hwillm1977 - MY CHICKEN IS HOME!!!!!

[hwillm1977]

well it all depends on if it's sturcturally sound. if it's got problems with it's bones, it could end up a money pit.

http://i631.photobucket.com/albums/uu36/Okiemedley/IMG_4457-1.jpg
this was our money pit. we got it for a song, but by the time you figured rewiring, replumbing, structure damage etc, we could rebuild for about the same money and have a new house.

don't get me wrong, I LOVE old houses, but you have to know what you're getting into.

Yeah, we plan on tearing down the kitchen and rebuilding that as a 2-story addition, and larger so that the bottom floor can be a great room and we'll have a master bedroom that's more than 90 square feet. The main part of the house is structurally sound, the kitchen is not... there's actually no foundation under the kitchen and it's sinking. Most of the rooms in the house are less than 9 feet on either side, so building an addition with bigger rooms will help resale (not to mention our sanity )

So far we have gutted the wiring and put a new 200 amp entrance on the house, replaced most of the plumbing (upstairs bathroom still doesn't work), torn down a lot of the plaster walls and put insulation in most of the exterior walls... some walls had none when we started.

I adore old houses, the character and history behind them and I've always wanted to fix one up. That said, I will probably never do it again... lol... next time we're buying land and building a brand new, energy efficient house from scratch. We're currently in negotiations for 117 acres closer to a town center... so we aren't 50 miles from groceries

In this drafty 900 square foot house, before we had the woodstove in, we were paying $800/month for electric heat and that wasn't even keeping the house above freezing all the time, I look forward to energy efficiency

 

[enjoy the ride]

Let's see- for $25,000, you get 6 acres with a house thrown in free. You also will graduate from the Re-habber's School of Hard Knocks with a degree in plumbing, electrical, insulation and mechanicals. You will have a lifetime of memories- some more painful than others. You will not be fazed by many things that others consider insurmountable. You will have a number of "If you think that was bad" stories. And you will have the moral superiority of knowing what others are getting themselves into and can smile at the innocence- but with affection.

Congratulations- I think that your home has a good feel to it.

 

[dragonlaurel]

Let's see- for $25,000, you get 6 acres with a house thrown in free. You also will graduate from the Re-habber's School of Hard Knocks with a degree in plumbing, electrical, insulation and mechanicals. You will have a lifetime of memories- some more painful than others. You will not be fazed by many things that others consider insurmountable. You will have a number of "If you think that was bad" stories. And you will have the moral superiority of knowing what others are getting themselves into and can smile at the innocence- but with affection.

Congratulations- I think that your home has a good feel to it.

Totally true. You got a good education - home schooled.

 

[framing fowl]

Good for you guys! It sounds like you knew what you wanted, were patient, and now the adventure begins! Are your plans to work on the house and then do something with the acreage or do you have immediate plans for that as well?

 

[hwillm1977]

Let's see- for $25,000, you get 6 acres with a house thrown in free. You also will graduate from the Re-habber's School of Hard Knocks with a degree in plumbing, electrical, insulation and mechanicals. You will have a lifetime of memories- some more painful than others. You will not be fazed by many things that others consider insurmountable. You will have a number of "If you think that was bad" stories. And you will have the moral superiority of knowing what others are getting themselves into and can smile at the innocence- but with affection.

Congratulations- I think that your home has a good feel to it.

This is almost EXACTLY how I feel about it... we intend to build our house ourselves, and everything we do to this house is just our practise run It did turn out to be a lot more, and a lot slower work than we thought. We've already been here two years, and I feel like we've done nothing.... although we have done things that allow the house to stay warm, I've been looking at walls of insulation and vapour barriers for a while... I'd like drywall, and pretty things

The 117 acres we went to see is around $300/acre, so land here is relatively cheap... depending on access, we'd have to build a road and run power into the property, right now there's only a trail for ATV's to get there, but it's still only 6 miles from a town center (the town I work in )

I grew up for the first part of my life in a house that my parents spent my childhood fixing up (built in 1895), this is my childhood home... it was 6000 square feet, and they burned 40 (yes FORTY) cord of wood between 2 woodstoves and a wood furnace to keep the house somewhat warm the first actual winter. This house was the reason I wanted my own old house to fix up

They moved in in February and didn't discover until spring thaw that there was no septic system, the toilets flushed into the basement.

 

[Dace]

What an amazing opportunity! I love old houses and all their interesting history....I would love to buy and old neglected home and fix it up.

You have a lot of work ahead of you but it sounds like you have got a pretty good plan!

 

[Farmfresh]

Well I have been rehabbing THIS old house for about 20 + years. I can learn you a thing or two dearie!

First thing to decide. Do you REALLY want to fix this house or could you do better by building a new house on the lot? My sister lived in a HORRIBLE trailer for two years while she was building her house. You could see outside where floor met wall, full of mice, the wiring was so bad some of it melted almost causing a fire and the WHOLE thing ceiling, walls kitchen cabinets was painted with flat gray primer. AND no septic ... hers flushed into a ditch behind the house! Man was it worth it!

