Quote:
Originally Posted by jenjen808
My husband and I are considering restoring an old home in the rural outskirts of Charleston. We are coming next week for a visit, (from AZ), we have a house in mind, that has never been touched, but we have some other homes on the list too, so my question is...
What costs have any of you come across in buying an older home and restoring? We have researched a lot, but $ estimates have been vague and all over the place, and vary in different states, so I thought I would ask the people who actually live there and may have done the same thing!
In particular, cost of things like updating electrical, plumbing, adding hvac, restoring hardwoods, and just anything and everything, I am sure we will come across one thing or another!
I just want to walk into a house and kind of know the cost of things before we make an offer and have an inspection or call out a contractor and waste anyones time.
Thanks in advance for any help  |
A lot depends on what you mean by "old."
The last central a/c system I had replaced was just 2 years ago and was right around $5,000. That one is not fun.
Last time I had a house painted (2 story, 1,500 sq ft, on the historic register) the estimates were in the low $3,000s and mid $5,000s. The difference was one crew working the usual way (power wash, scrape, prime, paint) and the other crew following the new EPA lead regulations with tarping around the perimeter of the house, hazmat disposal and whatnot.
There isn't much to updating the plumbing unless something is actually wrong, like galvanized plumbing rusting on the inside. Copper pipes have lasted us an indefinite amount of time. We've had to change out one cast iron joint on a drain that developed a pinhole leak once it reached about 95 years old. That one was a few hundred $. The only real updating you may run into that's not related to a layout change would be the drain from the house to the sewer and that has always been done before we bought the house.
I won't get into the science of it but, nearly everywhere would benefit from crawlspace encapsulation. That runs up to about $10K on the high end (3,000 sq ft / 1 story), done correctly. Under $2,000 for the same job done on your own but it's a dirty one. If it isn't encapsulated and you run into problems you get to...
Replace all the joists and subfloor. This ran me about $30/joist + new 3/4" T&G plywood. I did the work - labor would have increased the cost by a huge factor.
I just had new finish on site hardwood finished + some older areas refinished. That ran $2.50/sq ft but I had the place completely ready for them. No baseboards installed, no doorways installed yet. Price may have been higher if there were obstacles for them to work around.
No clue on what having someone else do the electrical would be - I took advantage of doing it while I had access due to walls being opened up, going from ungrounded, undersized Romex to new and bringing up circuits and breakers to modern standards. It was a few hundred $ in materials.
Scraping paint, restoring wood can be done on your own. If you have an old house it's SO worth doing instead of pulling out all the old solid core doors and replacing with hollow core, fake wood ones and new trim. Mortise lock hardware can be found at Lowes/HD/online and it's surprisingly inexpensive. Windows can also be restored on your own. The hardest part is typically removing the glass.
With an older house if you REALLY want it fixed up you'll need to learn to do a lot of things on your own or it will absolutely eat your lunch. When it's done correctly though it's awesome!
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