How to buy a “Fixer Up” House to be a Home.

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Thanks for posting this thread, it's been enjoyable reading it, and educational as well. We just purchased what I would consider big project, don't want to hijack your thread so I'll start a new one so that I can ask for suggestions, advise, and explain what we have gotten ourselves into…haha… We're excited about starting our new project (2nd home) and in a couple years will be our retirement home….as excited as we are, at the same time we're asking ourselves are we really going to be able to tackle on such a big project. :)
 
Thanks for posting this thread, it's been enjoyable reading it, and educational as well. We just purchased what I would consider big project, don't want to hijack your thread so I'll start a new one so that I can ask for suggestions, advise, and explain what we have gotten ourselves into…haha… We're excited about starting our new project (2nd home) and in a couple years will be our retirement home….as excited as we are, at the same time we're asking ourselves are we really going to be able to tackle on such a big project. :)


Thanks for taking a look and I somehow missed your post here until today. I have replied a few times to your thread about your upcoming project.

It’s always good to start a new thread about a large project as you have done and I’m looking forward to following your threads. The essence of this thread though is exactly what you are doing taking on a project house that’s abandoned and needs more than a little face lift and making it into something very special and very personal to you and your family. We took totally different approaches to the project but the results will be similar and that’s what counts. You are still going to be putting a lot of yourselves into your project and saving a bundle in the process and coming out the other end of the tunnel with a special place free and clear of debt or as close to it as you can.

As it pertains always come back here if you want to reflect on your project and lend inspiration to the next person wondering if it’s possible to do something like this.
:)
 
Don't know how I missed this thread. Great work Bud!

I didn't buy my first house until I was 29 years old. Before that I was a screw up for the most part. I have worked construction my whole life and grew up in a family that did everything for themselves, no job was ever hired out.

I originally started looking at homes in 2006, I had a pretty good job as a project manager for a pipeline company. I was looking to not spend over 200k (Here in CA that doesn't buy much) I was looking at a 1 bedroom condo for 220k and really it was that or a run down shack. I ended up saying forget it and not buying anything. Then 2008 rolls around and the economy takes a crap. I decided this was the time to buy. I looked all over but by then it was almost impossible to buy because the banks trusted no one or every home was a short sale or bank owned and the banks had no interest in dealing. I was on the verge of giving up again when my realtor called me one morning and said she had a house that fell out of escrow and it was a normal sale. I ran over there and took a look. The only thing about the house I liked was that it was a corner lot and had a three car garage. It was smaller than every other house I looked at but it was in brand new condition, an old lady owned it and it was only ten years old, her husband passed away and she was moving in with family.

That same week the company I was working for went out of business, I had a little bit of money saved up and starting my own company was already in the works. I would have backed out but the mortgage price was going to be a couple hundred less than I was paying for rent so I put in an offer not letting the bank know I was unemployed, i figured it was now or never, sink or swim. She immediately accepted the offer and we were in escrow. Got the keys on halloween of 2008. The house needed nothing but it was not our style at all. It had white carpet, white walls, gold fixtures. a basic tract house. For the first few years I worked like you, every day after work and every weekend. In 2011 my business was doing well and the market was still in the crapper so I decided to look for a small place up in the mountains where I grew up to flip, ended up picking up a two bed two bath home for 66 grand. A year later my mother passed away and I inherited her house also in the mountains. Now for the last six years all I have really done is remodel these three homes.

My current home is now at about 95% done and the two mountain homes are at about 80%. Now after the six years of work on this home that I really had desire on buying I love it, love the neighborhood and everything about it. Sadly we have outgrown and are currently in the process of looking at a new home to start over in, this time with property. My original plan was to do the starter home thing and and sell them to put money towards the next home and at this point I have enough equity I could probably pay off half the next home but we have decided to hold onto all of them for rentals. Hoping to get them paid off and have an early retirement if possible.
 
Chris,

Like your story too, it is amazing how things turn out. Sorry about your Mom's passing, but not even knowing you or her I'm sure she's looking down on you very proudly. Sounds like you have a plan and if you can swing it that's great, early retirement is always great! You'll need it after all the renovations of three houses anyway! haha
 
how I built a deck, First, My wife told me to...and being the correctly trained/domesticated husband I am. my only questions were, how big? do I get new tools?

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attaches to the front deck. making it a wrap around 8x40/8x50 770 sq ft
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A few months ago I was worrying about the snow load on my old garage and it made it thru the winter. This building was owner built and made out of whatever he could scrounge up for free. It isn’t the best but a lot better than nothing so the plan is to fix it up. I ran into an Amish man that does barn roofs and asked him to take a look at it. He first wanted to jack it up to take a couple inches of bow out of the one side but I told him I feared things popping apart as it has taken a deep set over time. I suggested shimming the purlins he places across the roof to attach the tin to and he said no problem in doing that. He figured the job and called in the order and said I would have to pay for the material and he would build the roof. The material was steel sheets, ridge and trim, plus a big pile of 2x, 50 lbs of nails and 20 lbs of screws. The Amish don’t like giving a price in advance but said he would build the roof for $250 about.

