Downtown Luxury Slum

One of the contractors we talked to on Friday got us a quote by Monday and it was well within budget. He had cut a couple of wish list items out because he wanted his price to be low so we asked for the items to be added back in and the numbers still worked out. Despite this, we were unsure about working with this particular contractor. He is very quiet and seems very easy going, which is not normally a bad thing, but since this is our first time doing this, we would feel more comfortable with someone more willing to take the wheel. Our realtor knew that he had done some work for a guy about a block away, so we met with him, saw the work that had been done, and left feeling a little more confident that we could work with this contractor.

We also got a quote from another bank that was in line with the original bank. So that’s another option.

Although the contractors all budgeted for a survey in their estimates, we decided to go ahead and order one ourselves to get that done with.

By Thursday we still hadn’t gotten an estimate from the second contractor. We realize we gave him a very tight timeline, but unfortunately that’s all we had to work with. We went ahead and signed a contractor agreement with Jesse, the contractor that got his estimate to us on Monday and has already filled out all of the forms needed to get him validated with the bank.

Our contact at the bank tried to convince us that the house isn’t actually a historic home and therefore doesn’t have to meet any historic preservation requirements because it doesn’t have a name. This is after he said we needed a Certificate of Appropriateness before closing. I managed to convince him otherwise though I have no idea why he cares. But I won the battle so I had start to work on our application for a Certificate of Appropriateness. I again spent a couple hot, humid, mosquito filled hours at the downtown luxury slum, this time taking pictures of everything on the exterior of the house that we will want to change or repair.