Fixer Upper

Has anyone here ever done a complete renovation to a house? We have been looking, and decided that to remain in our budget we would need to buy a house and just strip it down to the bones and rebuild. Does anyone have any advice about this? We're starting to look next week.

Re: Fixer Upper

My friend’s husband and his dad gutted their house, right down to the beams. Rewired the electric in the house, knocked down every last wall and redid the plumbing. They re-did EVERYTHING! it’s a HUGE task that costs a LOT of money. if you’re up to it and have the time, energy & money, go for it.

For me personally, houses here are already SO expensive. Unless I was able to buy a house for peanuts, I couldn’t afford all that work.

Re: Fixer Upper

WE did, we could only afford a handyman special.

WE made sure it fine structurally but everything else had to be redone.

So far we have been in a year, the first 2 months while we lived in our apt we gutted the entire first floor. Put in a new bathroom, new sheetrock, painted, added trim and redid the wood floors. We added Central Air and Heat during the intitial rip out.

We then moved in. Since then, dh is working on the basement as soon as that is finished we will gut the kitchen

and then work on the outside. It can be agrevating but it can be done. After the intital work was done we are just working on furnishing one room at a time.

WE also updated all the electric,

Dont know what you are looking for specifically

Message edited 5/22/2006 1:24:45 PM.

Re: Fixer Upper

Re: Fixer Upper

We did. We bought a small starter house that was a fixer-upper. The bones were good, but we did a lot of work to the inside. We gutted the kitchen and built a new one, took down the wall between the kitchen and dining room, built a den and a mudroom, etc. We did most of the work ourselves, so we saved a lot of money. You can see the before and after pictures here:

Basement

Home remodel

FM me if you have questions

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We did this. We bought a house that was structurally good, but very very ugly! We reipped down all the wood panelling and sheetrock in every room. We gutted the bathroom and kitchen, knocked some walls down, replaced all windows, etc. This year we did the roof and siding.
Out house is now done exactly the way we want it and everything is new. If we add up all the money we spent, we are still ahead of the game with comps in the neighborhood.
Lucky for us, we have a lot of skilled friends and family members... 2 electiricane, a plumber, 2 of my uncles own their won construction business, and lots of people for labor. With their help we saved so much money.
Good Luck!

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We did. We had a contractor and we got 95% of the work done in 4 months. My FIL is a kitchen designer so we used his main contractor and contacts.

Well worth the money we spent as we have essentially a brand new custom house. We are still a head of the game with comps in the neighborhood. My house appriased at 200K more than we paid for it and we put about 100K into the project... it seriously needed EVERYTHING.

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We bought our house during the summer of 2005 when the prices of houses were insane. We actually got a really good deal. Luckily for us we have a lot of hand people in the family and we also had our friends help out too. That saved us a lot of money, since we only had to pay for supplies.

Our house was move in condition, but we didnt like the closed in feeling of the original layout in a levitt cape.

We decided to knock down the wall that seperated the living room and the dining room, blow out the rear wall so we could put in sliding glass doors, and make two closets into one big one.

Other than the above we redid the bathroom, ripped up all the New carpeting the seller put down and 4 layers of tile plus the asbestos underneath on the first floor. We put down Laminate wood flooring.....

We did some work in the kitchen, moving things around and replaced the countertop. All the doors and trim in the house were redone too....We then painted the entire inside of the house - Did crown moulding, chair rail moulding and box moulding in the dining room.

Now we are concentrating on the exterior of the house. We ripped all the bushes out in front of the house last week and we went to Cheap sams this weekend to buy bushes and flowers.

We bought a new front door and we are also getting a storm door too. That should be installed in June.

We are waiting on the brick guy to call us to give us an estimate on having a brick walkway, and brick paveers around the flower beds done.

We are having our Deck installed First week of June

And we also have to have 5 to 6 trees removed from the back yard so we could have our fence installed....

Even though our house didnt need a full renovation, we defenitely did a lot of work to it and we love it. Next step will be to do a full dormer, and make the garage a den or we will move......But that wont be 5 years or so.

Scott

Message edited 5/23/2006 7:24:20 AM.

Re: Fixer Upper

We are. I didn't want to at all- we are not the handy type, but had to due to the crazy market. At the get go, We are pulling up all the carpet in the house (all over the house!), sanding and lightening all the hardwood floors, adding in recessed lighting (there is none in the house!), repainting the entire house, and gutting both bathrooms. We are adding crown molding too and eventually our 5 year plan is to add a dormer master bedroom suite, landscaping, and new windows. It is disappointing because I am not sure we'll come out "ahead of the comps", but at least the house will be mine and that will be that...

eta: we also are staining the outside immediately, sanding, powerwashing and re-staining deck and had the current owners resurface the driveway.

