Four Years Ago Today…

Wow has it really been this long? (We won’t dwell on how long it has been since my last post.) Before I get to what happened four years ago today, I want to step back to Christmas Eve, four years and eighty three days ago today. That is when I launched Our Philly Row with the post ‘Are we really going to do this?‘ The first sentence of the post was this: “If you are reading this first post on Our Philly Row, it is either because you are one of a tiny handful of friends who know of our plans, or you are looking at the archives.”

You see, when I launched Our Philly Row, it was done in secrecy and remained so for over a year. I say secrecy, but in reality it was public the whole time… But, only our very close friends and family knew about it. We had to keep the first year of Our Philly Row a secret because we didn’t want our employers to find out. After all, it would be more than a year before I left my job, and at the time we didn’t know that Y would be able to bring his job with him. We couldn’t risk our employers finding out and possibly letting us go.

So, with the soft launch of Our Philly Row, I wrote my first few posts about the why’s and what’s of our plans to move. We didn’t know anything about our future house other than it was almost positively going to be a rowhouse, given that that’s what 99% of single family houses in South Philly are. At this point, we had only taken one recognizance trip to Philly to see if we wanted to leave our comfortable lives in Manhattan for a more relaxed life in Philly. In fact, we had only made the decision to move a couple of weeks before. But I knew we would be in a rowhouse.

It was on our second visit, in early January on a snowy Saturday, when we toured the WOW house for the first time (photo at top). So named because every corner we turned, I couldn’t stop saying ‘Wow’! I am of course talking about our house and I am pretty sure our realtor was also a bit giddy inside because this was only the second house he had shown us, and it was pretty clear that this was going to be an easy commission for him. And it was… You can read about it in: Visit number Two – Snow and the WOW House? (Part 1 and Part 2)

Within two weeks, we were in contract to buy a rowhouse which we had only seen once, and for only about 15-20 minutes. What the hell had we done? Problem was, we were waiting for the sale of Y’s old apartment which he had purchased in the 90’s to close. It was the funds from that sale that gave us the ability to buy our house. Fortunately, we were able to negotiate a settlement date two months out… Which happened to be four years ago today. (Side note: most of the US uses the term closing when real estate transfers from one party to another, in Philly, they call it a settlement.)

So, on Friday, March 17th (only 105 days from our very first visit to Philly together) we rode the Greyhound in from Manhattan in the morning for an afternoon settlement. As soon as we signed all the paperwork and got the keys, our realtor drove us and our overnight bags over to our new house and quite literally dropped us off. I immediately set about recording a video tour of our house (above) and talked about our plans. At the time, I envisioned we would have everything done within ten years. Four years later, I am still envisioning we will have everything done in ten years… From now.

While we had a place to sleep, we did not have anything to sleep on, and we were limited with what we could schlepp from NYC that morning on the bus. So, shortly after capturing the video, we picked up a Zip-car and did what anybody with a completely empty house would do… We went to IKEA for a bed, a couple of cheap chairs, and a table, followed by a trip to Target for provisions.

We then spent the weekend familiarizing ourselves with our new house and our new neighborhood, all the while doing our best to hold keep our nerves calm. The previous week we discovered that we could not get homeowners insurance because our house had active knob and tube wiring (K&T). We knew from the inspection that there was active K&T, but it wasn’t until we started calling around for insurance in the days before settlement that we discovered that nobody would give us a new policy. So we owned a house with zero insurance… Very unnerving.

(Now before anybody gets their undies in a bundle… Yes, I know that many people have insurance on houses with K&T, but most of them have had their policies for years. Getting a new one is what was the problem. It seems that in the past ten years or so, nearly every insurance company has clamped down on the issue of K&T, and depending on where you live, you, like us, may find it impossible to get coverage.)

So, we very quickly set about getting quotes for electrical, starting the day after we settled. Y left for NYC on Sunday, and I stayed a couple of extra days to meet with electricians for estimates. We ended up going with the first estimate, and then had to wait to get on their schedule. (More about that adventure in Knob and Tube No More.) Finally, 40 sleepless nights after we took possession of the house, we were able to certify that their was no longer any active K&T and we got insurance. Big Sigh…

Of course, the issue with the K&T was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to urgent things to attend too. On our second night in the house, we walked around our empty house and really gave it a good look. This is when I fully realized that the vertical crack running down the wall in the back corner on the second and third floor was much more than a ‘settlement crack’ as our pointless inspector told us. It was obvious that we needed to get a structural engineer in to see it, and soon.

Also on that first weekend, I took my first shower in our only full bathroom. Afterwards, I came down to the kitchen (which is below the bathroom) and discovered water dripping from multiple places in the kitchen ceiling, and pooling on the countertops. Great…. Our tub/shower has a leak. My solution… I got a large plastic drop cloth and hung in around the shower walls to ensure any and all water went into the tub. And shamefully, there is still a piece of plastic taped up around the perimeter of the tub to this day. Albeit smaller than above. Not a long term solution by any means, but four years on, it is what it is.

