<p>So this evening our realtor showed me an 1812 farmhouse with a modern addition, and it’s fascinating! Also has a rental cottage waaaaaaaaay in the back that – once fixed (yeah, right now the bathroom is basically an empty closet with a hole in the floor) – could rent for ~$1,200 a month.</p>
<p>The main house is absolutely charming, with lots of old-world details. The master bedroom, however, has two decent closets PLUS a jumbo walk-in, plus a humongous bathroom with a jacuzzi and a separate shower. Needs landscaping up the wazoo. Needs to have a horrible “play room” converted back to the two-car garage it used to be. Still plenty of space in the house. Kitchen needs to be redone.</p>
<p>Also a short sale.</p>
<p>What’s wrong with me that I don’t want to buy an already completed, picture-perfect house? Tomorrow night my realtor will be showing me a few of those, in a not-so-close town that’s very rural.</p>
<p>You’re right. Watching too much HGTV. On HGTV, they see three houses, someone brilliant re-designs them all for them, and three weeks later they move into one of them and it’s perfect. Isn’t that how it works?</p>
<p>dstark: It’s the house on the river that would be too much. The farmhouse might wind up being just right.</p>
<p>It helps, by the way, that I have a wonderful guy who can handle just about any task – big or small. The only thing he won’t do is roofs. (Unfortunately it’s not DH.)</p>
<p>The one that was 40 percent over budget cost more because we kept adding things to the project. Well, we remodeled this, so we should remodel that. Plus…we found out the heating system had to be redone, we needed a new deck, new siding for a small part of the house, a new
waterheater, etc. You know…stuff happens. ;)</p>
<p>My SIL decided to remodel instead of buying new or a newer existing house. Aside from it going WAY over budget, the remodel caused a problem that causes the basement to flood. She says she has a new looking house with old house problems. </p>
<p>She also built a new house (vacation) and that was a great experience. </p>
<p>We had an old home which had been neglected for a long time. There were many unseen problems since no one took care of the house. We also got nowhere near what we put in the house and many of the upgrades were unglamerous. New wiring, new plumbing, new roof, things that added no value when we went to sell.</p>
<p>We’ve plowed $150K in to the house we bought 21 years ago for $107K. My contractor is the bestest and has never gone a penny over what the estimates were except once, when I added a pass through from the kitchen into the dining room and he told me it would be about $500 extra. </p>
<p>In total we did new roof, driveway with an apron, resided the front, put in all new windows, new furnace system, all new electrical, refinished the basement, gutted the kitchen and broke through the back of the house and added a family room and deck off of it. </p>
<p>On top of that new walkway and front entryway, plus all new landscaping in front of house and in the back. </p>
<p>After son graduates and there is no more tuition I’m planning on doing a master bedroom/bathroom and remodeling the big hallway bath.</p>
<p>We did a kitchen gutting/main floor remodel, knocking down walls to make an open main floor plan. The guy was key. His challenge was more about meeting the deadline than keeping to budget. Knowing we were committed, he took on new jobs and wouldn’t come in to us for a few days. I understood he a sole proprietor in business, but as I reached the 9th month of pregnancy on child #3, I had a meltdown. Next day, H convinced him he had to finish us up, and in a week we were all done. LOVED the results. </p>
<p>I get all misty remembering the night I washed the dishes, then 2 toddlers, in an upstairs bathtub. I considered that sequence with care.</p>
<p>I had a 6 month long kitchen remodel with two preschoolers. Cooking in the backyard, washing dishes in the basement. A form of camping, and I liked the creative process as it unfolded with this particular contractor. We had a great time figuring things out together in a rather odd kitchen space, and 20 years later it is still my favorite room in the house. </p>
<p>But it is the house that I need to sell as well, as I’m dreaming of smaller property, smaller property tax payment, getting rid of a mortgage. </p>
<p>A few weeks ago I saw a small house that took hold of my dreams. But it sold before I could look at it. So I looked at another that was cute, but one project after another. Not willing to take that on, and did not stir my passion for pretty spaces. As I’m thinking of a rather small section of my city, with older housing stock, I may be in the looking phase for quite a while. </p>
<p>I was thinking about how something needs to capture your heart to consume the energy for a move and possible renovation. Is this how you LIKE spending your time? Will you resent it, or enjoy the process? And yes, every project goes over budget. Your H? </p>
