Adventures at The Bunny Manse

The wonderful Sara mailed our tax credit application in February and shared pictures she took the day we bought the house. Since April 2013 we spent at least $275,000 on demo, electrical, plumbing, asbestos, flooring, termites, exterior rot and damage, plaster repair, chimney repointing, new window sashes, installing a single kitchen, and a replacement slate roof. We sold two houses and a vacant lot in order to make this happen. Then we got a mortgage. Deep Breath. The front of the house When you first walk into the house... The stairway and windows I saw and fell in love with.  The view from the stairs. Notice the clear NO TRESPASSING sign taped above the fancywork. The room where Jazz was born sometime in the late 1990s. This is now our dining room. From the other side of the dining room. This floor was shot from termite damage.   This is a little room off a little hallway that we currently use as storage for the vaccum...

The exterior of the house...on the south and west elevations you can see how the porches will be reopened into a sunroom and entrance on the first floor and a bank of windows on the second floor. We're also planning to add a decklet to the second floor area. And the interior! Sara moved the bathroom around a bit to keep all the plumbing in one central area where it's already piped through the ceiling.

We met with Sara again yesterday to put the final touches on the design. We have a couple of rooms that are...odd and two porches that were enclosed in strange ways. Figuring out how to use these best and integrate them into the house has been fun and Harris and I think we're both there. From there, she takes everything to the city for them to determine what the scope of work is. There are a couple of things we're asking to do that we have to get permission to do because of the local historic district we bought into. Then come the tax credits. North Carolina gives homeowners who do qualified restorations of homes in National Register historic district 30% back on the restoration costs. For Oakwood we ended up with $59,100 in tax credits (30% of $197,000 in expenses). Over the past 5 years, that's meant Harris and I got back $23,604 in state income tax we would have otherwise paid. Pretty sweet! The tax credit program is set to sunset at the end of the year. So far,...