After a rough year plus making plans for new home....Please read

[MrRational]

Originally Posted by Coldjensens

Everyone has to have a first house where they learn the needed skills.
No one is born with such skills. You can acquire them.

If you weren't fortunate enough to have your Dad or Uncle teach them while growing up and/or learning more while doing construction work during the summer when in HS and College... then yeah you're pretty much left with having to pay for your own education. It can be very expensive.

Those TV shows are not good sources of useful practical information.
Besides, half of them basically ruin a house.

truer words...

In what way do you want to "renovate?"

I don't think the OP is returning to the thread.
That quote about discretion and valor comes to mind.

hth

[M3 Mitch]

Originally Posted by Coldjensens

Everyone has to have a first house where they learn the needed skills. No one is born with such skills. You can acquire them.

Old House Jurnal is an execellent source of information. Neighbors with similar houses can provide information. Your locak histrical society can direct you to peopple who will give you ideas. Eve if your house is not that old, the issues are generally the same.

Those TV shows are not good sources of useful practical information. Besides, half of them basically ruin a house.

In what way do you want to "rennovate?" Do you want to restore a home, or replace period features with modern stuff that will look out of place and function poorly? If you intend to take an older home and remove al vestiges of charm or historic value, then you are financially better off finding or building a newer home that ha the old home "look" that you are seeking. If you butcher a historic home, it will cost a fortune and no one will want it and you will lose your tail financially.

And you forgot to say, "you will lose your tail financially, and you will deserve it as well, for hacking up a historic house that will never be right again, thanks to your bodgerly efforts."

[accufitgolf]

I will echo what someone posted earlier.

Start with an overall Master Plan so it all "fits/looks" good.

Be sure you know what you want and can afford such before you start anything.

List your order of priority.

Start with and complete one project at at time before moving on.

I will add that few ever end up in/with the home they have. Do not think this is the last home you will ever live in.

[thecoalman]

As long as you have the skills the first thing is to find the right home. We picked up a home for $175K that would have been $250K if it were updated. The house was built in 1950 but that was the extent of it, original kitchen, bathroom etc. I will say everything was in really good shape, walls were good, molding was nice and the hardwood floors while never fully finished were in excellent shape because they were apparently covered by carpet the entire time. You can still see the planer marks on them.

For $30K and a lot of work it's now worth $250K. The only work we had done by pro's were the windows and the granite countertops, if I had time I would of done the windows myself too. I should note I'm bit more knowledgable than your average homeowner and have a lot of big tools like dedicated molding machine which can really cut down on costs when you can work with rough cut wood.


If you're going to do this be sure to look at what the house can be and not what it is. For example the house we purchased really had no dining room but there was a bedroom adjacent to the kitchen. We took the wall out and took out a window to put in a door which is going to nicely head out onto the new deck we haven't put in yet. Now we have a nice transition from the kitchen to the dining room out onto a deck.

Sit back and decide what you're going to do and tackle one room at a time with a clear plan in mind before you start going at it. I laid everything out in Google Sketchup first, there was a lot of changes from what I envisioned in my head once I had it laid out in Sketchup.

One thing I will ask is are you prepared to live in house that is being renovated for the next year or two?

[thecoalman]

Originally Posted by TechGromit

I've read those do-it-yourself shows make more money for contractors than anyone who hires them from the start. Often people watch these half hour shows and think that don't look that hard, after all they did it all in one TV program, I can do this.

LOL, yea they never show you the bunch of guys off camera doing all the work. It's the same thing with Norm's "New Yankee workshop"...... "first I rip this board"..... they don't show him spending 10 minutes setting the machine up. The other thing is they are often using tools that the homeowner is not going to be using because of the considerable expense. They might purchase that $200 table saw but they aren't going to have the $1000 model.