Renovating house next door.

[thelynns]

We are buying the house next to ours.  Both houses sit on two acres.  The house next door hasn't been updated in years, both houses built in 1949.

It still has 60 amp service and if wiring is the same that was in my house, it has this fabric coating on the outside.  Exterior walls are 2x4 covered with this thin material, hard to describe.  Probably minimum insulation.

The house is on well and septic, over a full basement.

We are debating about what to do, either scrape the house and just enjoy the extra land, but wondering about filling in basement and cost of decommissioning well and septic.

If we keep house, maybe for rental or aging parents, it would be a complete gut job.  We would upgrade electric and want to actually move some interior walls.

What I'm thinking is, instead of taking all the exterior perimeter walls down to bare studs and figure out all the wiring and framing, could I just run a new set of stud walls, 2x6 around perimeter against existing walls.  I would remove all the wiring from breaker box, effectively decommissioning it.

Seems like it would be easier to almost start from a blank slate.  I will have the existing walls for some inulation value and the the new framing.

Other from a cost aspect, would this work?

The Lynns

[peg_688]

You'd be creating a whole bunch of problems , strip the walls bare , ripe out the old wire , "IF" you want / really need more than R 13 look at BIB's or nail on a ripping to the existing framing 2" wide giving you a 5 1/2" stud bay.

Behind that , (what ever it is) , wall material that is existing there are More Than Likely (MTL) issue that will burn you in the end .

So IMO doing the cover up / over is a HUGE mistake .

BTW I've been a builder for 30 plus years and have repaired / replaced a few debacles like your discribing doing .

G/L PEG

[benevolance]

Well I learned recently with my house....

That old fuse boxes and wires need to be removed in some areas...They do here in SC.... So re-studding the walls and covering the existing electrical might be a serious violation...And a fire hazard.

Think about the fire potential you would create by making a dry airspace with all kinds of flammable things in it like wire, wood insulation...And it would have access to lots of air...So it would burn quick..... a serious no no fire wise.

I had a couple of plaster drywall guys look at my 80 year old house where the walls had minor cracks and almost all of them said to re-stud it and drywall over the plaster.... I promptly threw each one to the curb

Yes it is a pain in the ass to remove the old wiring if it is in fact aluminum wire...It sucks if you have vermeculite insulation(contains asbestos)...

But you need to just grin and bear it....Get in there... rip the old wiring out and remove the insulation or whatever the case may be...

if the house has a good foundation and it is built solid...You have a lot to work with once you have the old wiring and drywall out of there.

If you have lots of time and patience you can remove the wire one at a time by pulling it through the walls and then attaching rope to it and pulling it back through with the new wire...

But if you are going to replace the drywall and insulate I would say hire a kid that will work like mad for low money and have him sledgehammer his brains out on the walls....

a couple guys with small sledgehammers should be able to get it gutted in a couple of days....I would remove a window and back a half ton truck to the window and shovel the drywall right out the window into the truckbed...and then haul it directly to the dump.

60 amp service sucks....But when you upgrade the electrical if you want to meet the code requirements you will need to install a lot of recepticles... there needs to be a recepticle on every wall every so many feet apart....

I am the last person you should ever ask about electrical...But I did buy, move a house several years back and to get it up to code it needed $8,000 worth of electrical work and it already had 100 amp service... Just installing more recepticles and better guage wire... stuff like that.. breaker type fuse panel

It stinks if you do not know someone that will treat you fair on the electrical...Calling the usual electrical company in the yellow pages means you pay $50-75 an hour....If you get lucky and find a small self employed guy he should beat that price per hour by a fair bit....

You can rip all the old wire and drywall out yourselves and it is easy to install new drywall....If you are worried about the final look have someone tape the drywall for you...

Set a budget and look at the house.... Let's say you think it will cost $20,000 and "X" amount of your time to get the house re-wired with new insulation and drywall....

Is having another house to sell/rent worth $20,000 to you.... What would this renovation of the house do to the net worth of the propertry should you need to sell it?

Is this the best use of your free time?

make a informed decision and then decide whether or not to tear it down and fill in the basement...

[thelynns]

Thanks for all the good advice!!!

My gut, which is pretty big, was telling me that not taking back to bare studs wasn't the right thing to do.  Just wanted to hear from someone else.

The house is within a hundred steps of ours.  It is owned by an elderly couple who bought it two years ago in auction.  They planned to have for relatives, but never worked out.  They are selling for about $7000 less than they paid to us only.  They are worried about who would move in.  Our lots are two acres, but narrow and long, so we are kind of close to each other.

We are buying to control who might otherwise move in.  There have been some similar size houses on a fraction of the size property selling for around 100k near us.  A lot in a subdivision around the corner from us goes for around 45k, so we think we are doing the right thing.  

I plan to do everything myself.  I have already added on to my house with new construction and was amazed how quickly that goes compared to renovating.  Fortunately because of the proximity, will use as storage for a while for things from our house and demolish as I can on evenings and weekend.

We want to reconfigure the interior, have to walk through two bedrooms to get to the other bedrooms.  Think it would be easier to start with new wiring than trying to re-reoute or figure it all out.    Have good friends in the trades who will advise me.

Again, thanks for advice, needed the sanity check.

The Lynns

[benevolance]

There is not much sanity needed for a huge project...

There are all kinds of things I do not do myself...I am scared half to death of electricity...And I am not a plaster guy...

What I have found is that you get someone out to estimate a project... This may sound harsh...But you get them to estimate the job and explain in detail what they will be doing for their money...And you make mental notes.

Then all of the demolishion work and gutting you do yourself...Then shop for the materials needs to put it back the way you want it.

And if you do need to hire someone to do something...Like Electrical...you can already have the walls gutted the old wire removed...the old panel removed...

If you feel ambititous and have a code book for where you live you can try to figure out where to have receptacles and ultimately where the new wires will have to go....You can drill the holes and run the wire...And have the certified electrician install the breaker panel and inspect everything.

But by ripping out the old cleaning up the mess and having all the necessary equipment on hand when you call the electrician you will keep the money you shell out to a minimum....They will be able to arrive at the job site and work full out without delays...Their time is money so swallow the humble pill and be the "Go Fer"

This same principle can be applied to plumbing... or other facets of building and renovating your home.

Remember that gutting and ripping out the old is an easy job...I am not talking about the physical labour part of it...That can be demanding....But if you hire a general contractor they are going to have a teen ager or a mexican in there ripping the crap out of the walls for 8 bucks and hour...And they are going to charge you whatever their flat rate hourly fee is...$40-50 or more!

If the unskilled uneducated kid can get in there and rip out the walls...You can for sure...

It is messy aggrivating and time consuming...But getting the old crap out of the way is more than half the job of a renovation in my opinion. So if you can handle making a big mess that will need to be cleaned up with a sledgehammer and crowbar I think you will be fine.

Putting up new Drywall is easy....And fixing any plumbing or electrical issues is easy when the old drywall is all ripped off the walls...It will also be easy to insulate everything when you strip it all down bare.

Some people make crafts after supper every night....Some people drink beer at the local tavern and work on breaking their wedding vows :-/

If you have a great job where you make $40 an hour and you can stay late a few nights a week and get Double time I would say your best option is to work the overtime and have someone else come in and do the renovation... Or you gut the house and then work the overtime to raise the cash to pay to have the house finished..

But many of us do not have great jobs and the money we save doing the labour ourselves outstrips what we might make working extra at the local plant or where ever it is that we work.

So look at your situation and figure out the best way to stretch your dollars and maximize the limited time that you have for this project.