Hi, my name is Dave and my girlfriend Traci and I recently purchased a home on 1/3 of an acre in Conover, Wisconsin. This is our first home, and I thought you might like to watch as we attempt and sometimes succeed and sometimes fail to improve it and bring it up to date, especially since we are planning on doing the lion's share of the work ourselves, with the help of our friends and family. Let me introduce you a little bit to our house.
It is a one-story home with a full, walk-out basement under a portion and a crawlspace under the rest. It is approximately 1000 sq ft on the top level, and 600 sq ft in the basement. About 400 sq ft of the basement is finished. On the top floor there is a kitchen that could probably be an eat-in kitchen if you arranged it correctly and had a really small table. The refrigerator and stove are not old but they are not new...I am thinking 80s or so, but maybe that makes them old. There is also a living room with hardwood floors that need some TLC and two big picture windows - one looking south and one looking west. There are two bedrooms and a bathroom as well. The bathroom has no vent fan and a window that opens but there is a storm window painted shut on the outside of it so it is functionally useless.
The basement has a finished living room with direct access to the outside, a bedroom that is not actually a bedroom because it doesn't have an escape window, and a full bath. We plan to renovate this finished basement area in order to set up a licensed tattoo parlor for Traci to practice her art. There is also a utility room that holds the furnace (2003, natural gas), water heater (2007, natural gas naturally vented), the washer and dryer, and a workbench. Access to the crawlspace is provided through the utility room. There is an attic that is only accessable through an outside window. The entire upstairs and downstairs, with the exception of the kitchen and bathrooms, is done in 70s era paneling. The bathroom upstairs and the kitchen have like 50s era-formica walls or something, and the downstairs bathroom seems to be drywall or something resembling it.
There is a one-car detached garage with the oldest garage door opener I have ever seen and a dilapitated and decaying lean-to that somehow manages to keep the snow and wind and rain out, so that is good. There are lots of nice gardens and landscaping, but the soil is sandy and the only trees that seem to grow there are pine trees, so there are pine needles everywhere.
The well is a 4 inch drilled well that is about 40 feet deep and was drilled in 1975. It still provides good flow and quality water, but the pump is in the well and is the original pump, so while it is working well we are sort of on borrowed time with that. The septic system dates from 1986 and is a conventional system with a lift pump, because the field is way across the lot and at a higher elevation than the concrete combo tank. Interior plumbing is mostly copper and PVC on the supply side, and is about halfway converted from galvenized steel to PVC on the return. The home does, however, feature the use of crocks and pumps for most of the plumbing in the basement. The electrical service coming from the pole is ancient, but it appears that the bulk of the interior electrical was replaced sometime in the 70s or so. However, there are still a few ungrounded outlets to be found, and there are a couple of sub-panels that still use fuses, most notably for the garage and the well and septic pumping equipment. The main panel is brand new and features circuit breakers. There is an easement for us to cross private property to access the public highway, and likewise there is an easement for the neighbors to cross my property to reach the highway.
All in all it is a good little house, desperately in need of some TLC and basic maintenance, but strong and well-built underneath. There are a lot of things that seem to be installed either backwards or half-ass, and like many older homes it has its share or quirks and discoveries behind the walls and above the ceilings. But that is all in the fun. If you want to take a tour and see some pictures just click here.
