It's a bit of a diamond in the rough at the moment but here are the good and bad points:
Bad:1)Pretty much everything inside needs to be fixed, replaced, or refinished.
2) The basement needs to be fixed and drainage put in.
3)There is a railroad track right next to our back yard.
4) There is virtually no insulation in the house. Anywhere.
Why some of the bad things aren't really so bad:1) If it didn't need so much fixing up we'd never have been able to afford it.
2) Most of the materials in the house are nice--they're just covered up with someone's awful 1970's cheep taste materials. Case and point: The office quality rug glued (but puckering up big time) directly onto hardwood herringbone floors. Question: Who would glue a carpet directly onto hardwood? Answer: The same person who would glue linolium over a terrazzo floor in the bathroom.
3)The Train that runs by is only two cars long and is not really that loud. If you're sitting outside around the table you don'e even have to interrupt your conversation during the 3 seconds it takes to pass. Plus, it doesn't run all night and the bedrooms are on the other side of the building anyway.
The good (my favorite part):1) The location is unbelievable. It is in a really posh neighborhood north of Copenhagen with good school districts, etc. The actual town is extremely old and looks like something out of a Hans Christian Andersen fiary tail with tons of charming historical (and protected) buildings. However, we are one of the few houses in the neighborhood which is not protected which means we can do anything we want with it without having to worry about planning permission from the historical council.
2) We live on the very edge of town so while we have the cute town on the front side of the house we have a park on the other (just behind the train tracks). This means we get a view of trees and park from the living and dining room but the track puts enough space between us and the trees that we get full sun in the yard.
3) The park we look over onto happens to be an off leash dog park
4) There is a put in for kayaks in the dog park (about 100m walk from where we live) which connects to the three big lakes in Northern Sjælland.
5) The dog park eventually hooks up to the Deer Park and from there to the beach. It also connects to the open air museum which you will probably remember from the wedding.
6) The house is walking distance to DTU (Morten's work) and 1km from the train station which goes directly to the school where I work.
We bid slightly under the asking price so we'd have enough money left to fix some of the more pressing problems right away. There were two other bidders but we got the place anyway! The details of the other offers are secret until Friday, when money changes hands. I am very curious to know what the others bid and what their conditions were. My guess is that we were not the highest bidders but that the owners were desperate for an imediate sale and the other offers had conditions about not taking over until their own houses were sold, etc. I will let you know when I find out on Friday.
Here are some of the pictures of our little uncut diamond from the original sales add online plus some ariel shots we did up ourselves.
The push pin marks the spot. My parents got a double kayak a couple years ago and Morten and I have wanted one since, too. We are definitely budgeting to buying a used one this summer. When my Dad comes to visit he's never going to want to go home again!
We do not live on a through street. Yay! And we actually have only have one neighbor. We've met them already and they're a very sweet older couple.
The front entrance. It's covered, but uggily. All the windows need paint and we're discussing color choices at the moment. Most houses with this color of brick have dark brown windows. We want to paint a color but don't want it to look weird or like color blind hippies live there. I am leaning towards a very dark purple but Morten wants blue. Morten always wants blue though (do we not remember the wedding theme colors?), so I'm not really taking his opinion into consideration at this point.
The floor plan. It's hard to make out but there is an entire wall of storage in the big bedroom, a linen closet in the dining room, a hall closet by the kitchen, and a closet at the entrance. They don't make 'em like that anymore!
The small bedroom. We will probably put our bed in here and use the larger bedroom for a closet/office/storage/guest room.
The big bedroom. The floor is in three layers at the moment: hardwood covered with carpet, covered with linolium. I really wonder what the train of thought was with that.
The kitchen. Notice the horendous doors--cork glued over hollow core with plastic handles. Ick! Also notice the huge stainless countertop. Not ick.
The bathroom. There's terrazzo under that beige linolium. Besides refinishing the floor the only fixes the bathroom needs is some minor work to that cute, original circular window and to remove the handles from the toilet. Perhaps we'll store them in the basement in case we stay here until we get old in which case we'll probably need them again. I am SO glad there is a bathtub.
HUGE dining room with sliding glass doors to the back patio. That arch is brick and the paint will be coming off. Notice the God awful rug and all the puckers where the beautiful hardwood floor underneath is trying to reject it. Don't worry, hardwood floors, I'll save you!
The living room is as big as some of the living/dining rooms we looked at in other places. The picture window looks (over the train tracks and) out onto the park. We're going to try to get the two dark grey/wood chairs, but not the red couch.
The back yard complete with elevated cement tile patio and garden shed. That big patch of grass is where my vegetable garden is going to be this summer.
The back patio. The fence blocks the view of the tracks so you don't look at them all the time. You can, of course, see the train when it comes by. The rocks in front of the patio have tons of strawberries growing in between them. There's also an apple tree way back in the corner. I'm going to make lots of jam this year!
I am in a bit of shock that we got such a (potentially) fantastic house in such a fantastic location. I am so happy!
"Rockwool" is the only type of insulation material you can use for brick structures as everything else gets too wet and will eventually mold. It is made of Diabase rock (a type of igneous rock) and other raw materials which are melted in a furnace and spun on wheels to form fibers. The raw material, Diabase rock, is easy to obtain and is renewable in the sense that volcanoes are constantly producing it and although it's production is rather energy intensive, over it’s lifetime it will save far more energy than it consumed in production. It's also completely non-toxic and is sometimes used as a substrate for starting seedlings hydroponically.
