Renovating Old Houses

I would say only if it is already wired with a 2/with ground wire electric system and had heat & air installed in the late 70S.You need to think this is your project too . Your wife will be busy with the baby.If the home don't have them things you need a travel trailer or 5th wheel.Cause it will need to be took down to studs. To do those things.
Me personaly i would look for some thing i could pay cash for after you sell your house and start saving to move up in house and be debt free.

Molly Mckee: "One big problem with a house that old is nothing is plumb. No corners are square."


^^^^This


Don't take on this project unless you have a bunch of money in savings. Also, closely inspect the electrical. Is the wiring of adequate gauge? Are all of the outlets grounded?

We have an older home and the wiring is only two wire. For a while there, every time there was a lighting storm, we would lose electronics (computer, phone, etc). Now when there is a storm coming, we unplug everything.

I wouldn't consider repairing something if I had to pay someone else to do the work unless I had deep pockets.

I would love to have a house like that, even if it were in disrepair. I am also capable of doing all the work needed myself and love well built houses even if they don't meet modern standards. It is all in how you intend to live. If you want a modern style sealed house with no maintenance required an antique house isn't for you and it will take a fortune to get it there.

My farm house is a hundred years old with single pain windows that had storm windows added. It is actually much better insulated than you would think, and a little wood stove will keep it warm even in the coldest weather. I don't intend to heat with anything but wood, so I don't plan on replacing the windows or adding insulation, it would be a waste of money. If you used central heat I am sure the place would be very expensive to keep heated, it only costs me some time and gasoline for my chainsaw.

If it were me I would fix a room to live out of and slowly go through the house as I got time. Sounds like a mansion with plenty of room. I was going to finish our farm house before moving in but my wife wouldn't have it so we lived on the second floor while we stripped the walls to the bare horse hair plaster and spent days stripping layers of wallpaper and patching cracks and entire areas of missing plaster. The plaster on our walls is horse hair plaster over wood lathe. Much stronger than drywall and easily repaired. I wouldn't consider replacing it with cheap drywall even if it would have been easier.

I wouldn't want a newer house built of poor materials. Other wouldn't want an antique house where modern conveniences had to be retrofitted into it. To each their own.

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www.jlmissouri.com Lewis Family Farm

I did one, a labor of love because it was my Grandparents home. It had historical significance as it was the first house built in the territory from lumber from the new sawmill. It was built on stumps and rocks, no foundation. The siding was perfect, no rot anywhere. I poured a foundation and lowered the house onto it. Squared and leveled it up, then gutted it, new insulation, wiring, plumbing. Electric heat, no ducting. New sheetrock everywhere. I was not living in it. Major work, all done myself. Like I said I did one. I like old houses and have done many smaller buildings into homes but....In the last 15 years I built all new. I got over the fondness pretty quick. I found it WAS better to gut, than try to fix temporary fixes done 1/2 way. If you want to live there for a long time, fix it right the first time. Patch jobs never work out in the end.
If you decide to gut it, make sure you have the money to finish it right....James

I'd suggest getting an appraisal from an independent source. Ask the appraiser to specify how much of the value is in the land and how much in the house.

IMHO, you would be much happier parting out the old house for what you can get and building a smaller, new home on the property. I've renovated old houses, and it just isn't really worth it.

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I believe in God's willingness to heal.

Cyngbaeld's Keep Heritage Farm, breeding a variety of historical birds and LaMancha goats. (It is pronounced King Bold.)

Yep. Do the math.

While it may be covered over with non lead paint, you can bet the farm it's there.

Thanks for the information. I called and told them thanks but no thanks. The more I thought about it, the more I saw the next five years of my life being invested in it. I work a 50 hour/wk job, take care of all of our animals, and am slowly working toward a PhD in my field. Combine that with the new child on the way and I think it would be rough. Although I have a really strong desire to take the project on, I don't want to burn out. If it were our ideal house/property I would have done it, but the 35 acres were once pasture and were left to overgrow for 50 years so the land would take a long time to rehab. I don't think I am up for rehabilitating the house and the land.

Thanks for the reality check ladies and gentlemen.

You should not have to replace the windows. Original wood sash windows work almost as good as new ones if you weatherstrip them right, seal them well and repair them correctly. You can try to do it yourself or pay someone to do it. You can put energy efficient storm windows on the outside or insides that will up the R value a ton without having to replace originals. Besides, in old homes you lose more of the hot/cold air through the attics, basements, and chimneys than anywhere else.

I would save the plaster as well. A much easier choice, more historically appropriate and probably more cost-effective too

This may be true in NC, but he lives in NH. Those old single pained windows leak air like a sieve. Having storm windows made to fit would be really expensive, probably more than new stock window, and they would not be as good.

V-NH, I think you made the right decision, given where you are in life. Getting your PhD will be a very good plus and you want to have time for your family. That, as well as the amount of time and money that could be involved in a house rehab would make it impossible to do anything else. or do anything well. You can do it later, when the kids are older.

