Entire House Rehab (subfloor, roof, fireplace, Home Depot)

[margarets1]

newbie rehabber here. have you ever done an whole house rehab at one time? how extensive was it? how long did it take? what do you wish you had known (good or bad) before you started? i am aware of the 'it takes more money and time' than anticipated. were there items you had budgeted for, that turned out way off budget, and how did you handle making up the difference? would you do it again?

i'd like to hear of any experiences. thanks.

[Squirl]

Wish I would have known to shop on Craigslist for replacement bathtubs, toilets, vanities, and appliances. Also I learned to plan on replacing water heaters; it seems inspectors always have issues with water heaters that are older than 5 years old.

It takes us between 4-8 weeks for a small house. I do it frequently.

[JimRom]

I'd say the 4-8 week window is pretty accurate on an average size house. As far as budget goes, add up everything that you currently know is in need of repair/replacement. Then add another 20%-30% to that total for the things you're going to find once you get started.

If you are doing it yourself, plan on some really long days and a lot of frustration.

It's worth it in the end though.

[margarets1]

thanks for your feedback.

[Coldjensens]

The first house that we did took ten years and it was nto 100% done when we sold it.

Our "new" house (built in 1836) we had some money and we swore that we would complete everything 100% before we moved in. We planned for 6 mnths of work to get everything done. This included:

Re-wiring entire house and installing new electrical panels and a generator. Re-plumbing the entire house. Replacing the entire steam heat system with a hot water heat system. adding insulation where it was missing, or where it had settled. ducting for a high velocity AC system (we still have not had the money to put in the AC unit). Building a kitchen with salvaged materials (the old one could not be saved when we moved the house). Finishing the basement with bedrooms bathroom and a game room (carpeted, drywalled, bedrooms sound dampened, fully wired, plumbed and heated). repairing all of the cracks etc in the walls and re-papering/painting. Screening all of the wood floors and refinishing them. Replacing the moldings, and window and door casings in a room that was remuddled with junky "modern" moldings from Home depot.. We found salvage materials from an 1860s house (which is when that particular room was added to the house). removing all the windows, sanding and priming them and then re-installinf them. Replacing all of the "modernized" light fixtures with period fixtures or appropraite reproductions. Gutting and completely renovating the 1970s bathroom and reconstructing it in perior style (from a period that they had indoor bathrooms, not from the period when the house was built). Replacing the roof. sanding and re-painting the stairs. Rebuilding the rottedout carriage house. It is wired and insulated, but no drywall is up yet and no flooring. THe garage part is uasable. The upstairs is semi-usable.

We moved this house and carriage house from another locationin order to save it from being torn down. The moveinvolved building a new basement, cutting te house in half and putting ist back together at the other end. We had to rebuild part of the roof structure where the 1836 portion of the house joins the 1850 addition. It was badly done and was leaking. We also had to number every brcik from one fireplace facia and take it apart and rebuild it as it was. (It cracked in the move). We removed a rotted out bathroom and office from 1946 and turned the space into a library (or it will be evnetually). This was in the old part of the house, but whatever the room used to be was changed to a bathroom and doctors office in 1946. The bathroom shower was leakgin and rotted out all the interior walls and the floor, so we just removed it and left it as an open room which it was prior to 1946.

There was more, but that is all that i can think of.

We overran our budget by 100% and still ran out of money. We hit the point where we either had to keep spending and try to getit ddone enoguh to live in, or just walk away from it. We almsot walked away on a couple of occaisions.

Every room has a few things that are not finished and one room (library) is not finsihed at all. It is just subfloor and primed drywall/plaster. (We replaced the plaster where possible, but the wall that was stripped completely down was recovered with 5/8" commercial grade drywall. We just could not afford plaster.

We originally planned to complete the work in 6 months. It was a year before we moved in and now, three years later, we still have a way to go. Part of the problem is that we have to re-do some things that either were nto done at all (insulation in somewalls) or were done incorrectly. We ran into quite a few crooked contractors and a couple of good ones.

It will take another four or five years to finish everything 100% if we do nto end up losing the house.

Would I do ti again? That is hard. It was a great adventure. It is a wonderful house. There is nothing like it anywhere.

However. . . ..

If we had nto done this project, I could have bought a house free and clear and still had enough money to pay for my kid's college. As it is, we are an the verge of losing the house and struggling to pay for college. I have not bought a new car in 15 years and it does not look like a new car is in my immediate future. Nor in my wifes. My 15 year old car may or may not hold out for another couple of years. Hard to say. My wifes car is on its last legs.

We did nto take any vacation at all for one year and for two other years we only went on short local camping trips. While the project was ongoign, vacation was impossible. Every time I was away for any period of time we either had a disaster or someone did something dishonest when I was not looking.

Now we had extreme luck on this proejct, both good and bad, but mostly bad. Not everyone would encounter the kinds of problems that we did. Not only crooked contractors, but wierd events and accidents. For example, one worker fell off a scaffold and broke his back. Another worker had a heart attack. The first (or second?) plumber's brother committed suicide on the day that they were supposed to start work. Someone left a rdrill motor outside when it rained and it tripped the GFI outlet that powered the sump pump. the basment filled with 2-3 feet of icy water and wwe lost a lot of tools. The carpenter's trailer was stolen from a different job. All of his tools and some of mine were inside it. He did nto have insurance coverage. He had no tools left and could nto work for a while. I lost a lot of tools too. I did nto have the heart to charge him for them and we were not certain what tools of mine were int hetrailer anyway (his guys picked up some tools by mistake and he had borrowed some other tools). The electrician simply disappeared wihtout a trace. The tile guy decided that he could nto do the job at the last minute. The insulation guy pretended to put insulation in the walls by spraying some on the floow. None went into the walls (he later disappeared). The HVAC contractor disappeared to another job (for 6 months). Many of the materials that i ordered arrived and were wrong and had to be sent back. IN three cases, the company went out of busienss and the materials could nto be returned. Several contractors had similar problems. Wrkers got in a serious fight. One guy was fired when we found him spitting tobacco juice on my bedroom floor. Load of other unusual events occurred. I cannot remember them all. Two contractors had workers that decided that our project was "cursed" and refused to work there anymore.

I do not think that these things are normal, so you may have better results than we did.


With our first house, we did not have all of this bad lluck. However we lived in the house while we restored it room by room and we did most of the work ourselves. When we paid for work we had to do it in bits and pieces. That is wy that project took ten years.

[margarets1]

i, also, have made some pretty bad choices on contractors in the past. i'm hoping not to make those mistakes again and seem to learn more with each experience. property needs just about everything too. this one is the most extensive yet. kinda nervous.

i'm trying to work on a realistic and detailed budget and do research on costs in my area. after completing that i may no longer be interested. coljens, i found your experience pretty enlightening and candid. thanks.

[ShaneSA]

I've done both f;ips and houses I lived in while rehabing. The flips usually do takes 6 to 8 weeks and usually run 20 to 30% over. Sometimes more, depending on what you fins when you start tear out.
Houses I've lived in and redone, I do one room at a time. It's usually easier and less hectic while trying to live in it. that takes the amount of time you have the money to spend. They are directly related.