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

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@zannej It was a silver maple and they grow these double and triple trunks that start to rot in the center. I never liked the tree and the neighbor whose tree it was loved it and she remembered climbing it as a kid. They did take off a bunch of big limbs on our side and even had the tree cabled to try and save it. The shade was nice and I hated the leaves in the fall.


The insurance guy came the next day and all that was left of the tree was some sawdust on the grass. He said he never saw a homeowner remove one that fast. And just asked our hours and paid 20 bucks per hour and added in what one dump truck load to haul away would cost. So was very fair on the cleanup I thought. He went thru and figured out the cost of removal and a new pergola and some replacement of siding and roofing and to rebuild the full rail on the side of the deck.


I used a couple come a longs and an auto floor jack and jacked and pulled it back in place. I replaced the bad broken wood and re-blocked and lagged and bolted everything square and plumb. We had two days in the 90s was perfect for fixing it up.


Scrubbed the siding and its good enough so is the bent tin on the roof its hardly noticeable.


If it stops raining in the next few day I will take a pic of the after repairs. I only have a couple hundred bucks in the repairs but quite a bit of free labor on our part.


Just glad it missed the main house and the roof protected the tub and no one was hurt.


As a side note the neighbor whose tree hit me just got a new roll out awning because his was 9’ and he wanted 12’. We got to talking about the loss of shade and he said I bet my old awning would fit the end of the deck. My poles are exactly 9’ so I guess I have a sunsetter to install.
 
Bud, I'm so happy to hear it all worked out for you. I can understand the neighbor wanting to keep the tree for nostalgia. I have a tree in my yard that I didn't want cut down bc I used to climb it when I was a kid. My father respected my wishes and one day the roll bar on his tractor bumped a branch on it-- branch came down on him, knocked him from his tractor, and fractured some of his vertebrae. If I'd been able to predict that, I would have annihilated that tree before it could happen.
Trees hollowing out on the inside is what happened with our 300-yr-old water oak.
Excellent that you got a new awning out of it. It sounds like you've got a good neighbor. I'm also impressed that you and your neighbor were able to clear the debris yourselves.
 
Thanks @zannej

I can’t brag enough how good that HF pole saw works. With a regular chainsaw doing limbing you have to get right in there close and climb over all the rubble. Lots of chance for a bent limb to get you or as the weight changes something dropping on you. With this thing you have the reach advantage and I would start at the end of a limb and lob it off 3’ at a time. the bar is about 6” long and it zips right thru 6” limbs. I cut some 10” with it going from both sides. Just don’t get the bar pinched.


The neighbors are a great family and we help each other out a lot. He has a small Kabota tractor with a bucket and a trailer. There is a woods close where we dump leaves , branches ect. Then the neighbor down the road heats so he pitched in to get the big stuff. He offered to do the limbing also but I didn’t want someone that wasn’t a property owner getting hurt once it was all on the ground I felt safe with him working.


You are right trees sometimes become our friends and people planting them never think about how big they will someday get.
 
Ah, it's a pole saw then, Bud? I think I have one in a box somewhere, but my arms are rather weak so I have trouble holding it up. My lower body strength is better than my upper body strength.
Sounds like you've got a good neighborhood with people willing to pitch in. Smart move on making sure non-property owners wouldn't get hurt.

On the tree planting, I still remember a now late friend complaining about the tree his wife planted that had roots disrupting stuff underground. She thought it was a flower bush at the time she planted it and didn't realize it was a tree. Fifty years later it was causing problems and he was ragging her about it. I was like "It was 50 years ago! Lay off!" I do think he was half-kidding though.
 
@zannej No upper body strength required The saw I got is electric. Well it requires a little upper body strength to hold it up there but nothing like those saw blade on a pole things. Here is a link. It goes on sale for around 60 bucks or you use the 20% off that they always offer in the flyer.


https://www.harborfreight.com/95-In-7-Amp-Electric-Pole-Saw-63190.html
Thanks! That is very similar to the kind I have. I tried using it but I had a hard time holding it upright and getting it to go where I want it to go. I'm horribly out-of-shape. LOL. It's something I need to work on.
 
