I figured it out...Pics of my new house!

[benevolance]

Here are a few pictures of the place...

Still no bed...90% empty inside... Running out of money for renovations....Completely did over the back sun porch into our laundry room....Tiled the floor..New hot water Heater..Installed a sink built a cabinet...Hook ups for the washer and dryer...

Bought the washer and dryer this week and going to haul them down to the new place on Friday after Turkey tomorrow

Bought a nice used sleeper sofa for $75 that was in excellent shape...My wife and I will have to sleep on that for a while...We have been using the old air mattress...Good for a night....Hell for an extended period of time

Wife wants a new Cement driveway and there was a patio in the back.. we scraped off leaves and saw the old cement pad...Talked with the 80 year old neighbor who told us about it... So the wife wants that re-capped with cement and a new patio in the back yard as well...I figured it out and I will need to pour about 14 years of Cement....So I am going to knuckle under and buy a new Cement Mixer...$325 at northen tool and equipment.... 14 yards is too much to mix in a wheelbarrow with a shovel....

6 months down the road the back stairs and deck need fixed up...I will likely just measure each stick of lumber and have it on hand to cut them out exactly as the existing ones are then tear down the old and erect the new...

But lots to do and I am almost out of money....Gonna be tight for Christmas.... :'(

But the house is mine...That is a start

More interior pics this time next week...Not getting internet down there until the start of the month...It is 250 miles between houses...So pics are not easy to post for me...

http://ca.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/anything_baseball/album?.dir=157dre2&.src=ph&store=&prodid=&.done=http%3a//ca.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph//my_photos

[desdawg]

That is a nice looking home. I can see why you would be excited. And the lot would appear larger than todays standard postage stamp. Where is it located?

[Sassy]

Really beautiful house - looks like you already finished the painting & plastering?  The hardwood floor & staircase are beautiful, too!  I like the brick on the outside & the windows - I can see how you didn't want to pass up a place like that!  That was built when homes used to have all the nice features that only "custom" homes have now & then they are fake.  Very charming!  

[glenn-k]

Nice place, Peter.  Thanks for posting the pictures.

That should give you something to work on in your spare time.

[benevolance]

Sassy

Actually....Thw wife and I ran out of money....So we have not finished the paint and plaster....half of the house was painted the dull bland half tan half brown colour inside and we hate it...

The kitchen needs a lot of work yet....And we are going to replace these windows when there is enough money to do so...

So we have a lot to do....As money permits


But yes I hate all new houses...Built like crap...

I went into the attic and it is all solid wood groove and tongue boards to sheathe the roof... The house only has 6 fireplaces in it now...But it used to have 7....The moldings and all the doors are solid wood....Likewise the stairs the cupboards...

We had a horrible time trying to buy home insurance...They wanted us to pay for $400,000 worth of insurance on a home we bought for less than $60,000

Crap about replacement value...the cost of real wood and real brick...Real beadboard ceilings...

I hate the fact that the back sunporch is now the Laundry room...I wanted to make it is a small greenhouse...But this frees up a lot of space for the Kitchen getting the Fridge out of the Kitchen means there can be an Island...

I hauled off a few loads of used brick...So eventually the plan is to build one of those fences around the yard where you overlap the bricks 50% so there is half a bricks worth of space between the bricks so you can sort of see through the fence but not quite...We have Ivy Growing on the back of the house and on a couple of the Elm and Oak trees...So it should take over the brick fence too...

We have a little dog and my wife would throw me out if I ever let anything happen to that dog....I know I come in second to him...It is not even close.

There are just a bunch of things to do and once you start running low on funds you have to slow down...It sucks! I can do some landscaping and make the yard nice....And start getting ready for sanding the walls and painting...

As I save up for windows...

You might have noticed but the damned house has about 50 windows in it...So it is going to cost me $8-10,000 for new windows.... :'(

We installed the duct work for one of the central air units so the AC wall mount units can go....Add that to the list...Maybe next time the pics will show some of the wilderness trimmed and the wall mount ac units removed...

I had to talk my wife into this place....Because it is 20 miles from a big city where property is a premium...Everyone wants to live there...And Lake City is a Small Town with clean sidewalks and a quaint downtown.... the 20 mile drive from Florence South Carolina and Lake City is barren...So she was not crazy about it at first....I showed her the beating stick and she came around

Our house is in a gorgeous area where most of the houses are brick 2 story with columns out front...Some are twice as large ands fancy as ours...Most are about as nice as ours...

Our lot is about half an acre which is a large lot for being in town... 213 x 100
So I have room for a tool shed or garage....Where the money for that would come from I will never know?