Yep Yep YEP!!! the man is not telling you all to tell why would he he wants to get the house sold. Buy a test kid at home depot lowes walmart and stop by and do a little testing its a tube /pen that turns a diferent color if lead is found. lead is a pain in the butt to deal with, somestates make you hire professionals you cant do it your self.

There is a 0% possibility there is no lead in that house. The guy selling the house knows that, it wasn't very nice to lie you.

My father in law is a general contractor, who had to get certified to remove lead paint. That says something about how much of a pain it is.

We live on my husbands family farm and are within about 7 years of becoming a centennial farm. We decided to remodel our home and that was 10 years ago, and we are not even close to being done.

My oldest child was in first grade and he just graduated high school this year, we have had 2 babies during this whole process (we have 5 kids). We ended up jacking up the house, pouring a new basement, putting on an addition, replacing every window, new roof, new siding.

Every time we gutted a room or a single wall the bones of it were so cobbled together that we end up putting up new studs and basically rebuilding a lot of it from scratch......we found 2 x 4's that were burned and charred....but not all in the same area, so we know this house never caught fire, but something else that was close must have because we are assuming they re-used and salvaged whatever they could.

We were of the opinion, its been here for 100 years! It is solid, how much could it need to bring it back? Well once you get started you will see, there are so many times we have been tempted to just throw some drywall up and call it good....who would know? But most likely one of our kids will end up living here and do we want to make them deal with some of these issues 30 years down the road? No I don't!

The next thing we will tackle will be re-wiring the entire place, re-plumbing it all, and insulating....hopefully this winter. Then we can start thinking about drywall.

If you have little kids, don't do it. Enjoy your family, find a place that doesn't require much in the way of fixing up, because if your living in it you can never get away from it, and it makes everything else you want to do so much more difficult and time consuming.

I owned a house that was built in 1898 and later cut up into a 4 plex. I did a lot of remodeling and renovation in the 22 years I owned it and never was done, I wound up selling it due to health issues.

If you buy the old house you will find that every project you tackle will take twice as long to do and cost twice as much as you first thought. You can work on it part time for the rest of your life and not be done.

Plumb, level, and square are abstract concepts that have no basis in reality. You are going to have to be a really good carpenter to cut pieces that fit when you do a repair.

They used different construction techniques back then. There was no plywood so they used regular boards for the floors and walls. Two X fours really were 2" X 4" so door and windows frames had to match the thicker walls. My house was balloon framed. You need to know how to work with these old techniques.

Unless you are in love with the old house, I would let the local volunteer fire department practice on it and then build a new one. It would be a lot less work.

Do you own an old house that needs to be rebuilt or remodel? Usually for remodelling, people try to apply for 203k loan. Your application will depend on what type of improvements your house will undergo. Like in my case, I’m under Streamline K. My loan officer from Prospect Mortgage said that FHA loan can purchase a home and renovate it with only one loan. Just ask your broker about this if you have questions.

This is the piece of information that matters most.

If you're positive that you've got the money to complete this project TWICE, and the personal time and energy to complete this project FOUR TIMES SIMULTANEOUSLY, then go for it.

Because it will absolutely take twice as much money as your most careful estimates project, and once you have the baby, there will be 75% less of you personally available in terms of time and energy. You will not believe how much less you're capable of when you're that stressed and sleep deprived. If you're positive that you could complete four these houses at the same time, then I'd say you've got a fair chance of doing it once with a baby.

Source: I've got three kids, and tried a very, very modest remodeling project when the first one was a year old, and another when the third one was a year old.



You're going to feel a real fear of missing out. Like there might not be another great deal for you ever; like this is your one chance. Don't let that fear control you! Be smart, be realistic, and don't let something that's supposed to help you live happily ever after cause you to get divorced instead.

Edit: I missed that you already replied above. Maybe this will help the next guy who finds himself in your shoes and comes to ask the question.

a project like that has to be taken down to the studs youll find you need work there first when gutted make sure the roof is good before you do anything else then is all new plumbing then elec. i have done a few old places like this over 2000 sq. ft and that many rooms you can remove some non bearing walls makeing some rooms bigger

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Don't complain, just do it

I have done several. The latest is this old dog trot house, before that was a three story Queen Anne Victorian. We sold it to the college next door because they could afford to finish it and we couldn't. The dog trot took three years, first thing that had to be done was to gut it, then we started completely over with new wiring, plumbing, insulation (was none), dry wall, put in new windows (slightly smaller than the originals so we could frame them in inside the old holes), etc. We still have lots of small projects to complete, like building closets in the master bedroom, putting down the door sills, and a lot of other little things. The only reason we could afford it was because I am a pretty handy carpenter and my grown son came to live on the property with us and help me and my husband is a retired electrician. He cannot do the work anymore as far as crawling around in the attic to run the wiring but, he has taught DS enough that he did that part with DH talking him through it. I changed the floor plan a bit as well, squeezing in a second bedroom and bath. It is not for the faint of heart and it costs more to save an old house that it would to just build a new one. You have to either have lots of money to spend on contractors (like the college I mentioned above) or you need skills. Mostly though, you have to love old houses. That is why we did this one, I refused to sell the Victorian and move into something new.

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Maggie

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