I found a good one in my neighborhood that I can sort of afford. With how rents are going up, I’d rather be locked in and have a chance of not being rent-burdened someday. Overall, it’s in good shape with a good foundation, roof, and utilities. However the current owner was going at it silly and the whole thing is covered in half-started DIY projects.
My friend who is a builder said that actually it’s in great shape, it’s just going to be a lot of work to clean up the half projects and finish up with the drywall and so on. She guessed it would be 300 hours of work for her or about 1000 for me since I have a lot more to learn. She’s offered to work together with me at a discount to teach me how to do things myself/do work-trade where I do grunt work at her sites and she does more specialized labor for me.
I think I wouldn’t mind living somewhere jank for a few years as I fixed it, but I am seeking the perspective of people who have done it before. What were your regrets and what do you wish you had known going in?
My union has been coming through for us these past years so I can afford an okay down payment and to get some good inspections.
Overall, I feel mixed. On one hand, this feels like a real chance at stability but on the other it might be saddling myself with more work than I can chew. With each year that passes, my capacity for projects and things outside work wanes and I am a bit worried about the trade-off with having such a big ongoing project and the mental load of it being always around me.
Also for reference, I am used to doing manual labor just not building trades.
So yeah.
Also I’m excited because there is a really big and easy to access attic that can become a dance hall or a jam room. Like it was enough room to have 15 people dancing comfortably up there. Granted that’s only really gonna be comfortable in the Spring and Fall months although if we get really moving the Winter could be doable.
If its only a cosmetic uplift it sounds like a lot of fun and probably worth it if you have the means. If the house had more structural issues or poor/broken utilities i wouldn’t touch it.
Just be careful not to add to the half done DIY projects with your own half done DIY projects haha
o7 its going to be one room at a time. There’s one bedroom that’s mostly done. Getting the stuff I def need pros for first done, then will do that, make the extra kitchen workable, and make sure one bathroom is functional and pleasant even if not in the end state. Then I can focus on starting the dream home components with the big community spaces.
Can you come do my house afterward? :D
:p silly! I’m probably going to be completely burnt out when I’m done in a few years.
I did with my house. I bought an absolute piece of shit for dirt prices. Was a former trap house. I roofed it. I re wired it. I re insulated it. I gutted the house down to the studs and re-rocked and insulated everything a room at a time. New paint. New siding. 80 foot of below slab tunneling for New drains and water lines. New electric panel w service capacity upgrades.
I’m still doing stuff to my house, 10 years later, but it’s minor things like removing bad Sheetrock texture, repaint, fixing appliances etc.
Bought the house for 38k. I’d have to look in my filing cabinet and spend a week tallying receipt totals but I think it was another 40-50k over the first five years. I’d work 10’s, then come home and work another 4-6 hours a day. Every week day. Then nearly all weekend, every weekend. For the first twoish years.
Everything in this home, probably 75% was put here by me. Only things original to it are portions of the framing and the slab. Everything else was me.
I don’t think I’ll undertake something like this ever again. But, it served me well. I have a construction background (10 years concrete work in my youth, career plumber for longer than I can remember now) so a lot of it was easier for me than someone without the background. I feel well prepared to tackle just about anything my home throws at me, on my own. I’m thankful for that. But I don’t wanna do it again either.
Learning how to do DIY sharpened my mind a lot. It’s very good for teaching the proper balance between action and planning.
Add up how many hours you think you’ll have free over the next couple of years to work on the project. Double it since you have no idea what you’re doing. If you can live in it for that long while you work on it for half of your free time, go for it.
With a friend who can help teach you how to do stuff, you’re really in a good spot. Do make sure an inspector checks check all the important and/or expensive stuff (structural, plumbing, electrical, environmental hazards).
Can you live comfortably in a portion of the house that you haven’t fixed? It’ll be a lot easier to get through if, when you’re done for the day, you can hide in your one completely finished bedroom. (And the kitchen and bathroom function.)
This is definitely possible! It was a former duplex.
a cold dance room sounds perfect to me, you get 15 people in there and it won’t matter, you’ll all still be warm, as long as its not completely freezing
Just throwing this out there - get an inspection for things like radon, gas, roof, etc. not saying your friend doesn’t know what they’re talking about - they sound like they do - but house inspections aren’t crazy expensive and they’ll look at literally everything.
Oh, and get the sewer scoped to the street. Hidden things like that can turn into massive money sucks.
My sibling had to have the front lawn excavated because there were roots in the sewer line less than a year after they bought their first house.
