|
Here's the original thread that got archived because I neglected it for too long: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3501210 Long story short, my (now) husband and I bought a house together in 2012 for very cheap back when the housing market was in the toilet. It needed a lot of work, but we were young and ambitious, and figured we could live in it, save a ton of money since the 15 year mortgage would be far cheaper than renting, fix it up while living there, and sell in about ten years. We were motivated and productive for the first year or so, and then we just... stopped doing stuff. It turns out, living in a house while trying to fix up every single room is very difficult, even more so when you adopt a couple cats and a dog. Living in an unfinished house wasn't bad, but there was that constant stress of knowing there was a ton of work left to do. We just bought a new house a couple months ago, and will be listing this house for sale soon. Finally, we are getting around to actually finishing it, so I thought I'd post a thread with the last few weeks of progress and results. Here comes the e/n part. In 2017 we got married and wanted to start a family after that. A series of unfortunate events followed soon after. Within a couple weeks after our wedding, both of us found ourselves on unemployment thanks to our lovely employers. A few months after that, our house got broken into, and lots of sentimental and irreplaceable stuff got stolen. We are pretty sure it was one of the neighbor kids that did it, but the police never followed through, and we never found any of our stuff in pawn shops or online. Things were in a pretty dark place, and living there became a constant source of tremendous anxiety, and I didn't feel safe there any more. The neighborhood group of boys had been getting progressively more rowdy and destructive in the past few years. We got a giant dick spray painted on the brick part of our house, cars on the street were getting vandalized and broken into, and the neighborhood was getting to be a very unpleasant place to live. My husband and I found new jobs, and decided this past summer to get the hell out of there so we could start a family in a safer neighborhood, since I could no longer imagine having a kid at this house while keeping my sanity. It took a while to find a house that we liked and could afford, and while we were looking for houses, we managed to create a baby, which will be coming in April of 2019. We bought a new house at the end of October. It's a cute little 1909 house in a neighborhood full of cool, well-maintained, early 1900's houses. The interior was gutted and redone about ten years ago, so it's all drywall (HOORAY). Updated electrical, new windows, new-ish furnace, and a nice two story addition on the back that gives some extra living space and an extra bedroom. It was move-in ready. There are a few things we'd like to do eventually, like get paint colors we like, put up a tin ceiling in the kitchen, and maybe a cedar ceiling in a bathroom, add a sauna somewhere, etc. It is so wonderful living in a house that doesn't need any work done! All the pictures are still in the original thread, so I will just post a few of the progress we've made in the past several weeks. Then, when it's completely finished, I will post before and after! It's turning out to be a pretty cool place, I wish we would have been motivated to do more of the work earlier, but OH WELL.
|
#
¿
Dec 22, 2018 00:45
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 24, 2024 10:21 |
|
|
 Original kitchen. The stove was propane, and we actually never replaced the tank or got a new stove, even after we got the house hooked up to natural gas instead of fuel oil. We cooked on a hot plate or a grill for the entire time we lived in that house.  The kitchen in its current state. A family friend was remodeling their kitchen and offered to give us their old cabinets and appliances. We got a new counter top, put some waterproof panels on the wall with the stove, painted the walls, and sheetrocked the ceiling. We will be hanging some wooden baseboards along the top of the walls since there are some big holes at that height thanks to tearing out the drop ceiling. There is a cabinet with a hang-down microwave and vent that fits above the stove that we need to hang up still.  The original stair case and entry way. The stairs were painted "swiss coffee brown" and had tread stickers for the old lady who lived there.  We took the tread off the stairs and painted them black and white. They are very dusty from sanding plaster in this picture. We extended the red wall in the entry way into the stairwell, and created a little shelf where the wall had originally had a weird curve. The hallway walls are a light bluish/gray.  The tiny office room originally.  This is what it looked like for the next six years while we lived there. We never used this room, we had a cat poop box in there and stored some things, but it was never functional.  Now it's plastered and painted buttercream yellow. Still need to clean the floors.  The horrible bathroom. It stayed pretty much like this while we lived there, except we ripped off half of the wall covering, so there were holes in the walls and ceiling. Really classy.  We painted over the old, crumbling paint on the woodwork, plastered and painted the walls, added pine to the ceiling and did a pine wainscoting, and will be putting up some sheets of that pre-made tile stuff in the tub/shower area.  You can see the original green in this picture. Now that the bathroom is nearly done, I'm upset we didn't do it earlier. It wasn't hardly as huge of a project as I thought it was going to be, and it looks so fresh and nice. It was embarrassing to have guests use the old bathroom because it was so gross.  Second bedroom, which would have been our kid's room if things had gone the way we originally planned. We got this room plastered, but it just sat plastered and not sanded for a few years (and therefore unused) until a couple weeks ago when we finally finished it.  Sanded and painted, and added a textured ceiling. The paint color is kind of a pea green, we found it in the basement and it was perfectly good so we used it. Yeah, textured ceilings are gross, but the plaster was so thick and we were so tired of sanding, we took the lazy route. We still need to put the picture rail up against the wall/ceiling and clean the floors, and then it will be done.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 22, 2018 01:14
