Okay, we have a…

Okay, we have a tentative plan:

• Ask painters for estimates on exterior of Mad Hatter house

• Ask contractor for estimate on bathroom of Mad Hatter house (Coffman & Wicklow estimate $25K - $40K for master bath renovation, oof! Does that seem reasonable? Or is it that high just because they specialize in fancy restoration work?)

• Pay inspector to do thorough inspection of Mad Hatter house and barn (found what seems like a great inspector through recs: Mark @ Secure Choice -- tons of experience living in Oak Park and inspecting big old houses, yay! Not cheap, but knows his stuff.)

• If sound, make quite low offer on house, factoring in cost of paint / bathroom + inevitable overruns

• See if we can get it for cheap

• If not, switch to Beautiful Gunderson and make quite low offer there as well

• Bargain until satisfied or at our limit

• If both fail to come through at a budget we can live with, look to other houses that are less inherently beautiful, but which are clearly large enough for us, and which we can potentially work with over time to make beautiful.

• Finish process before our own closing, hopefully!

In the meantime, I've been looking at design ideas online. Fancy wallpaper is insanely expensive, it turns out -- I have new appreciation for the lovely wallpaper in the Victorian's dining room, which I think is a high-end one, which means it costs a good $1000 to wallpaper that room -- and they only went halfway down the walls! It would be $2000 to wallpaper an entire reasonable-sized room in something like one of these lovelies...

Bird and Bramble:

Rook and Holly:

Click on either image to see a large selection of Voysey designs -- which do you like best? Or do you just think wallpaper is appalling? :-)