This post will give you some basic info on the house. I'll use the pictures and info that was available via the realtor and realtor.com for this post, so you can see what I saw going into it.
It's located in the Town of Hull, WI, and has a Stevens Point mailing address. That's pretty much in the dead center of the State.
It was built in the late 70s, 1978-1979, and has almost 4,000 square feet of space.
After a fair amount of negotiations with the previous sellers, I purchased the home for $169,900. I bought this house at a time when the housing market was really down, largely due to the morgage/financial issues of the time. I should note here that Central WI wasn't hit by collapsing home values the same way that other places were.
The home is a qual-level. Essentially that's two two story houses staggered vertically, and shoved up against each other. There are 4 different levels in the place: A basement, a lower ground level, an upper ground level (the lot slopes up as you go South), and an 2nd story level. I've found this layout to be much more appealing than a bi-level home. It feels more open, and there aren't nearly as many steps to climb to get between floors.
The basement has tons of room for storage, and has a large space that could be finished out for additional living space. It appears as if the space was once finished, but was gutted at some point. I make that assumption because the ceiling has finished drywall and light fixtures, the support wall that runs down the middle of the basement is paneled similar to the way the upstairs once was, and there are still some small remnants of carpeting glued to the cement floor. The furnace in the place was likely the original one from the 70s.
The lower ground level has a two car garage built into it. It also has a full bathroom, a laundry room, a large entry way, a large living room with a built in brick fireplace, and a few closets. This level has four external doors in it.
The upper ground level is where the previous owners had the remodeling work done. The floors are all a very nice hardwood; the kitchen had been redone with appliances, fixtures, and cabinets; and some very nice custom stair case work was added. These changes along with the location, lot, and price were the selling features for this house. This level has a single exterior door. There was a small deck off of this floor, that led to a second raised deck which was built around a large above-ground pool.
The second story level has three bedrooms, all of them rather sizable. Lots of closet space, a sizable bonus room, and a large full bathroom. This level had new carpet everywhere except the bath and bonus room. The master bedroom has a patio door that leads out to a raised second story deck.
The lot that the house is on is just over half an acre. There were three sheds of varying sizes, a large (and in very bad shape) detached garage, an overgrown dog run that had been used as a dump for yard waste, and a white bridge. There were also many mature pine, oak, and other trees scattered around the lot. The yard has the feeling of a mature park, thanks to all the trees.
This house had several places where there was paneling up on the walls. Some of it newer, most of it very dated. The light and plumbing fixtures were probably the originals from the 70s everywhere other than the kitchen.
The outside of the house had a brick pony wall around the lower ground level which was separating from the house. This was allowing water in there, and causing some issues. The sidwalk around this part of the house was also in very rough shape. There were no gutters on this portion of the house, so the sidewalks were pitted badly.
The second story deck wasn't properly attached to the home. This had caused some rotting of the second story joists, and caused the upstairs floor to buckle slightly. The previous owners had hired a contractor to fix this issue.
There were several other issues that I didn't become aware of until later. The things discussed here, and the ones I discovered along the way will be discussed in future blog posts.
Most of the images and focus in the for sale ads were on the kitchen, and custom woodwork that had been done. The selling realtor was a master at that craft.
So that's where this tale starts. My head full of ideas, and my hands ready to get to work.
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