I wish blogs existed back in 1994 when we purchased this house. This is the first home we have owned and we had been looking for quite some time. We knew we wanted a fixer-upper. Some days I ask myself "what were we thinking?!" I found the home by accident actually. I had dropped my wife off at work on a Saturday and was driving home and decided to drive down a few side streets in an older neighborhood we like. Driving down one particular street I saw the "for sale" sign and stopped in front of the house. Judging by the appearance I could tell it was vacant and needed some work. I wrote down the realtor's phone number and drove home. I called the realtor later that afternoon and inquired about the house but instantly became disappointed when she told me the asking price. I told her it was a bit more than we were willing to spend but she was very insistent that we meet her the next day to see the house. She told me the sellers were very motivated as the house had been on the market for 6 months and had not had even one offer. Well - I should have known what that meant! So later that day I picked up my wife from work and drove her by the house. She LOVED it and beat on the dashboard yelling "buy me that house!" (my wife tends to get a little excited about things) The next day (Sunday) we met the realtor at the house. Well - I have to say I was somewhat disappointed with the interior. It had pretty much been untouched since the 60's. You know the routine - green velvet wallpaper - lime green shag - powder blue this and that. Half bath off the kitchen with the original toilet and sink. (but they weren't even close to be considered "cool") Steam heat with old cast iron radiators. Horrible kitchen. (I wont even go into detail about that room) At any rate we thought we could do alot with the house and a few days later made a very low offer. Our realtor later told us she thought there was no way the former owners would even consider our offer but as luck had it - they made a counter offer just 5K higher than our offer and within a little more than a month we had keys to the house. Now the funny part of all this is we told NO ONE we were buying this place except a few very close friends. We told no family members. (they would have thought we were crazy) To this day I still laugh about the first time my inlaws came to see the house. There was a section of flooring between the living room and foyer that felt "spongy." I thought "no biggie - when we rip up the carpet I'll just run some deck screws down to tighten it up." WRONG!! There was old termite damage to the subfloor. So the first visit from my inlaws was on the day I had cut a 3 foot by 3 foot section of the flooring out and you could actually see right into the basement. My mother in law's eyes got very big when she walked in and saw this gapping hole in the floor. Then she looked around and saw the rest of the house. It was obvious she was holding her arms as close to her body as possible so as not to touch anything. It was all so funny. At any rate we are approaching 12 years in the house now and I will try to go back and recreate what we have done and what is still left to do.