The next big surprise was on the Monday after settlement when I grabbed my new ladder and slid open the hatch to the attic and discovered daylight streaming in where it shouldn’t be. One of our chimneys was leaning inward leaving a sizable gap open to the sky. This was the very first thing I saw when I slid open the hatch… How did our inspector not see this? I was right there when he went up into the attic. I remember him telling me he saw some K&T wiring (but didn’t know if it was active) and remnants of an old birds nest. How did he not see the gaping hole? Oh, and there was also a cracked roof rafter! He totally missed that too! (Turns out after reading the fine print, we had little recourse against the inspection company.)

Oh… Also on that first weekend I discovered that our refrigerator was basically all but dead. After putting a bag of ice in the freezer on Friday, I discovered it mostly melted by Sunday. So a new refrigerator was added to the list of things to deal with. Ugh… Even though the old fridge was disgusting and dirty, we did not plan to replace it right away.

From there the list goes on… It turns out the vertical crack was much more serious than originally suspected. In April on the night before the electricians arrived to get going on the electrical system, I was alone at the house on the phone with my Bestie in Oregon. While chatting with him, I kept wondering about a section of wall covered in drywall on the second floor near the vertical crack.

So, I went upstairs with my phone, a hammer, and a glass of wine. Knowing that one day, we would be tearing into the wall, I decided to see just what was lurking behind the drywall. After several whacks at the wall, I pulled down drywall revealing some framing over the original plaster wall. I could tell this was not a recent fix, probably was done before the previous owner bought it in the 90s (it was a rental for decades before that). This is where I discovered a gigantic crack in the adjacent wall, large enough to fit my hand in (see photo below). The entire third floor rear wall was slowly pulling away from the house. Cue the structural engineer…

It took a couple of weeks, but we finally got a structural engineer in to do an assessment of the newly discovered crack, the known adjacent vertical crack, and the leaning chimney. He was here for nearly two hours and came back to us a few days later with a detailed report of everything that was wrong with our house. Oy… Some things were more serious than others, but all needed to be addressed.

In addition to what we knew about (the cracks and leaning chimney), we learned the following:

• The stone foundation walls in the basement needed to be re-pointed and parged.
• The second floor was sagging over the parlor and needed to have the floor jacked up, and the joists reinforced.
• The roof needed some repairs and sealing, while up there, we had them swab on a silver coating to reduce heat absorption.
• The exhaust for the furnace was improperly installed allowing water penetration into the house, so a new housing needed to be built around it.
• There was no access to the rear attic (nobody had been up there in 100+ years), so a new access panel needed to be installed
• The downspout in the rear was severely clogged and every time it rained, water would cascade over the top of the scupper and pour down the wall causing major moisture issues. This issue is decades old and has compromised the integrity of the brick wall which will be addressed when we rebuild the kitchen and rear guest suite in a few years. The short term solution was to clear the downspout.
• The exterior sill on the bank of dining room windows were completely rotten (from the cascading water noted in previous item) and needed to be stabilized to prevent further damage. We will still need to rebuild the entire window frame when we do the kitchen in a few years.
• Also, each time it rained, the rear yard would flood several inches deep because of improperly sloped patio slabs and a poorly drained yard. This caused the base of the house to sit in standing water for days at at time. We had to install a new drain and connect it to the sewer (Philly doesn’t have separate sewer and rain run-off systems like modern cities).

Whew! The first 90 days of owning our house really did feel like like we were Tom Hanks and Shelly Long in ‘The Money Pit’ (well, maybe not Shelley Long, but you get the idea).  There is more, but they are smaller items and comparably insignificant. I wrote a few blogs posts on this, including: Our Philly Money Pit – Surprise!, More is Being Revealed, Money Pit gets Deeper, and On the Mends.

Ultimately, we spent about 15% of the purchase price of the house fixing everything and buying a new fridge. There are still things on the list which have yet to be addressed, but they will have to wait. The crazy thing is… We still didn’t yet know when we were going to move in. Little did I know I would be making more than 20 round trips from Manhattan to Philly before the end of 2017. We would have to wait until the following January (2018) before we finally left Manhattan for Philly.

I can now say that four years later… ZERO regrets… We love our house, despite the rocky first few months. While I seriously expected to be much further along with projects and renovations than we are, I remember that we make plans, and God laughs… We are still on the ten year plan.

And finally… I know I haven’t been very active lately… It seems as soon as I get going on something, something else gets in the way. That said, things have been happening. Several things are partially (mostly) done, but nothing is ready to post about yet. Stay tuned… The studio is nearly completed (sneak peak above), the dining room has gotten a facelift (more to come), and the parlor is the next project. And one day we will get to the main bedroom and bathroom suite (which is currently being used as an office).

Till next time. . .

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