It is going to suck....My wife and I had a plan to sell in a year and fix up another house...As I work on this one I am getting attached....yes I can make some sweet money on the house...But it will be like removing part of my soul to part with it.

I know it needs a lot of work and I am making mistakes...But I am really proud of it....I catch myself looking at it all the time wondering how someone could let the place go into foreclosure...And how in the hell did this house stay for sale on the market for 4 months ....

My wife and I have hit all the antique sales in the area and when people ask us where to deliver the furniture we tell them and a few contractors and one of the guys that runs the auction were like..."We wanted to buy that house...Too expensive"

I guess some people with money expect amazing deals....I have been floating around like I won the lottery ever since I first saw the place....

[benevolance]

Glenn

I know we have not been friends long...But Christmas is coming up and I would really appreciate it if you sent me a can of spare time...I am running low around here

[Sassy]

Benevolance, if he can find any, Glenn is gonna have to give his spare time to me for Christmas!  

[benevolance]

desdawg,

Sorry I forgot to answer your question
Lake City South Carolina...Zip code is 29560
Small town...Population around 10,000... if you count the Urban Cluster.

Hometown to one of the astronauts who died in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster...There is a monument to him 2 blocks from my house at the Public Library

The Industry there is mainly a huge Meat packing plant for all the IGA grocery stores in that part of SC/NC...and Coleman has a huge manufacturing plant there... The land is flat with lots of topsoil....A lot of farms outside of town...Cotton, Tobacco and Corn..The train runs North South parrallel to the coast connecting Wilmington, Florence, Charleston....So freight and rail are important too... I can hear the train at night a little bit... not horrible...It runs through the town about 8-10 times a day...

My wife and I gambled a bit Seeing that Florence is Exploding in growth...And so are all the coastal Communities in SC....There is a 4 lane bypass that runs through lake city to Myrtle beach...It is only 4 lanes part way and they are currently expanding it all the way...Which will increase the speed limit and cut the time to the water down to about 45-50 minutes.... So my wife and I thought that this would result in a lot of people not being able to afford land at the beach buying a close drive to the beach...And as beach communities fill up and the price skyrockets there will be a predictable residual effect on all properties surrounding the beach communities.

If we are dead wrong we wind up with a great home that we absolutely love...So it is not all lost...If we are right we can cash in and try to buy a place in Northern Maine or Oregon someday for our retirement.... She likes Maine and I like Oregon...

I am ready to retire now...But unfortunately I was born good looking instead of rich....So my wife and I will likely have to buy renovate and sell several homes like this to get towards our long term goals

[glenn-k]

Your good looks and a dollar will buy you a cup of coffee, Peter.  (Maybe someplace it will).

Spare time Peter - I'd send you some but I think it is on the endangered species list.

[benevolance]

speaking of my looks...Have you been corresponding with my wife? Hard to buy a decent cup of coffee anywhere... That starbucks crap is just that...Crap...and some of their junk motto expresse latte with sprinkles...like 5 bucks a cup...

mmmmm I think not...

I have a guy from New york coming for a load of parts so I will have another couple thousand to put into the house in the next week or so.... But when you have 20 things to get to...It evaporates quickly

I could scrounge up some extra time if there was enough money to go around for the house

[desdawg]

If I could buy a house like that for $60K I would think I died and went to heaven. Around here that might get you a bare acre of ground. And all of those fireplaces. I am a fireplace nut. You did very well by my estimation. Keep up the good work.

[jwv]

I love those old places with character, back when more people took pride in what they built and aesthetics were the norm not an upgrade.

Sounds like a great little town too!

Judy

[benevolance]

Judy

We like the small town...It has not quite caught on...So either we are ahead of the curve or we missed it all together... 20 miles down the road in florence all of the historic downtown is getting new brick facades...They are installing retro looking iron poles with lamps on them to light the historic section of the downtown...

We are thinking that as the beach exodus spreads inland they will fix up the small town we live in just like that...

My wife is not happy that we do not have a super walmart...Only a smaller regular wal mart... It is going to cost a little more but I have already bought a bunch of stuff from the mom and pop hardware store up the road and I like it...

I have always hated the soul less corporations like Wal Mart

[benevolance]

desdawg

Well my wife did spend a lot of time looking...I think we just got lucky...And we knew what to look for.

Where do you live? $60,000 for an acre seems pretty silly to me... But then again half a million barely buys you a livable house anywhere near NYC or LA

In the lower part of SC there are all kinds of houses like the one we bought ...We looked at a few more that were  nicer for under $80,000....But this was all we could afford.

This is why we came up with the plan to fix up and re-sell several...We noticed that there are all kinds of bank foreclosures on 80+ year old homes that need some TLC...

