Real Estate Resuscitation

Saturday, June 19, 2010

Amarillo - Exterior Front - After Pictures

And now the after pictures of the front exterior of the house -

Doesn't the house look so much happier now!?!? I decided I wanted to have the house painted yellow so Mike and I drove around with a paint deck and stopped at a yellow house we liked the color of and matched their paint to a paint in the paint deck. The shutters and front door were painted black and the trim was painted white to match the new garage doors. The other changes that took place were replacing the driveway and sidewalk with new concrete edged in brick pavers which looked very nice, a new tree to replace the dead tree, new bushes and new grass. Mike still gives me a hard time about having old boxwoods torn out just to be replaced with new boxwoods. You might ask, "Why such a little tree Sharon?". The answer is that a tree the size we had planted costs about $250 and a tree double that size costs about $750.

Why did I pick such boring garage doors?

I guess I was more concerned about staying within my budget (usually a good plan when renovating), but now I see these garage doors in the picture and think they are pretty dull. Even windows in the doors would have livened things up a bit. Live and learn. We never quite decided what to do with that "nook" either. I understand the new owners have done something in the "nook", but I'm not sure what.

New outdoor light, mailbox, house marker, door hardware, brick step and plants. The fact that the first sidewalk joint line was not straight really bothered my obsessive-compulsive mind -

Originally, there were shutters on the porch hiding a painted decorative iron railing where the post is now. We removed the shutters, left the iron railing and simply wrapped the railing with a new post. The beadboard on the porch ceiling was there originally and added some personality -

Two of the children from the neighborhood and I had great success planting tulip bulbs -

Next up - the process involved in buying a foreclosed property.

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Getting Back on Track

While my current real estate resuscitation remains a magical mystery without a tour I am planning a series of posts about our Amarillo, TX resuscitation. I'll start with the exterior of the house and work my way through each room discussing the good with the bad in each area. First some background. Mike was transferred to Amarillo with his job. He works for an animal health company. Amarillo is the largest city in the Texas Panhandle which is major cattle feeding country. We were fortunate enough to live there for 5 years.

Amarillo on the map -

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Amarillo is a city of around 200,000 people. I called it the island of Amarillo, it's just that it's surrounded by dirt instead of water. Flat and treeless Panhandle Plains -

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From Wikipedia - The city was once the self-proclaimed "Helium Capital of the World" for having one of the country's most productive helium fields. The city is also known as "The Yellow Rose of Texas" (as the city takes its name from the Spanish word for yellow) and most recently "Rotor City, USA" for its V-22 Osprey hybrid aircraft assembly plant. Amarillo operates one of the largest meat packing areas in the United States. Pantex, the only nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly facility in the country, is also a major employer. The attractions Cadillac Ranch and Big Texan Steak Ranch were located on the former U.S. Highway 66, which passes through the city.

Pretty glamorous, huh? Here's the thing, the people there are super friendly and the weather is fantastic. Plus there was always the sky -

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I am not exaggerating the fact that trees in the Texas Panhandle are few and far between. When I was searching for a house (I search, narrow it down to 3 and then Mike and I decide together) I really wanted a neighborhood with trees. We decided on the historic neighborhood of Wolflin in Amarillo where there were lots of trees and pretty houses. The house we selected was not so pretty at the time we bought it since it was a foreclosure and in need of some major resuscitating -

There was a big tree in the front yard that had a vine growing on it that had suffocated the tree to death. It was such a shame. Don't let a vine overtake your tree!!!

Cute front porch. A neighbor "permanently borrowed" the mailbox that was left when the house was on the market -

Unfortunately, the big dead tree had to be taken out else we would have risked it falling on our house one day. The house also got a new roof. While a lot of the houses in this area have wood shake roofs we didn't opt for that since the price of the roof and homeowners insurance is almost double for wood.