My uncle spent 5 years in a trailer (his was nice) while fixing up a 1880's stone farm house in Kansas. Also worth it.

Starting from scratch gives you a chance to make things the way you would use and need it instead of dealing with someone else's problems. With an old house you have to tear out and then put it back. With a new house you just plan and build.

If you decide to keep this old house, or don't have the option of building a new one on the land. Remember, work on the house from the foundation up. I would have it checked professionally for termites first of all. Those weak floors are often a sign. Next I would make sure the foundation is is good solid order. I have a friend that actually lifted his whole old house and re-poured a new basement right under it!

After that you are actually in good luck. You have little you have to save and lots of possibilities! I would just gut the place and start work on insulation and new wiring. Do lots of reading and learn the building codes for where you live. Even if there is no need for inspections I would follow those codes to the letter if you possibly can. They were developed for public safety.

If you get the foundation solid and the exterior tight and in the dry (new roof?), you can take your time on the rest working on one room at a time. I am going to go against usual convention when I recommend the FIRST room you finish as being your bedroom. When living for years (and it usually takes that long no matter what you might think) in a construction zone, it is very important to have a sanctuary where you can rest and recover.

Bedrooms go quickly. I gutted my front bedroom in a long weekend. (Plaster was separated from the lathe. Plaster went to pave out bad driveway (watch for nails!) and lathe went to the kindling pile.) I repaired and caulked all of the windows and sanded and refinished the door. I completely re-wired, re-insulated and re-sheet rocked (sheet rocking a ceiling is hard work!) in about another 2 weeks, while working a full time job. Painting and trim work took another week or so. (Trim molding is expensive try to find a Habitat for Humanity Re-store near you!) Then I had a sanctuary where we spend most of our down time today!

It is a LOT of work and there are a LOT of REWARDS!

Oh by the way I am a woman. Most of the work was done myself or with a friend (another woman) helping some. My hubby and son did help with sheet rocking the ceiling. It is hard to hold up sheet rock AND run a screw gun!!

 

[hwillm1977]

Well I have been rehabbing THIS old house for about 20 + years. I can learn you a thing or two dearie!

First thing to decide. Do you REALLY want to fix this house or could you do better by building a new house on the lot?

Thanks for all the advice, any and all is appreciated!

We don't intend to live here for that long because the lot is so small... the house is actually on 1 acre, then 15 miles away we have 5 acres of maple woodlot... we will keep the woodlot, it borders on a national park and is beautiful as well as providing us wood to heat with.

What we had intended was to fix this house up (not to absolute perfect, but livable, insulated, solid, and clean) and sell it to pay for building our dream house on 50-100 acres closer to a city. This is technically just a long term flip for us. While we're building our dream house we will live in a trailer

So far we've done 100% of the wiring in the house (it was all knob and tube), and are working on buttoning up the outside now. It's fascinating to see how wide the boards are that they built the outside of the house and floorboards with... some are 16-18 inches across... We don't have termites here so there's no worries about those, we do however have extremely COLD winters so insulation and getting the heating bill down is our biggest concern.

I am technically more handy than the hubby (but I don't tell him that) so I'm the one in charge of fixing a lot of the things around here

 

[Farmfresh]

Another problem I discovered with our old house was the builders did not seem to measure anything. They just slapped up a rafter where one looked good.

Maybe your floor support system was installed in a similar way!

I think the flip idea sounds great! It will get you some equity built up that should help you buy and build in the future.

I am curious ... Why are you wanting so much land? What are your plans for it?

 

[hwillm1977]

Another problem I discovered with our old house was the builders did not seem to measure anything. They just slapped up a rafter where one looked good.

Maybe your floor support system was installed in a similar way!

I think the flip idea sounds great! It will get you some equity built up that should help you buy and build in the future.

I am curious ... Why are you wanting so much land? What are your plans for it?

The builders of our house did the same thing... 16" on center did not exist Our wall framing ranges from 9" to 18" on center and it's completely random, the roof joist are 24" apart, and the floor joists are also completely random.

We wanted anything over 20 acres, and we found a great piece of land for relatively cheap and it's 117.8 acres. So we're negotiating to get that. We'll start small and gradually build up to complete self sufficiency... raising animals, growing food for us and the animals, making our own power, running our own managed woodlot, someday getting to the point where we can make our own biodiesel to run the truck and farm equipment. Once we're up and running I'd like to set up a CSA type arrangement in the town.

My parents are getting older now and they are going to need somewhere to live, so I'd like to be able to give them some land and set them up with a house. Dad had a triple by-pass last thursday and can't go back to work... they have supported me through everything I've wanted to do my entire life, and this could be my chance to give them a helping hand.

They are the ones who taught me self sufficiency in the beginning, we had a 200 foot greenhouse that the two of them built by themselves and we had chickens, pigs, and grew all our own veggies...we traded veggies for our neighbours beef.... and I loved every minute of living there.