So it begins...
In 2014, I was off work for a couple of weeks recovering from surgery. I spent my time eating Jello, taking Percocet, and watching a lot of television. HGTV and DIY to be more specific. Nicole Curtis "Rehab Addict" to be the most specific.
I love that she takes old (usually abandoned) houses and brings them back to life... sometimes from the brink of being demolished. She repurposes and reuses a lot of things and has a garage full of supplies and leftovers. She shops at salvage yards to really restore these 100-year-old homes to their former beauty while also modernizing their features.
Something struck a chord with me. "I could do that," I mused, sitting in my pajamas and high on my pain meds. I was always moving from one project to another in my current house. New floors, new backsplash, new paint... mostly one room at a time and usually by myself. My most recent accomplishment (at the time) was that I had completely redone my laundry room with beadboard, new floors and fixtures, new cabinets for storage, and I built a pantry and an area for the litter boxes.
The months went by, but the idea... the house idea... the one big ass project idea... didn't subside. I did research online looking for houses to buy. But with a very small budget to buy a spare house, there wasn't much to choose from. I was more than a little discouraged. I knew that at the max, I could afford around $30,000 for the initial purchase. At MAX. Memphis has a lot of houses you could buy for under $30,000. But I am sure you can imagine, they are not houses you want nor in the right neighborhood.
I came across some information (by accident) about buying a house in a tax auction. In Memphis, the city government can actually sell your house for the tax burden owed on it. The key, if you are an interested buyer is research, research, research. You are buying a house sight unseen. You are also committing to sitting on your purchase for a year before you can do anything with it (there is a 12 month right of redemption for the owners in the tax code).
So I researched the thousands of houses that would be up for auction in September of that year. Eliminating houses based on the location, the other liens against the property, any historical information I could find on the internet, and the actual appearance of the house. I spent a lot of lunch hours driving the city looking and making notes. I specifically wanted a house with a small tax lien (and no other liens), in a decent location, that appeared to be abandoned (less likely to have an owner exercise their right of redemption). I managed to find two. On the day of the auction, only one of them was still on the list.
I bid. I won. I waited a year. And in October of 2015 I opened the door... to a mess. My husband actually questioned my sanity that day when we first walked in. It was overwhelming and sad and full of the previous owner's belongings. It was Marguerite's house. I still call it Marguerite's house.
This blog is documentation of the long and winding road I have been on since then...
I love that she takes old (usually abandoned) houses and brings them back to life... sometimes from the brink of being demolished. She repurposes and reuses a lot of things and has a garage full of supplies and leftovers. She shops at salvage yards to really restore these 100-year-old homes to their former beauty while also modernizing their features.
Something struck a chord with me. "I could do that," I mused, sitting in my pajamas and high on my pain meds. I was always moving from one project to another in my current house. New floors, new backsplash, new paint... mostly one room at a time and usually by myself. My most recent accomplishment (at the time) was that I had completely redone my laundry room with beadboard, new floors and fixtures, new cabinets for storage, and I built a pantry and an area for the litter boxes.
The months went by, but the idea... the house idea... the one big ass project idea... didn't subside. I did research online looking for houses to buy. But with a very small budget to buy a spare house, there wasn't much to choose from. I was more than a little discouraged. I knew that at the max, I could afford around $30,000 for the initial purchase. At MAX. Memphis has a lot of houses you could buy for under $30,000. But I am sure you can imagine, they are not houses you want nor in the right neighborhood.
I came across some information (by accident) about buying a house in a tax auction. In Memphis, the city government can actually sell your house for the tax burden owed on it. The key, if you are an interested buyer is research, research, research. You are buying a house sight unseen. You are also committing to sitting on your purchase for a year before you can do anything with it (there is a 12 month right of redemption for the owners in the tax code).
So I researched the thousands of houses that would be up for auction in September of that year. Eliminating houses based on the location, the other liens against the property, any historical information I could find on the internet, and the actual appearance of the house. I spent a lot of lunch hours driving the city looking and making notes. I specifically wanted a house with a small tax lien (and no other liens), in a decent location, that appeared to be abandoned (less likely to have an owner exercise their right of redemption). I managed to find two. On the day of the auction, only one of them was still on the list.
I bid. I won. I waited a year. And in October of 2015 I opened the door... to a mess. My husband actually questioned my sanity that day when we first walked in. It was overwhelming and sad and full of the previous owner's belongings. It was Marguerite's house. I still call it Marguerite's house.
This blog is documentation of the long and winding road I have been on since then...
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