It seems being a Troggie as Glenn put it helps us....As the average person around the age of 30 cannot install a window or replace a toilet...

well not that they could not do it...Only they have never done anything like that and would just call a contractor...

So when they look at a home and have the estimate done to get it upto their "joneses" standards...It would cost 60,000

There was a report on our house from a contractor and they wanted $40,000 to install new windows, central heating and air...And to redo all the hardwood floors fix a few cracks in the plaster sand and paint the walls.

Fourty thousand dollars for that little bit of work...

I am not a great carpenter! ..if 4 qualified skilled labourers came into my home they could have it done in about a week to ten days...The carpenter to do the windows...The paint guy to refinish the floors and sand/paint the walls..and a ac heating guy to do the central heating and air

If you said the cost of materials was $20,000 that would be 20,000 in labour...divide by 4 people...equals $5,000 divide by 10 days...Equals $500 a day

It gets pretty expensive and ridiculous when you break it down...

I think that the opportunity for us to steal this house was partly created by the huge amount that it costs to get anything done when you just call the first guy in the Yellow Pages and you start paying $60-70 an hour to get something done...

So many people who buy a old car or a house touch nothing...They do not even do the simple things like remove the chrome on a car before they send it to the body shop....Or rip out the old drywall before they get a house re-wired...

I suspect that when a lot of young couples went to look at the house we bought they saw it did not have central AC...Which is a must when you live in the south....Hot and 90% humidity unbreatheable!..And then they saw that it needed regular TLC that any house 80 years old would need....And never having done so much as paint a deck or hook up a washing machine they kept looking.

My real estate lady was a P.B.F.H. Psycho Bitch From Hell....When we called her to look at this house she told us that it was probably not what we were looking for on the phone After I specifically told her I wanted to look at it several times repeatedly she agreed to show us the house.

When she got there she had a list of other houses she had listed that were half the size one story ranch style homes built after 1950...Most were brick...But they were on small lots in places out in the middle of nowhere...I took her list she had prepared and threw it in the trash right in front of her.... I Told her I already knew what house I was interested in.

We told her as soon as we saw it we wanted to put an offer on it....She still kept trying to talk about other houses that were 30-40,000 more

I am not sure how other real estate agents are...But ours was money hungry and did not see a $50,000 house worth selling....Not enough commission for her I guess? :-/

Bank Repos are harder too I have learned It is a hassle to put an offer down you have to prove you have all the money upfront before you are allowed to make an offer...So you cannot find a house and then shop for a mortgage as with other houses..

Stuff like this is why I am confident that we could go out and get another great deal if we had to....This house is special to us and we feel like we won the lottery.... I told my wife that no way we sell this place until we find a place that we like even more...

Maybe we will both get lucky and do really well with our jobs and we can afford to keep this place and save up a little to go and buy the next place without having to sell this one... That would make me very happy

[Sassy]

Peter, why do you have to replace the windows?  Are they just single paned?  I just looked over the pictures again,  the windows are really pretty.  The interior looks nice in the pictures, also - looks like it has been painted (actually, I liked the beige & white - but I like muted background paint so that I can accent it with the furniture, etc) & the hardwood floor looks in good shape - so does the banister on the stairs.   Post some more pictures of some of the other fireplaces.  I agree with Desdawg - you got a great deal, even though it might need a lot of work - you couldn't touch that around here for less that $300,000-500,000 with the large lot.  

And small towns are nice!  I hate driving into the big town of Fresno (a lot of people don't think it is big enough).  I rarely go into Walmart or Target just because there are always such big crowds - although I do go to Costco... I've always liked living in the country or a small town - couldn't imagine living somewhere like LA or San Francisco.  It takes so long to drive anywhere that although you live close by stuff, you don't go because it is too much hassle.  

It's great that you & your wife are willing & able to do the remodeling - like you said, not a whole lot of young couples like you are willing or even have the slightest idea of what to do when it comes to remodeling - so you are way ahead of the game!  

[JRR]

Nice looking house.  I know the area.  I went to public school in Hartsville.  Saw some of the first Nascar races (ever) at Darlington.

Use to love to drive to Myrtle Beach.  But now ...   You're right, seems like the overgrown coastal blight is now swallowing up everything.  Wonder if Brookgreen Garden still exists?

Darn I-95 and I-20!!!

[benevolance]

Sassy

When you sell a house there are selling features and things that are huge detractors... Here in the south not having Central Heat and Air is a huge Red Flag

Wooden Windows is also a Red Flag....People want Energy efficient Dual paned argon filled Vinyl Windows

Yes the Wooden Windows are single paned and they are hurting the house in terms of insulation factor...The cooling bill in summertime and heating bill in the wintertime is more because of them.

