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Honeybee42

New Member
Joined
Jul 24, 2021
Messages
2
Reaction score
2
Location
southern IL
I live in a house which was once my grandparents', and was built sometime before 1938 (that was the year my great-grandfather died, and he was involved in the construction). As money permits, I'm going to be re-doing things, so this will be a project going on for quite awhile, and involving just about everything inside/outside.

I live in southern IL (much closer to Kentucky than Chicago), and actually came home from the hospital to the house I now live in.
 
:welcome: To the forum.

As you do projects feel free to ask questions and post threads showing us what you have done. Old homes are great I have owned a couple.
 
I love older houses! I did nothing but work on them for 15 years, I'D drive up in the yard and all I can hear is ching, ching, show me the money!
Start at the top! What condition is the roof in?
Next is the plumbing, if it's old steel supply's and cast iron drains I would have gotten a price to replace it before buying it!
A house that old likely has no insulation in the walls, old single pane windows that need to be replaced.
Way under sized incoming wiring, under sized main panel.
Just a guess but that old a home may have all the lights and outlets on the same circuit, not great idea to meet moden codes.
 
As a counter to #joecaption welcome and he is 100% correct I will describe my situation.



If you can do some or all of the work yourself and don’t view your time as money rather a hobby you enjoy doing there is nothing like the charm of an older home.



Our house was built around 1880 so a good bit older. We paid $24K cash and our total annual taxes are $350 where our neighbors in new homes are all around $2-3K, so in 20 years that’s $40-60K. The roof wasn’t great but good enough for a few years so we held off, the electrical was upgraded to 200a but a lot of the wiring I redid. The supply plumbing was shot but the old cast iron looks like the day it was put in so I replaced all the supply with PEX. We bought a used kitchen on CL that was in great condition along with used flooring for the kitchen. We gutted most of the rest did new drywall where needed replaced and added a few windows and doors most of that came from CL sanded hardwood floors. Got a pool deck off CL and used the wood to build a large hot tub deck. Hired the Amish to put a new steel roof on garage and house. We lived in the house after about 3 months of working on it. The water heater lasted 6 years the original furnace is still going strong. Our gas and electric bills are as low as our neighbors.



All in we have under $50k one year of a lot of work and four years of projects here and there and now we have a nice place paid in full never paid a penny in interest and had fun in the process. We even built one room that is our front projection home theater where we watch sports and movies and some TV on a 110” screen.



We are in a small quaint town on a nice river great neighbors a new brewery down the street.

You should know what you are getting into but all old homes are not the money pit.
 
Well, I didn't buy the house (inherited), so there's at least that. But the list of things seems to grow in almost mouse-and-cookie fashion.
 
Free is always good. Make your list and apply some logic to the order even though it is very tempting to go after the pretty items first. Myself when I was younger I was always high on ambition and low on funding, so while I was trying to save up for something I put my efforts into the stuff that didn’t cost a lot like demo. You may want a new kitchen but don’t demo the old till you know you got the new one covered and there is nothing wrong with staging and saying I’m going to paint the old kitchen make it look better and then in 5 years replace the kitchen. Without a doubt if the roof is bad that’s where you start.
 
Not paying rent or making house payments is nice too. There's prolly not very many of us on these forums.
 
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