Friday, May 28, 2004

the purchase of the beach house


It still seems unreal to me that we bought this beach house. While it's in an awesome location( across the street from the beach) and in a nice neighborhood it requires A LOT of work inside and outside. This house is the definition of a "fixer upper" or I guess in today's terms a "flip house" except we don't intend to just "flip" it.

The house is actually a "duplex" and we have right side (look at the picture). It has three bedroom and two and half baths. It has a good size garage, a driveway upfront and very large driveway in the back.

As you can see, the house has been neglected for a while...the deck is old and falling apart, the paint on the house is faded and chipping, the grass is overgrown, and the prickly pair cactus is taking over the flower beds.

It has a two level deck in the front and good size deck in the back. The house gets a nice sun in the front and a comfortable shade in the back.

Adam and I plan on spending 10 days doing as much fixing and cleaning as possible. What remains, we'll get to on the weekends.

What do real estate moguls tell you the secret is? location, location, location! We got this one right!

This is the beach right in front of our house.

He's actually very happy it's just that the sun is in his eyes...or maybe he's just dreading the work that needs to be done on the house.


This is actually the bay so the water tends to be a little calmer than the rest of Virginia Beach.

You know you're close to the beach when your front yard is more sand than grass!

The neighbors are very nice. I think they're happy to finally have someone fix and occupy this house. They told us that the house sat vacant for almost three years.


This is the back driveway and deck. As you can see, we have plenty of parking.

I love the backyard of this house. It's so peaceful and pretty. So in the front it's a beach house but in the back it's a lake house.


The back driveway...

This is the lake in the back. The lake is full of turtles so we call it "turtle lake".