Message edited 5/23/2006 7:47:46 AM.

Re: Fixer Upper

We also did, although it wasn't really planned.

We unfortunately bought at the height of the market (last summer), and had planned on doing a bunch of renovations, BUT we wound up gutting the whole house down to the beams b/c of a wallpaper/mothball smell issue

New sheetrock, insulation, lighting, heating and CAC, hot water tank, floors, kitchen (appliances, cabinets, floors, everything), doors, moulding, closets...The only thing we did not gut was the bathroom b/c that was new.

Now we are working on the outside, new driveway, paver walkways, paint, landscaping...next year patio, stoop and fence, the year after siding and windows...But, when we are done it will be ALL NEW!

A never ending project!!!

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we bought an as is property at way below market value in may 04. My area actually has appreciated quite a bit since then & now leveled off.
Our house had no sheetrock, trim, interior doors, electrical, heating, flooring and a ton of other stuff wrong when we bought it. We also gutted the kitchen & two bathrooms-took down walls & finished the basement & did a ton of outdoor stuff.
It literally needed everything just for us to get the mortgage. The only plus was most of it was gutted already. We made a deal with the seller to let us renovate before closing ( long story), so we had to get everything on the list the mortgage co provided within 2 months-all while working full time The other important thing though is my DH is a carpenter by trade & I'm very handy. The two of us did every single thing except the main electrical panel & heating system.
We did it & here we are-there hasn't been a house SOLD in my neighborhood for less than 125k over what we paid including renovations in the last two years.
search for a post called "before & after" and you'll see pics of the work a lot of us did on our homes.
My only words of advice are its MUCH harder than it looks especially if you'll be living there. The cost of materials is very high right now & sometimes things go wrong.
What areas are you looking in & have seen homes in that range?

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We bought a house that was in "diamond conditon" as the listing said but wound up gutting and redoing everything. My hubby did all of the renovations himself which saved us tons of money. We could have never afforded to hire a contractor to renovate. Its a PITA to live in dust and debris. Even with room barriered off. I don't regret it but I never want to do it again!

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Thank god we didnt live in the house when we were doing the renovations - with all the dust and not having a bathroom - It would of been impossible to live there

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We did this. Actually our house is a 2bedroom, 1 bath and my husband is doing it pretty much by himself, except when I hire people (ie, the plumber, the landscaper and the roofer) and the livingroom is done, the kitchen is in the middle of being moved and the room that was the kitchen is becoming the diningroom. I hate living through this, but I cant wait until its done so we can sell it and buy a bigger house.

Re: Fixer Upper

Posted by KellyFG

we bought an as is property at way below market value in may 04. My area actually has appreciated quite a bit since then & now leveled off.
Our house had no sheetrock, trim, interior doors, electrical, heating, flooring and a ton of other stuff wrong when we bought it. We also gutted the kitchen & two bathrooms-took down walls & finished the basement & did a ton of outdoor stuff.
It literally needed everything just for us to get the mortgage. The only plus was most of it was gutted already. We made a deal with the seller to let us renovate before closing ( long story), so we had to get everything on the list the mortgage co provided within 2 months-all while working full time The other important thing though is my DH is a carpenter by trade & I'm very handy. The two of us did every single thing except the main electrical panel & heating system.
We did it & here we are-there hasn't been a house SOLD in my neighborhood for less than 125k over what we paid including renovations in the last two years.
search for a post called "before & after" and you'll see pics of the work a lot of us did on our homes.
My only words of advice are its MUCH harder than it looks especially if you'll be living there. The cost of materials is very high right now & sometimes things go wrong.
What areas are you looking in & have seen homes in that range?

Re: Fixer Upper

Stephanie-we are in Lake Panamoka-two minutes from baiting hollow. We have a private lake & beaches. Are the homes you're looking at zoned for year round living? I know there is one section(it might be in wading river) that you can only live in seasonally. There are "move in ready" cottages in my neighborhood for under 300.
Good luck with your decision!
Kelly

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We plan on purchasing a fixer upper. My Dad is a handy man and DH has learned a thing or two from him, plus my Dad's friends are pretty handy as well so this is the route we are heading to. I prefer to move into a house that we don't have to do work on but with the insane prices in LI and what we can afford, we don't have much of an alternative.

Re: Fixer Upper