Lizzy Current

And since the last post was rambling and only half related to Lizzy, I give you

LIZZY CURRENT



There's a little fine tuning of this to be done; After those changes are made I can create Lizzy Proposed.

Lizzy needs a good cleaning

We went over to Lizzy with a contractor right before Christmas. We asked him to provide us estimates for fixing the foundation, restoring the roof to its proper shape, and replacing the non-historic windows with the goal of having an exterior tight and structurally sound house. He was hopeful after seeing the foundation, as, apparently from the inside, he expected it to be much much worse. He worked on our Oakwood house and we have a great deal of confidence in his work, professional ethics, and billing.

He did caution us against jumping in the kitchen/hallway as there is a joist that is about to break.

While we were there I was saddened yet again by Lizzy. I know it's just a house. But here, this house is standing in for human suffering taking place for the profit of others. This house was rented out in this shape. Children made their home here. While we were in the back bedroom that will eventually be the kitchen, we found a hypodermic needle. While in the crawlspace we found those plastic sharps-esque stoppers that used needles are placed in. A lot of them.

It was then that I noticed the upturned barrel in the corner, the lights above, and realized that at some point, the crawlspace of this house was a shooting gallery. Who knows how many people have gotten high on that earthen floor while kids were playing inside on moldy carpets in a fire damaged house. Who knows how much money people made on that house, sucking every last useful cent out of families through the structure.

So for a little while at least, we'll not be going inside Lizzy unless it's broad daylight. We'll clean up and quietly sleep and let some more of the sadness of the place dissipate through the cardboard siding and cracks in the walls. Harris created a drawing of the house and I'm going to be digitizing it this week in the hopes that we can get our application submitted.

Proposed Timeline -
Have plans approved (or very nearly so) by May.

Dumpster drama

We'll be adding $40 to the cost of the dumpster. It seems they could not find a place on the property to locate the dumpster so it has to be placed in the street. For the honor of placing the dumpster in the street, Harris and Madeline spent an hour and a half at City Hall + $40 this morning.

You run into things like this a lot. Basically, City Department do not communicate well nor do they help you anticipate problems. On Wednesday they couldn't decide how much notice was needed nor if we should be prepared to pay with a check or credit card. Today, it's an on-street fee for a dumpster because they didn't like the off street locations provided.

It's best to have a little free time to navigate these things.

delays

Sometimes it's the smallest deals that take forever.

We're trying to get a final deal completed, but are running into normal family drama.

Thankfully, though we've experienced drama of this type before, this particular drama is among another family and not ours.

Hopefully this week our costs will increase by 33%.

We're still investigating dumpsters as, with our work so far and the time change, we can't really move around and do much in the house right now. Hopefully we'll have the place cleaned out, the lot cleaned up, and the plans for the renovation up in the next month.

We did run a very nice scheme though. We traded 1.5 hrs of babysitting for some of the reusable materials in the house. We have less to dump and were able to have Madeline play with someone else one morning! Great trade!

Cops & Robbers

The house has not been broken into...yet.

Sure, it's going to happen at some point and Harris will freak and I will down play it. This weekend we got our first taste of shenanigans. We walk by the house every day, sometimes multiple times, just to say hi. On our Sunday walk for Madeline Nap 1 we noticed new items in the yard. Seems someone thought we needed a subwoofer, tweeters, two stereos (one missing its face plate), a huge car jack on wheels, and an assortment of taillights.

We called Durham's finest to see if they wanted to pick up the stuff since we were pretty sure it was stolen. When the officer arrived he asked why we thought it was stolen then insisted that we could make some money if we could just flip the house. Got to get that flip.

After the officer left- without any of the goods (he suggested we just throw it away) I went and spoke to the guy who lives two doors down, giving him my phone number in case anything untoward happens again.