If you enjoy working with your hands and tinkering with stuff DIY isn’t even work really but a great hobby. Especially now with youtube there’s literally nothing you can’t do with some patience. As long as you don’t go cutting through structural members or wiring when you don’t know what you’re doing it’s pretty much impossible to fuck things up in a way that isn’t fixable.
Most contractors are unreliable dipshits who do a crap job anyway so not only will you be saving money you’ll be doing a better job. Apologies to any contractors present this is just my experience. Having said that a good contractor is a homeowner’s best friend but they are HARD to find.
The one catch I will say is doing all of these projects takes tools. Usually you need a tool for a specific job that you would hire a contractor for, and the way I look at it is I would rather spend the money on a tool and the time to learn what I need to do than to give my money to a contractor. Bc your friend is a builder you might even be able to borrow tools.
My one regret, if you even want to call it that, is buying a REALLY old house. It’s beautiful but shit is breaking like every week. It’s truly a money pit. If your place is stick framed and built with modern materials I say go for it.
Finally I want to touch on the financial aspect of homeownership. You often see these rent vs buy calculators or whatever that show the return on a real estate investment vs. putting that money in the market or whatever and are like see renting is better for some people or whatever. This is a false dichotomy. You have to spend money for a place to live, and the rate of return on rent is -100%. Also, rents over the past five years have gone up a shitload, but my fixed rate mortgage has gone up zero. From a financial standpoint home ownership is pretty much the closest thing to a no brainer there is, and many times the only way to get a leg up on the property ladder is buying into a special situation like the one you are describing.
Like what kind of half hearted diy projects, if you’re in reasonable shape and work doesn’t suck up most of your energy it’s probably worth it. Learning how to maintain/update a home if your friend isn’t around in the future is a real boon that most homeowners never bother with and end up shelling out stacks of cash for, and you’re adding a lot of value to the property if you ever decide to sell it.
You’ll have a lot of Big Ideas at first. Then reality sets in. It’s a slog but it’s worth it when you can be proud of yourself and improve your home. You’ll be doing it forever. Contractors are awful though because they are be your own Boss types and don’t like to be told anything. They always treat you like children because you’re not a boomer. If you can do it yourself definitely try before calling somebody.
Food for thought : consult a reputable framer or engineer before loading up an attic space with people and things. They are used as storage but not always intended to be load bearing.
This is a great point!
I think it is a great idea, if the bones of the house are solid (and, from what you said it sounds like they are), and if you are serious about putting in those hours and labor.
A lot of people think they are, but it can be hard to translate ‘off hours at home’ into ‘additional unpaid labor hours’ mentally sometimes. I work construction (electrical), and I’ve seen very skilled and active workers leave their homes full of half finished projects like the house you’re looking at is, just because of the mental and physical toll it takes go from work, back home to do more work.
But it can and will save you a lot of money to do it yourself, or even mostly yourself, with the added upside of being able to sculpt you home to your preferences, and to be familiar with what is where in case of doing later repairs or renovations down the road.
If you need any electrical advice, feel free to shoot me a DM. Hopefully you won’t need to do more than splice and pull romex or maybe cat5, which should be pretty simple.
Honestly sounds like a great idea, particularly if you have the pay and the spare hours (a union classic) to actually put into the place.
You’ve got this. None of the work is rocket surgery. I worked as an electrician for 15 years and spent 2 or 3 years on a remodeling crew doing a little of everything. As long as the bones are good, as your friend has told you, you should be fine. Just take your time.
I lived in a lot of different houses growing up and we always renovated them. I say fuckin send it. Some of my best childhood memories are helping my dad hang sheetrock or rip up carpet.
I did something like this. some days after work sucked. like a week straight of stopping by the hardware store on the way home from work and doing shit while my kitchen was unusable/draped in plastic. but it is so worth it to make a place yours, to have it laid out how you want functionally.
I say, if the critical parts “the bones” of the structure are good and it’s just bullshit like replacing fixtures, aesthetic b.s., and putting in new components: go for it.
I spent a lot of effort on my kitchen and got it 90% how I wanted, and now I love being in it, cooking, hanging out with friends, etc. somewhat by surprise, I’m moving to another state for work stuff in the next months and will have to sell it and get a new place, which is heartbreaking, but I will easily get back what I put in, material and labor wise, so that numbs the sting a little.
owning a house that you work on is very gratifying. sometimes you can bang out a little job, like sturdy shelving in a utility space, over a weekend at a chill pace and it drastically improves your quality of life.