|
|
|
When we get the pictures taken for the listing we will do everything possible to get the best natural light in, and hope for a not-gloomy winter day. The front and back has sky through the windows, but the sides of the house have other houses within ten feet so not a lot of light comes through those windows. We are so close to being done. We’ve plastered the rest of the hallway and the kitchen ceiling, just needs sanding and painting. This weekend we will get a truck and do one final dump run, move the remaining tools, grill, and guest bed to the new house, and get the tile sheets for the bathroom and trim for the kitchen. I’m over six months pregnant now and basically useless (also working overnight shift), so we are getting help from an awesome friend. I spent all day today sorting through tools and organizing things for Saturday and I’m spent. I will do the rest of the painting, but I’m really considering hiring a company to do the final deep cleaning. Yesterday while my husband was at the old house, he heard a loud crack in the basement. The plastic bracket holding the sump pump pipe had snapped off, the pipe came apart at the base, and water started to spray all over the basement. Thank god he was there to shut it off. We replaced the bracket with some metal ones today. Hopefully nothing else breaks or goes wrong until we hand over the keys.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 9, 2019 06:17
|
|
|
I’m coming to terms with the fact that unless some miracle happens, our old house won’t be sold by the time the baby comes. It’s due in nine weeks and we still haven’t listed. I’m beyond sick and tired of dealing with the house and paying two sets of bills and mortgages. On the bright side, the market in our city is picking up again, and a couple houses that are by our old house have sold in the last month. We added and painted trim in the kitchen, finished the bathroom, painted the hallway walls and ceiling, replaced the thin pieces of wood along the baseboards in the bedrooms, used wax pencil filler where the cat had scratched the wooden doors, did some detail painting on little scratches on some walls, and did the first round of cleaning. Plaster dust is horrible to clean, and I should have never painted the stairs because I need to re paint them again. The windows are super dirty but we can’t clean them because the liquid cleaner immediately freezes. All that’s left is installing some light fixtures, which is going to be an electrical challenge, moving all the tools to the new house, repainting the stairs, and doing the final deep clean. Edit: Just a vent. When we bought our new house, we were offered loads of help from both sets of parents and several friends. Only two of my husband’s friends have helped at all, but they did a lot for us in the few days they were able to help. My parents have helped when they can as they live out of town, but have often made things harder due to rushing projects or doing things half-assed, so we have to redo them anyway. My in laws, who we were really relying on, took some stuff to the dump for us but that’s it. They have now been on vacation for close to two months, and are having us watch their very energetic, attention requiring dog, who has peed on the hardwood floor in our new house twice and stained it. The hardwood had just been professionally redone right before we bought the house and now there are piss stains thanks to their dog. They have delayed coming home twice and the dog is driving me crazy. If you ever find yourself offering to help a friend with a project, please actually carry through with it, and try not to create more work for them. Koivunen fucked around with this message at 03:54 on Feb 22, 2019 |
|
#
¿
Feb 22, 2019 02:16
|
|
|
The house is officially on the market! Our realtor listed it this morning, and by the end of the day there was already one showing done with five more scheduled. I think that’s a good sign? We decided to list for $110k, which if we get close to full price, will give us a nice nest egg. Will post some pictures of our final DIY results tomorrow. Initially when it listed I felt so relieved, but now I’ve got this new anxious-stress. Our baby is due in five weeks if I make it to my due date. It would be wonderful to get and accept an offer right away, but hopefully we don’t get into a situation where I go into labor the day we are supposed to close!
|
|
#
¿
Mar 21, 2019 05:04
|
|
|
Ghostnuke posted:Plz mail me that Tom Selleck poster, tia I've been very close to buying a copy of that poster and hanging it up in our new house. It really is incredible and I'm sad the previous owners took it before we moved in.  FINAL RESULTS PICTURES Seven years in the making! These are pictures I took with my phone, not the pictures from the actual listing. Before  During  During  During the final plastering.  Right before painting.  After (I had just mopped the floors).  After (Saw was moved prior to showing the house).