Coming from his place to mine by horse is about 30 minutes and we had some bad weather so he didn’t get started till 9:00 am by 9:30 he had a 2x6 down each end and string lines pulled across every 24” to set his plane and was slamming down 2x4’s with blocking under them nailing it all down into the rafters tapping the roof to find the rafter location. I can’t find one nail that missed. He fell behind schedule when it poured for an hour and a half but by 8:00 at night he had all the steel up except the end caps and the ridge. He came back the next morning and had that on in about an hour.

I asked him what I owed him and he said oh I don’t know how about a million. And said what did I tell you. I told him he said $250 and he said well that would be good then. I gave him the 250 and said how about you take the leftover 30lbs of nails as a tip.
So $1050 for material $250 labor, $1300 for a 20x40 roof job. The hardest part was watching someone else have all the fun, actually I think I could get used to that.

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Looks nice. Beautiful horse there. Love the blue color of the exterior walls.
I'm glad you found someone who did a good job and stuck to his price. Not a bad price at all.

Frodo, I had missed those images of your deck. It's beautiful. I sometimes entertain the idea of adding a covered deck in my yard where the house sort of makes an L shape, but I think the roof would be tricky. I like the door you chose. Porch swing is a nice touch. I used to have one before the tenants moved in. It was gone when we moved back.
 
He earned every penny of that money. Wish we had people like that out here.
 
He had a small plastic bucket full of oats he brought along and he was getting the oats out for the horse and I asked him how many miles to bucket he got. He laughed and said he never checked his mileage. Then he said the good thing was the other day he ran out of fuel but still made it another 10 miles on empty. Pointing at my truck he asked if I could do that?

He did something I haven’t seen done and didn’t know you could even do. When trimming the steel roofing (in either direction) he would make a snip about an inch long and then grab the piece (scrap) and tear it right along the chalk line. Even did it going against the corrugations.
 
Thats because he is as strong as an ox, you and I couldn't even try that.
 
Does he get a straight edge doing that?

Straight enough. With roofing the cut edges get covered with trim. He was snapping a line and ripping it very close to his line by pulling one way or the other if it started to run off. I would say keeping it within a quarter inch was pretty easy.
 
Wow, that's some impressive hand strength-- but its not surprising given the way the Amish work. Sometimes I'm sad when I think about how some of the good ways of building things are going away and not enough people are learning how to do things.
 
Well I haven’t posted to this thread in 6 months. Once we got the hot tub on the deck I lost a lot of motivation to do projects on the house. Once fall hit and the cold rains came star gazing wasn’t as much fun with cold rain hitting you in the face. So I rigged a hillbilly tarp up over the tub and we missed the stars but liked the protection. That worked pretty good until we got that 4 inches of snow and I woke up to my tarp straining to the max. So last weekend I decided to channel my inner Mexican and build a pergola. I have been to Mexico and have also eaten at enough Mexican places to get a bit of a flair for the primitive building practices and look. So what you have is a northern Yankee that’s cheap and or frugal building his take on a covered pergola. Total cost of the project was under $30 as the wood was reclaimed from the deck I tore down and the tin for the roof was the 52” wide steel ring that went around the 24’ above ground pool that was part of the deal I had to remove to get the lumber. Most of the cost was deck screws. The rest of the tin went on the back wall of my shed for siding. Waste not want not. The original theme of the deck my idea was to be rustic and northern, thus the tree cut out on the gate. Her idea was tropical thus the palm trees cutout on the back wall. The pergola is following along with her wants. I haven’t trimmed the ends of the rusty tin yet and my plan was to paint it but it looks more original with the rust spots so I might not. Start to finish I have about 8 hours in it. If you look close there are screw in eyes and I cut tarps to make covers for the really cold times should they be needed.

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Looks great! I wish more people would use recycled materials. I built most of my old back yard from left overs and old torn down stuff.
 
Thanks guys, I’m hoping to spend a lot of time out there this winter. Most people don’t want to use materials that have some nail holes and such but I like it adds to the look. When I talked to the guy that had the deck he said he had a lot of replies most said looks like too much work and others wanted to cherry pick the good material and leave him with a bigger mess. I told him I would take it down and clean it up rake clean and all he would need to do is put grass seed down. He dropped his price to zero at that point and I kept up my end of the deal. It did take a week of going straight there after work and working till dark though and part of a weekend. So maybe 40 hours of time.

I also wish more people would reuse products pretty much except for 2 ceiling fans, a hot tub drywall, pex plumbing and a little wire the rest of the remodel came from sales or Craigslist.

She just wasn’t into any of the nice used hot tubs I found on Craigslist. I told her the fraternity boys kept their tub nice :hide: and she said no way and off we went shopping for new. :)
 
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