homebuying fun (caution: stupidly wide .jpg)

[Stanley Rockafella]

^ Damn excellent work. Sucks the inspector missed all of that. But glad you were able to handle it.

Agreed.

I would have seen that and said "well, I guess it's time to patch up that hole in the floor with a piece of cardboard and GTFO!"

[MR E30 325is]

^ Damn excellent work. Sucks the inspector missed all of that. But glad you were able to handle it.

Part of the reason I do my own home inspections, with the aid of my now personal GC. No one cares as much about your things as you do. Some inspectors I have witnessed were incredibly lazy/incompetent. And they wanted 4-500 for 40 minutes of their time. No thanks.

[2mAn]

This is a cool thread. I dont know what we'll end up with in the near future when we finally buy a home. Needless to say, buying in LA is ridiculous. I need to stop looking in other cities because I look and see a 3bd/2ba home that will cost less than my rent... but isnt a few miles from the beach.

[FireFight]

homebuying fun (caution: stupidly wide .jpg)

I bought my first house 1 year ago

I noticed a bubble under the flooring in the hall, and the floor felt soft. We pulled out the washer and my foot went though the floor





Rot was past the joists

It went all though the main hall and the back bathroom to the kitchen and the inspector missed it all

I was pretty stressed, but luckily my father is a contractor, and I had a decent amount of money stock piled




New flooring though out, replaced walls, new plumbing ect

(Above is finished)Kitchen was new flooring, sink, appliances, back splashing, and this is what every drain pipe looked like


Back bathroom new flooring and floors, and did some wainscoting. As well as new toilets, they all leaked in the house, all three bathrooms.

I dug out this corner of the lawn
.
The garage was 2 bedrooms, a bathroom, and a small garage, it's now a big garage.
Next we are replacing all the storm windows for 3 pain ones.
The heating is wires in the ceiling, super sketching and doesn't work well, so we are taking the hot water heater out and putting in a tankless one then putting a furnace in the water heaters place. He housing is getting natural gas, I'm trading engine work on a buddies car who is going to plumb the gas and the new water lines.
There has been more work done, but in spacing it. The previous owners where disgusting humans, they left a ton of stuff and garbage.


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[jpod999]

[Kershaw]

Hahaha

[ajhostetter]

Oops.

[rturbo 930]

I am NOT gutting the place.

Just be careful of scope creep.

house is gutted

Oops.

[evandael]

update

house is gutted ;D

check some pics here https://www.instagram.com/3471.5Denny/


i'll be posting more pics once framing/electrical/plumbing starts

[ajhostetter]

Latest, and last project for a while (Baby #3 comes in March). I added a wooden backsplash to my bar and did a floating shelf. Wrenching 10" lags is a bitch.

[BlackSpeed66]

I have nothing to offer in this thread except congrats on the purchase!


Oh, and your s52 i bought is in my car and running! ;)

[evandael]

TL; DR: Old homes are great, but they suck to work on.

Kinda like old cars? At least sometimes!

[Kershaw]

I've been drilling up for electrical access and putting the outlets in the same spot the rest are, 12" up from the floor. it's just a pain doing it on the outer walls through the bottom plate. I have to use a flexible drill connection and get into tight spaces. Sometimes that's not possible and I drop down from the attic, but then I have to feed wire down 9+ feet and that's a pain too. Either way, retrofitting anything is usually pita. And then all the 100 year old lumber really takes a toll on the drill bits, it's not easy to drill through, the stuff is super solid, especially since I can't put any weight on the bit due to it being overhead and with a flexible connection.

TL; DR: Old homes are great, but they suck to work on.

[rturbo 930]

I have never seen nearly 100 year old plaster and lath look great. My walls have all been poorly patched all over the place, multiple layers of wallpaper, and then multiple layers of paint. I'm actually in the middle of removing loose sections of plaster and patching and smoothing over all the wallpaper lines in the front two rooms. It's a pain in the ass. None of the walls are very flat either. And then on top of all this, all the trim is still painted. Beautifully stained oak trim painted white. Is it cost effective to remove it all without breaking it and then have it all dipped and chemically stripped? No, just get new trim, it's not like we're talking about fast growth southern yellow pine that looks dramatically different. Might as well rip everything out, shim/sister the studs flat, new drywall, new oak trim and restore it to it's original condition. And while the studs are exposed, put in outlets every 8 feet or 2 per wall or whatever. My house came with 1 outlet per room, retrofitting outlets sucks.

I've seen a few decent plaster walls, but I guess it depends on your standards. As I said earlier here, I like the uneven walls, and IMO anything that is laser straight sticks out like a sore thumb in an old home. And quite honestly, I think it would be a losing battle trying to get anything straight in a 100+ year old house. Some are definitely better than others though.

I definitely understand wanting updated electrical though. My family's beach house was built in 1930. The first floor has been updated, but the second floor (two bedrooms) has a total of two outlets, two overhead lights, and only one wall switch for the stairway light. The walls are some kind of fiberboard though and need to be replaced anyway. In your case, I would try to do it without ripping the walls out though. Maybe put the outlets in the baseboards, or use the bottom part of the wall that would be covered by trim as an access point.

The wavy glass is a cool feature of my old windows (most still have it), I agree. Unfortunately, none of the windows are in great shape. They're all chipped, have holes, or damage all the bottom edges. They're all double hung and none seal that great against the top window. Even more unfortunate is that even if you pay out the ass for the correctly styled wood windows, the wood is not the same. It's not 300 year oak old growth that'll last 100 years with abuse or indefinitely with care anymore.

Each house is different though, of course, ymmv.

Depending how bad it is, yeah, that might be a case where replacement makes sense, though I'd have to see it to make a good judgement. And I hear you on the quality of the wood, and that's one of the reasons why I would generally make an effort to keep any original wood trim, windows, doors, etc.

[Hansel]

I have an 1892 Victorian in City Park West area of Denver.

My electric and plumbing was all redone before I bought the place which was nice.

In regards to plaster walls not being straight, trim painted etc etc. As my realtor friend told me when I bought it, stuff is not going to line up and have quirks. Its the territory w/ houses that old. "Fixing" everything to be straight and even just isn't feasible sometimes. My foundation is solid as a rock, but rolling a marble across my 120 yr old floors will definitely not result in a straight path.