high five for friday: new house edition!

This week crept by and flew by at the same time. Is that possible?! Today I thought I’d share some photos of the house that we bought last week! It’s the best kind of ugly and we are loving getting to work on it. We’ve already done a lot and have long list to get through this weekend as well, all which I hope to share next week. These are photos from the previous owners that were used in the listing. I lost all my before photos, more on that below…

So, funny thing happened the day we closed. Well, not so funny, and I do have two PSA’s for you guys. We closed, we came to the house, tore up carpets for five hours, I took 1 million before photos and left my camera here accidentally – my very expensive DSLR camera (we didn’t move in until Saturday). When we came back on Friday to get more work done my camera and a pack of purple solo cups were gone. We hadn’t changed the locks yet, so I knew someone had come in with a key, because there was no sign of forced entry.

I went to the police station, reported it and provided them with the serial number to my camera. Well, THEY FOUND IT. Within 24 hours they had recovered my camera all because I had the serial number. So PSA #1 – people, keep your serial numbers to high-priced electronics. It’s the only way the police will be able to identify them. Three different cops told me that I would have kissed it goodbye if it weren’t for having that info. Didn’t recover the purple solo cups, but it’s cool, minor detail (sense the sarcasm?). I knew to keep serial numbers from back when this happened, so I always have them.

PSA #2, don’t wait to change the locks on a new place! We were planning to change them (obviously) when we moved in, but it should have been the first thing we did. Luckily, there was nothing else in the house for anyone to take. The police are investigating as they have identified the person and it was an isolated incident of likely kids that thought they could get into the house one last time and get some quick money out of anything they found. The seller was a 90-year-old woman, so I’m confident it wasn’t her. Truth is, we basically live in an elderly community and cops said they very rarely venture to this area. So here we are, moving in, the young people and causing all the commotion! I’m just glad we got to the bottom of it and can get started on making our house not look like we’re 90.

So much more to share in the coming weeks as we begin to modernize our new, 70 year old house!