Well DIY costs on the deck repair and cleanup was about 100 bucks. The majority of the vinyl siding damage scrubbed off and the couple little dents in it are on the side no one ever looks at so they are good enough. The steel roof and gable trim is a little wrinkled on the one edge but nothing that has to be replaced as it is still doing its job.


So I’m calling the project done except I was planning on replacing the gutter facing the deck all summer and the tree finished it off so I guess I will try and do that before winter. Deck is all fairly plumb and level again. So I can go back to sitting on it and enjoying retirement.
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Looks great, Bud! Hope you get some time to relax and enjoy the hot tub now.
 
aug2018a.JPG sept2008a.JPG Riverside 21.JPG Riverside brew.JPG Riverside brewa.JPG Was looking on google street view and they came down our road in Aug a month before the tree came down and smashed the deck. They have a feature that reverts to the older version also. I captured two shots of our little place (left) and the neighbors 2008-20018. We bought the place 5 years ago so if anything it was a little worse before it got better. Just thought it was interesting how 10 years makes a difference.


The really odd thing as I was driving around town in virtual reality the Riverside Inn was still prior to the fire that destroyed it and the same piece of railing I salvaged after the fire and turned into our front porch gate shows up in both street views. It is the far left railing on the side porch of the inn. The fire trucks poured water on the fire for close to 24 hours to keep it down and only that small corner of rail made it through with just charring on the backside.


A young couple bought the property and moved a 150 year old timber frame barn to the sight and it will be a brewery. Here is what it looks like now.
 
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Bud, that is so cool! They removed some of the archive street view footage from my area- so sadly the picture of old man Murphy in his driveway is gone, but I took a screenshot of it when it was still there & sent it to his family after he passed away.
Street view of my old neighborhood in Singapore shows they tore my apartment building down & built a new fugly building in it's place. My old house in Virginia had a side driveway/garage added & a turret up higher. My old house in California no longer has the plum tree out front & from satellite view the play house, seesaw, and swingset are gone. There are no street view pics of my current home bc they probably heard banjos & turned around. :p
I remember when we first discovered google earth (aka google maps) & I showed it to my father. He used it to look at the house he was born in as well as his school & neighborhood.
Have you had a chance to use the hot tub yet?
 
Bud, that is so cool! They removed some of the archive street view footage from my area- so sadly the picture of old man Murphy in his driveway is gone, but I took a screenshot of it when it was still there & sent it to his family after he passed away.
Street view of my old neighborhood in Singapore shows they tore my apartment building down & built a new fugly building in it's place. My old house in Virginia had a side driveway/garage added & a turret up higher. My old house in California no longer has the plum tree out front & from satellite view the play house, seesaw, and swingset are gone. There are no street view pics of my current home bc they probably heard banjos & turned around. :p
I remember when we first discovered google earth (aka google maps) & I showed it to my father. He used it to look at the house he was born in as well as his school & neighborhood.
Have you had a chance to use the hot tub yet?


Zannej, I sometime wonder how many people cruse around google street view looking at places they used to live. The other day when we were doing this I went up the road to her grandpa’s house and there he was on his cub cadet mowing the front yard. We both got a good laugh and captured the pic.


I’m sure you have seen the movie Lion https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3741834/

It is on netflix now. If not or for others reading it should be on your list to see. It picks up on the idea of using google earth as a way to find your past.


I know a guy that plows snow and he gives quotes now over the phone from google earth. People freak out when he asks them if he can pile the snow by the big tree that’s in front of the shed and tells them how long and wide their parking area is.


Oh we were using the hot tub within a couple days of the tree falling. I had the roof held up with cables and a jack before I replaced the beam and I was in it. I’m thankful the tree fell before winter and I was able to get it fixed during good weather.
 
I imagine a lot of people use google earth for looking at where the used to live or places they frequented. I'd never heard of the "Lion" movie before. I don't get Netflix. Due to bandwidth restrictions we can't really stream movies or TV shows frequently enough to justify it. Plus our ISP throttles videos in particular.

That's cool about the guy using google earth to scope out people's houses. It's not very accurate for addresses in my area-- usually a few houses off. At worst it's been a whole half mile off.

