First trip to house June 2005

The plain was to make a trip to Nebraska, being we were in Arizona after Jessica got out of school for the summer. The house was found on the internet and we had only pictures and the word of the realtor and inspector to go by. The inspector said the house has a sound structure and over all didn't look to bad. We knew it was a fixer upper from the start but the price was right at 20k and plenty of room for the animals with the almost 5 acres. And lots of trees and So the farm house charm. There was many thing we had to learn about but I'm getting ahead of myself.

In the pictures we had we could see it had been updated some in about the 1970s or so. lots of paneling. I'm not fond of the kitchen paneling but the front room paneling is the real wood and isn't to bad. Lots of slat and plaster still in the house all over. It still had all the old wood orginal to the house, lots of dark wood. And all the rooms have hardwood floors some not as good as others.

So we get there to the house for the first time, the keys were in the wash house, skeleton keys. but this was after finding out our road 419 is not maintained from the main road that we need to take 420 to get to the house if the weather is bad. The road out in front of the house down to the corner of 707 is maintained thank goodness.

1st surprise for us was NO WATER. They had shut the water off to the house and diverted it for water to the cow tank in the corral. And how do we get water to the house was the big question.

The back porch is enclosed and has an updated power box, washer and dryer hookups.

The basement is a 1/4 size. hot water heater and pump for the well is down there. Also we found an old oil burner heater down there also. The one wall in the basement does need some attention but its not really bad. Nobody had lived in the house for 3 years and was all over grown with weeds and the trees need some major attention. We saw that the wiring was in pretty bad shape coming into the house from the pole out side, and the wiring from the other pole from the transformer was in even worst shape. This was not mentioned by anyone.

We knew there was not central heating or air going into this, but what there was for heat is very old propane space heaters. 1950s vintage. 4 of them the biggest being in the front room. We ended up using the one in the front room for 2 winters.

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We found out who the people were that had taken care of the water and well, went to talk to them. The whole well thing had to be brought up to code for Nebraska so we wouldn't have water the whole 10 days there. So we hailed in water. We had phone and electric already on so we weren't totally roughing it. But we had no stove or refrig in the house so off we went to get those. We have a 500 gallon gas tank which we used the first 2 1/2 years here. We had the cats with us to start demousing the house and out buildings. Second surprise was a mommy cat with 3 kittens already in the barn.

We did as much as we could the first 10 days there and then had to return to Az to get packed and be ready for the movers and be ready to return to Nebraska in 7 days.
So while we were back in AZ they were suppost to get the well all redone. Famous last words...