For the record I like them too....There are 2 windows that need a little work...But I would easily fix them...Scrape and paint the windows in the house and they would all look pretty decent.

The hardwood floors are in awesome shape not scraped or gouged at all...My wife and I have had a fire in 2 of the fireplaces and they work well also...

And yes I like the small town lifestyle too...Walk into the Barbershop and know the owners name and vice Versa. Makes you feel like you are part of the community

[benevolance]

JRR

Where is it that you live now? How long ago has it been since you lived near Darlington...

My wife would give up this house to live in Darlington...She loves the Historic District....The houses there are breathtaking

[JRR]

Benevolanve

Atlanta and maybe now soon in middle Tenn.  Half a century. (Ouch! Can I be that old!).

I would think there are still many "opportunities" around Darlington, but am just guessing.  

[benevolance]

We looked at some breath taking homes for sale in Darlington that were 70-80,000 but they were nicer than the home we just bought in a nicer community...We just barely missed one that was 5,000 square feet with a 28x28 garage with an apartment above the garage...3/4 of an acre of land smack in the middle of the historic district...It was amazing...$80,000 bought it too....My wife cried when we saw it and called to discover it had been sold the day before

So yes we are thinking that we can find a niche there and work on our retirement goals fixing up houses....

[desdawg]

Hey Peter, I live in AZ. Prices are high but nothing like Glenn and Sassys CA. I guess prices are getting high everywhere so the current market correction may not be a bad thing in the long run. But some people are going to get hurt while it corrects. They overspent and the lenders approved them for overspending by financing them with adjustable rates, interest only or some other off the wall mortgage plan. Now the payments are ratcheting up but the paychecks are not. Home prices are going down interest rates went up and a lot of people are screwed.They can't refinance, they couldn't afford what they bought and a lot of them won't pull through it. So, to make a long story short you did really well. Just remember Rome wasn't built in a day and you can take all of the time you need to improve your home and still live in comfort while you are doing it. You did it right!

[benevolance]

Desdawg

I have made more than my share of mistakes in life to date...And Yet somehow I feel that I am not immune from them yet....So this is a learn as I go thing.

I am holding back from getting deep in debt...I want no part of zero equity in a home and be forced to re-negotiate a mortgage and the rates hike up and not be able to make payments....As you just talked about.

The bubble will not even have to burst for many people to be in trouble.  A lot of people bought with no money and 90% of theor assets weere debts instead of assets...

A slight cooling of the market and any kind of increase in interest rates and they are in trouble. People were buying second and third houses based on projected growth rates from the past few years when we experienced unprecedented increases in property values and houses.

If you planned smart and left yourself lots of options and wiggle room a rate increase or a slow down would not kill you... If all your eggs are in one basket and you are mortgaged to the hilt...It is time for a few sleepless nights and tough decisions.

Looking at Wal Mart Enron and Tech stocks....You cannot have record breaking profit every quarter forever...Sooner or later you run out of room...Then there is a massive sell off and people start scurrying trying to recover their investments

I am not smart enough, bold enough or rich enough to play at any of that sort of thing... I am happy doing this one house at a time...

My wife and I talked about it and if We can do one a year for three years on top of what we both make in salary...We should make an additional 50K a year for the next three years....Because we will be living in the house it is tax free money for the most part because the IRA allows you a capital gains exemption.

The way we figure it is this would allow us to put $150,000 in the bank for our retirement now...So it could grow or be used for other things over the course of the next 20 years before we are both retired.

Neither of us are rich or paid well...But She makes $30k and I make a little more than that about $50k....

It is cheap to live in SC and we have always been able to save several hundred a month....The houses are our chance to get ahead and take control of our retirement

[desdawg]

benevolance, my hat is off to you. Keep up the good work!

[benevolance]

Desdawg

Keep yer hat on....Shade is a good thing...Ask me how I feel about the house when I get done.

For a while it is going to be one of those things that no matter how much you do it is not enough...

kind of like in Star Trek where the Borg Cube absorbs energy without taking damage....That is my house... I will work all day on it without noticing any real difference.

At least we are fully moved in Have everything hooked up but the internet...So it is all good...

I need to try to buy myself a Bobcat or an old farm tractor with a front end loader on it... Landscaping cement and brick work will be much easier with a machine....

[benevolance]

As I said before I would much rather be born Rich instead of good looking

I know you are supposed to enjoy success when it is hard earned...That saying came from someone not smart enough to invent something trivial and almost useless that netted them millions

I would gladly settle for being the lucky SOB who invented pez dispensors.... This house thing is cool and all...But it is going to take a good deal of time before my wife and I get to the point where we will feel like we are rolling downhill...

Still a decent incline for the time being.

:-/