is a relief.  “But just to be on the safe side let’s make sure there’s no further damage behind the wall”.  Great idea!  Actually it was, as you will see.  So we brought in a contractor to take a look.  As it turns out the walls have asbestos and behind the wall… extensive mold!  Obviously an ongoing leak.  Just hearing about it made me cough and spit.  Can we say remediation?  The bathroom was actually the one room in the house that we thought was in good shape and would require little work.  Just a little lipstick. Now due to the extensive mold issue we will likely need to gut and redo the whole bathroom.  So we will now be doing full on mold remediation, not to mention asbestos remediation.  

Remember I mentionned you could learn with me on our journey.  Well friends I hope you have a pen and paper handy, as I believe the learning list will be a long one.  So key learning here… asbestos can be found in drywall mud and tape.  Who knew?   Well I do now.  So any area where it has been located, if it is to be disturbed, it must be remediated by professionals.  Oh yeah and don’t forget also needs money to pay for it.  Now on the positive side, it is actually a good thing the leaked was discovered and we caught the mold issue, as it could have been a significant health hazard.  So as some would say a ‘blessing in disguise’.  As a result, once we get the keys we plan to have the whole house checked for any further health hazards so we can ensure everything is addressed.  Stay tuned for the outcomes and next steps on that one.  So as I say a good thing, but definitely not planned for or budgeted for!

But this is not the end of the pre-keys story my friends.  As my title promised this story also contains… rats.  Yes I said rats.  As a city person I think of rats in the sewer, not a house.  Well I guess my country living training begins.  As it turns out, through a pest inspection we had done, we also discovered we have rats in the house.  Now understand, when we did the inspection we thought we were being very smart as we wanted to check for termites, as we had heard they were a potential issue.  Ah yes, intelligent us.  What we did not know was that the other common pest in the area is rats.  Rats?  No that must be a joke.  Mice maybe, but rats?  Well I guess that is learning number two for this post.  Sadly we have rats in our house.  Asbestos, mold and rats.  So now I am coughing, spitting and my skin is crawling.  I sense more remediation.  My husband now wonders if we may have bats in our belfry?  Ummm…. and we haven’t even walked in the door yet.  But I am sure this will be the worst of it…right?  Are you intrigued?  I am.  In my journey of trying to escape the rat race, I found actual rats.  Ah the irony! 

Can’t wait to see what we find when we actually get the keys and start working on the place… Yikes!  At least we will have some lovely furry creatures to keep us warm when we get there.