<p>My impression is that your heart has been captured. But do you easily fall in love with interesting spaces? I know I sure can. Right now the curbs in my town are filled with old furniture from the student move out. I see such possibility in the old and unloved, and need to hide my eyes from too much possibility. </p>
<p>Hey, P3T, D moving to Israel for 10 months! We’re excited.</p>
<p>I have my heart set on a floating home. I have never slept on one and that will, hopefully, be done this fall. There are only 5-6 to rent around here as we are only interested in a very small area of the river and what we need may never come up. I also think we are nuts to consider this at our age. But then again…that is where my heart is…</p>
Having the right contractor is the key to building a new home or doing a major remodel along w/ having the funds to pay for the project. </p>
<p>I say go for it.:)</p>
<p>My advice on landscaping: grass and boxwoods. You can always find someone to feed and mow a lawn and boxwoods can be managed easily. A yard w/ lots of exotic plants and flower gardens requires attention and maintenance which you may not care to do in the future.</p>
<p>We had the remodel from h*ll a few years back. It was great fun for quite a while and we initially really liked the contractor who was very detail-oriented and had great subs. I was highly recommending our contractor to friends and neighbors. But then the 3 mo remodel took 10 mos and problems abounded and he started to be dishonest and nasty (now I understand why he is twice divorced and says he “doesn’t do relationships well”) and from what we could tell he fell off the wagon. Had one, ONE thing left to do which was in process. He got nastier, went dark on us and stopped responding to every attempt we made to get the last item taken care of and pay him the last, relatively small payment (and we paid a LOT-- almost 6 figures, for this remodel). Then he started to send late payment notices, trumped up bogus charges that he had mysteriously “forgotten” to charge us for (btw, this was a fixed price contract, any changes had to be signed off on by both parties), put a lien on our house and sued us. Long story short, he LOST, and he ended up owing US a few thousand dollars, which, believe it or not, he ultimately actually paid. And we got him to remove the bogus lien. What a miserable experience. And this went on while I was dealing with my dad dying in the hospital.</p>
<p>That said, after whe got someone else to come in and do the best we could to make the thing that needed fixing “good enough” and repairing other things he did wrong, we actually are quite happy with the remodel. I just cannot fathom doing that again. I need to get our basement updated and converted to an office, but I cringe at the thought.</p>
<p>And btw, this contractor has now apparently done this to 3 clients. Nice guy.</p>
<p>We too had the kitchen remodel from h***. The high-end, recommended contractor removed a load bearing wall and we spent the next year fighting with them to correct the damage.</p>
<p>veryhappy – the house sounds lovely – it really does. Just check out the zoning and C of O for that cottage – you want to make sure you are legally allowed to rent it.</p>
<p>DH and I went to re-visit three houses yesterday, and also saw two more that I had not seen before.</p>
<p>The Hoarder’s House is not as bad as I thought when I first saw it. Yes, it needs a lot of things, but we [untrained eyes that we are] didn’t see anything that causes us to run screaming. </p>
<p>The 1812 farmhouse, it turns out, does have many many problems that are making us run screaming. </p>
<p>DH was not enamored of the ready-to-move-in, just-needs-updating house several towns away.</p>
<p>New house on the list is one built in 1900 that needs a full-fledged two-story addition to make it realistic. Then, once the addition is added, it needs two new bathrooms and a new kitchen. </p>
<p>I am favoring the Hoarder’s House, as I think DH is also. We’re going to do some research at Town Hall about it and about the street. Since it is on a river, we also need to understand how much flood insurance costs – it’s not something I’ve ever paid attention to in the past.</p>
<p>Around here you can’t remodel a kitchen without an architect (though plenty try to). The architect should ensure that silly things like removing bearing walls without a beam don’t happen.</p>
<p>In your first sentence of this thread, when you said “1812” that made me instantly think, “NO WAY!” Now I know there are some beautiful 200 year homes that people absolutely love, but it just seems like the potential for problems is huge. How long do houses even last, anyways? Seems one can only do so much remodeling. Not knowing anything about a historic home, on the surface, that just seems risky. </p>
<p>But it sounds like you found out about the problems already.</p>
<p>Houses can last for hundreds of years if they were built right. Houses from the 1940s on not so much. Older houses often have structural framing that is much more than really required. Brick or stone cladding will last forever with some minimal upkeep. I’d much rather live in a 1920s house than one built by a mass production builder today.</p>