The second floor roof in the rear of the home.

As you can see we have a great ventilation system for the spring and early fall =) We have two chimneys which will need repaired. No don't excited, these aren't for original wood fireplaces. If they are used at all it will be for venting things like the HVAC and water heaters.

You can also see part of our back alley who we share with folks on Eutaw St... VERY nice street of 3 and 4 story brownstones and victorians

Raise the Roof ya'll ....

We will all be getting a new roof.

We will be replacing the original 'city skylights' with the exact same type. There are some places in the city which still make these... Terribly inefficient but those historic tax credits look pretty good =) I kind of like them anyway...

Our piece of green

Its not too much, but just enough for a city row home... Fire escape is coming off, the back cantilevered rear bay will be historically rebuilt. The tree is mainly dead and will be coming out. We'll have a nice new sewer main running to the alley after stabilization.

Once again the house to the right will be rehabbed through one of our group members, and the two to the left were just completed...

More Neighbors

This view is still off the front roof of our home, but looking more south down our block. 3 Linden Tree LLC members will be living in this group of homes (Remington, Sean and Olga, and Atsoh)

Our Neighbors

This is a view off our roof, across the street

Original Staircase

We have a bit of cleaning to do... =)

We will also be restoring the original staircase

Our Porch

Another historic part of our rehab. The original tile mosaic is in decent shape.

Vestibule

Here is the original tile mosaic in the front vestibule. You can also see a bit of the wood paneling we must restore since we are doing a historic rehab.

2246 Linden Ave

Here is our home. You can see someone else just finished the rehab next to us, actually the next 2 over. The one to the left, 2244, will be rehabbed through our group. Jeff and Maria Marks will be our neighborhoods from Linden Tree LLC. As you can see the front window is a bit drafty !!

The front of 2213 Linden Ave - quite the skylight !!

2213 - Our most deteriorated building.. but not by much

Eureka !!

The LLC finally settled on our eight row homes during the morning of Dec.15th !! We are now the proud owners of 8 run down homes =)

You will see much more activity and posting now...

Can't think of a title....

Here we are almost two months since the last post... No.. we don't own the properties yet. But guess what... ?? we are getting close.. only 4 to 6 weeks!! I'm just tired of saying it...

At this point we've almost gotten out of the project 3 times this year. But for some reason we think its a good idea to stay in.

Our elusive target date for settlement is now around our wedding anniversary at the end of September... 2006 that is...

We are about to meet with the Architect that 'Healthy Neighborhoods' is offering as a free consultant. Healthy Neighborhoods will be financing our final build out of the home. We will go over our floor plan layout and talk about moving forward with MEP dwgs... (Mechanical Electrical Plumbing)

These drawings and our cost spreadsheet are the last two bigs pieces of the puzzle before we negotiate a General Contractor agreement/contract for final build out.

Now if we can just settle on these properties, and get the stabilized home from the LLC...

No words can express our disgust....

... Linden update... Guess what... we still don't own our home after 26 months.

Two very heavy rains have deteriorated these properties more.

Stay tuned, but don't hold your breath...

25 months and counting....

Hello everyone out there in cyberspace.... I know everyone is eagerly awaiting an update to this blog !!! =) Anyway, our latest news is a settlement date of July 10th. I have a 2% confidence factor in this date... Me and Beth are guessing first week in August for settlement, GC beginning work end of august and completing stabilization of our home, 2246 Linden, in December, and us starting final build out with our own finacning and GC January 2007. Assuming 6 to 8 months for final build out puts us moving in around August 2007... only 39 months after trying to buy this home !!!

We'll lock in our final financing over 3 years later than we wanted to... predicting over 2 or 3 points higher than what we could have gotten, and assuming a materials price hike of over 15%...

But, on the positive side, we do hope to use a Healthy Neighborhoods Initiative loan, locking us in at 1% below Fannie Mae rates, and have applied and been accepted in the Maryland Historic Tax Credit program, where we recieve 20% of rehab costs by way of a tax credit, for doing a historic rehab, with max credit at 50K... which we are sure to hit...