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Ya..we knew and thought about that before. However, if new build cost 250k, then we need to find something under 400K. It's kind of hard to find it with good location, decent lot size in the town we want.
Our house was built in 1900. We added a metal roof(it had one originally), had to rebuild the front porch and rewire the entire thing. Thats just in 3 years. It has two HVAC units and no wall insulation. We added 20 inches in the attic. When we did the front porch we used true lumber that had to be made. 2X4's are no longer true 2x4's and so on. Our lumber cost was crazy high! Our columns had to be custom made because they are only 6 feet tall. Most pre-fab columns are minimum 8 feet!
You get the picture! Nothing is "normal" on old homes! They built things to last and ours certainly has! I can see the guy spending 200-300k on that home........easily. But if he totally renovated and not restored you have nothing! IMO
You can buy salvaged lumber at salvage warehouses. It is uaully very cheap and already true sizes, so no milling. 18" baseboard on the other hand is insanley expensive. Most of what we found was $16 per lineal foot. We eventually found a house about to be torn down and gave the owner $100 to go in and remove molding, flooring, door/window casings,doors, etc. It was a deal.
And from what I can see of the other houses on the street, as well as in looking at pictures of the house before the rehab was done, is that it had little to no charm left before the renovation was done. .
That is the only thing that can justify the butchery that is often done in the name of renovation. However it is possible to restore the historical character, rather than making a quickly out of date "mondernization mess". It is jsut very expensive. Remarkably, Butcher block countertops can cost almost as much as granite or corian. Soapstone or Slate will often cost more.
The house that you are looking at can probably still be restored, but the cost would be astronomical. (See my note about Yellow Pine Baseboard molding at $16/foot. Had we not found the salvage house, it could have cost us thousands just to rpelace the baseboard molding in one room that had been attacked by the Home Depot fiends).
We had to move our house and could not save the kitchen. We built a new kitchen but finshed it almost entirely with salvaged materials (doors, windows, flooring, appliances, cabinets). We cannot have a kitchen match the age of our house (1836), but we can match the kitchen that was on the house and was the original kitchen for the house (the original kitchen was a seperate buidling and used a wood burning fireplace. The kitchen that we could not save, was added in the late 1920s and it was easy to re-create that period. We added a hidden room to hold the dishwasher and dish sink (and dirty dishes) out of sight. We used push button light switches, a 1927 magic chef stove and a 1930 farm sink. THe light fixtures are either salvaged or reproductions in the 1920s - 1940s style (excpet one which is kind of modren, but at least tries to be old fashioned looking). Except for knowlegable old house aficinados, most people think tha tthe kitchen is original or at least from the 1920s. It is reasonably istoricaly accurate sinc ethe kitchen was first attached to the house in the 1920s (as far as we can tell). Although it is not what I would prefer, it retains the historic charm of the house without making a mish mash of styles and periods. Building a seperate kitchen with a wood burning fireplace to cook on would not hav ebeen conducive to my marriage.
Last edited by Coldjensens; 02-17-2010 at 03:00 PM..
Question: does anyone have a general idea of cost per square foot re: renovation of an old row home in Philadelphia? Its probably built right around the turn of the century, true trinity coming in at a whopping 624 square feet and its all of four floors - don't judge It has had some updating but its looks like major roof damage has the plaster falling apart on all four floors and the kitchen (in basement) looks medieval. Thoughts? Recommendations?
Question: does anyone have a general idea of cost per square foot re: renovation of an old row home in Philadelphia? Its probably built right around the turn of the century, true trinity coming in at a whopping 624 square feet and its all of four floors - don't judge It has had some updating but its looks like major roof damage has the plaster falling apart on all four floors and the kitchen (in basement) looks medieval. Thoughts? Recommendations?
You would probably get a better answer in the Philadelphia thread.
cost =what you want.gold floors or wood,hot air heat or hot water,real moldings or plastic............everything has a cost, its up to you .that said.......about $150 - $200 PER SQ FT BALL PARK.
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It has had some updating but its looks like major roof damage has the plaster falling apart on all four floors and the kitchen (in basement) looks medieval. Thoughts? Recommendations?