|
|
#
¿
Mar 21, 2019 21:44
|
|
|
 Living room before.  Before.  During demo.  During plastering.  During plastering.  Messy work.  Painting.  After.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 21, 2019 21:49
|
|
|
 Dining room before.  During demo.  Washing off nicotine.  Removing popcorn ceiling and nicotine build-up.  After. Unfortunately this is the one project we never finished, and we couldn't bring ourselves to paint over the woodwork that we had spent so much time stripping.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 21, 2019 21:55
|
|
|
 Awesome staircase before.  Awesome staircase after, but before we mopped it.  We painted the stairway to the basement, too. It was a really dirty tan/flesh color previously.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 21, 2019 21:59
|
|
|
 Stairwell before.  Hallway/stairwell during.  Stairwell during.  Stairwell after.  Hallway after.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 21, 2019 22:04
|
|
|
Kitchen before.  Kitchen electricals when we removed the drop ceiling.  Kitchen during.  Kitchen after. Only change we made to the pantry was we painted the counter tops black.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 21, 2019 22:08
|
|
|
I already posted some of the before/during photos from some of the upstairs bedrooms, they all pretty much looked the same, so here are a few after shots.  Final master bedroom.  Final second bedroom.  Third bedroom (bed and rug were removed prior to showing).  Fourth bedroom prior to cleaning it.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 21, 2019 22:14
|
|
|
Throwback to the demolition and plastering of the master bedroom.    
|
|
#
¿
Mar 21, 2019 22:16
|
|
|
 As for the exterior of the house, we had planted a crab apple tree that gets beautiful white blossoms every spring. It's gotten to be a pretty nice size and provides some privacy for the front porch. We also painted the porch white, and the large support columns we painted a deep blue/purple color that looks really nice with the brick. We also sealed and painted the stucco on the second story.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 21, 2019 22:19
|
|
|
 Bathroom while we were living there. Super gross.  Bathroom after.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 21, 2019 22:23
|
|
|
The moral of the story is, doing DIY house fixing up is harder, more exhausting, and takes so much longer than you could ever imagine if you've never done it before. I will never, ever buy a fixer-upper again for as long as I live. The new house we bought has room to add our own personal touches, but in the meanwhile, it's functional and livable and perfectly fine the way it is. Really, really hoping the old house sells fast so we can be done with it forever. My husband absolutely loves the old house and will be really sad to see it go to new owners, but the amount of stress it's added to our lives over the last six months has made me extremely excited to sell it and be done.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 21, 2019 22:31
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 24, 2024 10:21 |
|
|
We closed on our old house this morning! What a huge relief! We listed for $110k and had an offer within a couple days for $113 with us contributing to closing. There were ten showings in two days, which absolutely blew my mind. I thought it would be sitting on the market for a while considering the neighborhood it’s in. Then I was worried about passing the inspection since there are quite a few things that still need attention, like the 15+ year old roof, three windows that have huge cracks in the glass, and the old electrical work on the upstairs floor that works fine but should probably be updated. Anyway, all the buyer asked for was a chimney cap to be put on, so we happily took care of that. I was super pregnant when we accepted the offer, and the closing date was set for our due date. We set up an appointment a couple weeks ago to pre-sign the documents, but I ended up giving birth on the day we were supposed to pre-sign. So, our nine day old baby came with us to the closing today. Bought the house for $45k, had a 15 year mortgage, and sold for $113. After paying off the mortgage and taking care of all the sellers and realtor fees, we were able to bank almost $80k. Cashing that check felt great. The buyer is exactly the kind of person we wanted to buy the house, too. He’s about our age, is going to continue restoring the house (like finishing stripping paint from the original woodwork and getting the wood burning fireplace up and running), and he wants to put raised beds in the back yard. We were really happy to hear he is going to continue to strip the paint, that was so much work. He wants to keep the look and feel of the original features, which was entirely our goal as well. Everything ended up working out in the long run, it just took forever to get there. My husband is still struggling with the thought that we don’t live in a “cool old house” any more, but when he went over there before the final walk through, there were three cop cars and police on foot looking for someone named Lee. So... I’m very happy living in a quiet, safe neighborhood even though our house doesn’t have original features like the old one did. A house half a block away from our new house went up for sale and has lots of cool original features, but asking price is $315k, a full $115k higher than we could afford. So relieved this is all over, and we are so happy the buyer has the same vision for the house that we did. Now we can focus entirely on raising our daughter in our new house.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 25, 2019 01:22
|
|