7. Change of Plans

Well.... today didn't turn out exactly like I thought it would, but I can't complain.  I headed out this morning all ready to snatch up $15,000 in grant money that the city was offering for "renovation and rehabilitation of historic buildings, based on the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards, in Redevelopment Areas."  I had checked to see if my house was in a Redevelopment Area.  But I failed to recognize that the Secretary of the Interior is only interested in National Historic buildings, which mine is not.  Jeez I thought almost 100 years old was good enough, but I guess nobody famous ever slept there that was willing to admit it.

Not all was lost, a lot was learned.. here's what happened.

Jake and I met with Jeanne at the Redevelopment board at 10am.  She gave me a nice full color brochure, and pointed to the side of it that talked about "Residential Facade Grants" of up to $5,000.  Needless to say I was a little disappointed at the time, since I was kind of anticipating TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS more than that.  Then we talked about the requirements for the grant.  First of all, I would have to improve the off-street parking available at the house, in order to qualify for the grant.  Currently there are two "ribbons" of concrete that you drive up on with "grass" (read:  "weeds and dirt") in between.  The City requires that I replace that with a concrete slab, pavers or ASPHALT.  Yuck!  OK, I wanted to hear her out.  Then I would be required to get two estimates from licensed contractors for any work being done to the facade of the house, and only the lowest estimate would count toward the grant.  Then I needed to pull permits and bring in paid receipts when all the work is done, for up to $10,000 and they would reimburse me for half.

Please understand, Jeanne was a lovely lady and I really enjoyed meeting with her.  She was helpful and professional and we had a few laughs.  And $5,000 of free money sounds like a good thing, right?  I am planning on pulling permits anyway, not trying to do anything sneaky.  But I had problems with this.  For one thing, the whole point of me getting this house was to save costs by doing a lot of the work myself.  The City would not allow me to bill for any labor that I or my friends put in on the house.  And they wanted me to put in this little parking lot - when I had no intention of doing anything of the sort.  I am perfectly happy with my concrete ribbons.  I felt like my plan of attack had to be re-thought, and all the puzzle pieces were kind of tossed up in the air.  We did pick up all the permit applications we would need, and the grant application - but something just didn't sit right with me at the time.

Then Jake and I drove over to the house, which as I said I hadn't visited in months.  The lock on the door had been re-keyed, and some trash had been thrown out that was on the front porch.  I could tell someone had been in the house since I was there.  We spread our stuff out on a table in the dining room - he began on some paperwork and I began to photograph and measure exterior doors and decide which ones would need to be replaced.  There are oddly two doors entering the house from the front porch, and my plan was to close up one and focus on the other as a front door.  I decided the one that was remaining was a cool old door and would be usable, with a little work on the interior jamb and also a new handle set (see picture).  That would save about $300 right there.  I moved on to the next exterior door.

This door we are calling the "coffin door".  A coffin door is something people would build into an old house so a coffin could be brought down a staircase that had a difficult turn or landing.  It's also handy for bringing up beds and other large pieces of furniture when the stair turns. You can see it in this picture on the right (along with the back end of my boxer Roscoe before I fattened him up).  I evaluated this door also, and decided that the door itself was fine, but the jamb and trim on the outside would need to be repaired.  Another $300 ... check!

While looking over the exterior of the coffin door, I was outside on the landing.  My neighbor, Mr. Leet, who is an architect, happened to be coming out of his side door, so I took the opportunity to introduce myself.  He was very happy to see that "People!" would be at the house - it had been vacant for about a year, I think.  Jake came out and I introduced him, then Mr. Leet proceeded to inform us that "they did catch the guy who stole the air conditioner" at which time Jake and I looked over where the AC unit used to be and realized there was nothing left but a jumble of wires and a hacked off copper pipe!!  Hey Hey Hey wait a minute!  I signed up to buy a house WITH an air conditioner!!

Got on the phone to my Realtor, who called the other Realtor, bla bla bla.  Turns out the cops actually caught the guy in the act, and then they put the AC unit in the basement as opposed to leaving it on the side of the building all de-tatched.   OK - add expense of having AC re-installed, charged with freon, fixed to a base like it was supposed to be in the first place.  Maybe I'll get away with $200 since Jake's son is a certified AC mechanic.  Still up $400 for the day.

Then Jake took his ladder upstairs to inspect the roof rafters and tie-downs in the attic.  When he got up there he noticed a lovely breeze blowing through:  The two window AC units had been pilfered as well.  That's fine I didn't want them anyway.  Good news is, we stood there and enjoyed the breeze - it was amazing.  When we headed over there this morning, I have to say I was dreading being upstairs in a house in June in FL that had been closed up for so long - I was sure it would be sweltering, but it was not.  Later on we sat on the front porch and enjoyed the same beautiful ocean breezes, at 1:00 in the afternoon on one of the hottest days of the year.  I'm thinking those AC units might not be so important as I had thought.

There were more revelations when we got down into the basement, but I'll save those for another post.  When I returned home, I thought for a long time about how to rearrange the pieces of the puzzle - my fantasy had been disrupted thinking about all the things I needed to do to get the City's grant money.  In the end I decided to completely shift gears.  I would set aside the facade of the house, the painting, all the exterior work (and the prerequisite landing strip they required in front of the garage).  There are plenty of other things to work on for now, and I can always return to the grant idea later on.  So my "TO DO" list has changed just a little... I'll start my next post with that.