Glad the tub has been put to good use. My old jacuzzi is just sitting in the back yard literally falling apart. Too heavy to move.
 
I imagine a lot of people use google earth for looking at where the used to live or places they frequented. I'd never heard of the "Lion" movie before. I don't get Netflix. Due to bandwidth restrictions we can't really stream movies or TV shows frequently enough to justify it. Plus our ISP throttles videos in particular.

That's cool about the guy using google earth to scope out people's houses. It's not very accurate for addresses in my area-- usually a few houses off. At worst it's been a whole half mile off.

Glad the tub has been put to good use. My old jacuzzi is just sitting in the back yard literally falling apart. Too heavy to move.


Red Box and other rentals should have the movie Lion on the shelf or in the box. It’s a good movie and it being a true story makes it even more amazing. We sometimes take out American lifestyle as rough and when we compare it to others we know even the poorest among us don’t have it too bad.


As to google and in some ways all the internet most of the time I don’t have a clue how they do it. Just to be able to search is still as amazing today for me as the first time I did it.
 
Bud, I may just buy it on Amazon if it's available because it sounds good.

The search features are amazing now, although I do miss some of the boolean searches that were available with earlier search engines like Infoseek. Lycos wasn't bad, but Infoseek actually let you exclude things from searches, you could also prioritize certain words or make it so it would do complete phrases rather than just words.

To keep this even slightly on topic, my friend is still working on fixing up his late grandmother's old house- the one that had turned in to a crack den over the last decade. He has a fence along the back to keep out trespassers (and to stop the nearby trailer park from continuing to rent space on his lot out to people w/o his permission). He's no longer getting notices about the junk on his porch from the city bc he knows the mayor & made a call about the people next to him calling in complaints to harass him. The place was *much* worse before he started working on it. Since the roof in the kitchen is leaking so badly and the kitchen is tiny, he cut his living room in half and moved the kitchen forward. Got a new stove and ran some 6/4 wire to it. He's going to order flooring after his next paycheck. Got carpet and pad in the living room. He still needs to put up doors, fix the roof, turn the old kitchen in to a pantry, put in cabinets, and replace the front door. The bathroom still needs something other than plywood flooring. But, it's making progress.
 
Well after the tree fell on the hot tub deck and smashed my covered pergola (see post 96) things were never quite right.


The Pergola got fixed and the roof I had put on it always leaked a little more after the tree. The roof was made from the 54” high by 90’ long piece of sheet steel from the pool I tore down for the guy to get the wood to build the deck (see post 9).


I had some tin left over from the Amish roof jobs and I made a little bridge between the house and the pergola like a wide gutter to feed into the gutter so I wont get wet for the foot between the door and the tub along with snow dumping on me at that spot also. I was going to rip the swimming pool tin off and put up metal roofing to match the house but that seemed like a lot of work and being flat I didn’t know how well that would work.


So I got to looking and Amazon had EPDM rubber roofing .045 thick Firestone and I could buy a 10’x10’ piece for $92 free shipping. When it came it was actually 10x12 all folded up in a box weighing about 40 pounds.


Please roofing experts I know I didn’t install it correctly its just a rain cover so I did my best without breaking too many of the doctors rules about climbing ladders and walking around on shaky roofs. I nailed it off on 3 sides with ring shank plastic cap nails and the third side I have held down temporarily with bricks until the neighbor gets done borrowing my extension ladder. I left it long about 5” on the end where I put the free sunsetter (see post 109) and it overlaps and keeps that crack dry now. I also added a little shed roof off the backside to keep water from dripping on me when I’m soaking.


For anyone building a shed or fixing a shed roof you can’t beat this material for the DIY home owner compared to rolled roofing that doesn’t hold up.


We have 10 days of rain in the forecast and so far its working well.
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Also, if you have any left over membrane, cut a strip and lay it under the narrow metal, round the corners on the metal where it lays on the rubber.
 
Bud, you know the old saying... "Good enough for who it's for"


Is the sunsetter over or under the epdm?


It is under it a couple inches of overhang. I have been testing it today as its been raining for 24 hours. I used to get drips at the sunsetter now the water drips out on it and runs down.

Yep we used to say good enough for the girls we go with. Now I guess that's not PC.
 

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