The Honest Minnesotan : The Tale of the Fixer Upper: Closing/Demo Weekend

If you’ve been following my blog, you will know that I and my husband bought a fixer-upper on the western side of the Twin Cities in Minnesota. It’s been a whirlwind (see You Had Me At Purchase Agreement) and that it’s been nothing short of a struggle to get to the final stretch of the home-buying process. But recently, dreams became a reality and we were able to finally close on the house!

The Final Walk-Through

Before you sign your soul to your future home, you get a chance to walk through one more time. This is set up to make sure no major changes have been made since you’ve agreed to purchase the home. For me, this was only the second time I saw the house on the inside. Talk about making a commitment! I was choosing where I was going to live for the next dozen or so years based on ONE viewing. Looking back, it seems incredibly insane. Especially because time had desensitized me to the reality of the home.

The home was in terrible condition. That’s me putting it nicely. I cannot tell you how much stuff was left behind -- including things they said they would take. A pop-up trailer, lawnmowers, a plethora of doors, rotting food in the refrigerator…. And a refrigerator full of food downstairs that had been unplugged for months. Was this a house of horrors or our new home? It’s hard to know. I felt overwhelmed and again wondered what I was getting myself in to. But I remembered the vision for the home that we’ve been curating over the last month. I remembered the beautiful cupboards, the gorgeous American hickory floors we’ll be putting in, the layout for the upstairs that’s set up for hosting. We always knew that this house was going to require TLC times ten, so I quickly pulled myself up again and decided I still wanted to go down this path. At this point, I think we had to go down this path no matter what.

What Closing Looks Like

Closing, at least for us, seemed pretty straightforward. We met at the title company, where we had our lender, the seller, our agent representative (he was out of town at the time), and some family members present. We gave the title company our 20% deposit and they filled us in on everything that was going to happen. Over the next 45 minutes, dozens, if not hundreds of documents were signed. At the end, we were given lovely gifts from our agents as some first “welcome home” presents. Immediately after everything was settled and the keys were put into our hands, we headed over to the Ugly Duckling house.

Demo Weekend

Demo weekend is exactly what you think it is. We simply took everything that was on the inside of the house, and either burned it or threw it away. I cannot express to you how much stuff there was. Actually, if you watch our Ugly Duckling Tour, you’ll kind of see what we’re talking about. And then times that by five -- for all the things hiding in almost all of the drawers in the house. Yes, it was that packed of stuff.

The worst refrigerator of all time

Bless their souls

Originally we got the biggest dumpster on the market to throw everything. But little did we know that we’d run out of room sooner than later. The solution? Just burn it! My husband loves to burn things, and that’s exactly what he did. While the fire was consistently large for about a week, none of the neighbors seemed to mind; I think they were just happy to have us in the neighborhood!

Somehow for this weekend, we rallied ten of our friends to help gut the house. We had people working in the garage, in the backyard, in the basement, and upstairs. Every person was incredibly useful and, quite honestly, there were things I didn’t see exit the house until it was all said and done. That’s how fast everyone was working. We also realize how incredibly lucky we are to have such great friends to help with this kind of project. Naively I thought it’d kind of be a family thing, maybe four of us slowly emptying things. That, my friends, would mean we’d still be demoing to this very day. Maybe not for every demo situation, but when it’s almost on the brink of foreclosure and people quite literally leave underwear in the entryway closet, it’s going to take a while to get things taken out.

Within the first weekend, we removed cabinets, sinks, trash, refrigerators with molding food inside, carpets, subfloors, broken water heaters, trim, a popup trailer, appliances, five lawn mowers (yes, there were five!), and a lot of other objects scattered around the backyard and basement. My jaw still drops thinking of how much was removed. We’ve documented this all in videos and pictures, so make sure to check out my Instagram page!

What Next?

Even though we somehow managed to get an incredible amount of work done in those first few days, not everything is complete. We’re tearing down the walls that separate the kitchen and the living room, we’re ripping off some random spots of wallpaper, and we’re making sure to pull all the nails from the ground, baseboards, closets, etc. The walls need to be wiped down, and I’m pretty sure we’re going to have to find a solution to the intense animal smell within the walls, just short of burning the whole house to the ground. Yes, it’s that bad. No, we cannot live like that. From what the neighbors have told us, a multitude of outdoor animals had the pleasure of also being in the house (i.e. pigs, goats, rabbits). So you see where I’m going with this.

Here's some of my favorite images from that weekend. It's amazing to see the changes happening!