When my husband and I decided to start a family, the first thing we looked into was towns outside of Boston that had good schools but also were reasonably priced for the housing market. We were quite surprised to see that even the areas with lower income were priced higher than what we were looking to spend. It literally took us over 2 years and countless open houses including 8 offers put in on sub-par homes that we were willing to settle for before we happened upon a great deal. We were incredibly lucky to find a home that was below our budget and managed to snatch it up even before it was on the market for 12 hours. Of course with a cheaper house comes a lot of projects and this 1958 ranch had no shortage of fixing up that was needed. The one good thing about this property was that it was on a 3rd of an acre, with a large flat green yard in the back which made everything better. The roof was in decent condition and had been replaced about 10 years ago, the only issue was that there was some staining as well as that green moss growing in certain spots that were under the trees. Apparently this is a problem in this region, especially when there are parts of a roof that dont’ see much sunlight or are shaded by large trees. This is a prime environment for damp moss to develop over time. In many types of roofing shingles there is limestone which is an organic material. Lichen, algae and moss can develop on roofs because they feed off of the limestone that is in the asphalt shingle. We called up a local roof cleaning company, which I never realized was a thing, and they did a fantastic job using wonderful techniques to clean the roof. They didn’t use those super strong pressure washing guns you often see being used to power wash siding and driveways, instead they used hot water and a soft roof washing ma gun that sprayed a gentle eco-friendly soap onto the roof, and let it set, and then after an hour or so, they rinsed it clean and amazingly all the moss and staining simply vanished and came right off. Instead of spending big bucks to replace the entire roof, we were able to clean it up nicely, and it looks almost new. The entire process cost us just under $800 which was more than worth it for the outcome.
That was only one aspect of course in our home projects, we also ended up gutting the entire ground floor, redoing the kitchen, bathroom, mudroom, front door, painted everything, added new trim to all the doors, which we also replaced. The existing doors were brown, hollow, with ugly brass hardware. We installed solid doors, painted white with brushed nickel hardware and it literally was the biggest difference to the interior of the house overall. Now that we have been in the house for over a year, we are working on the next projects which involve exterior parts of the home, siding, adding a deck, etc. and we cannot wait to get to the landscaping part! We are very happy to call this place home.