Buying A House: C or D?

have any of you guys finished (or paid someone to finish) a third floor attic before? we are going to see a house tomorrow that looks pretty cool but has an unfinished attic. many of the attics in the area are finished so this one is priced accordingly.

https://www.redfin.com/OH/Lakewood/1493-Northland-Ave-44107/home/70838241

so we saw that place this morning, yikes, it needs a lot of work. our realtor estimated (and we agreed just based on a loose assessment of things) that it probably needs about $100k worth of improvements, including:

kitchen remodel (w/ possible addition if we want a bigger kitchen, current one is very small)
attic finishing
new windows (or refurbishing of existing windows)
exterior paint
interior paint
wood floor refinishing
basement waterproofing
+ lots of other things here and there since the house hasn't been that well maintained

there are some very cool aspects of the house, lots of cool architectural details, it's a neat place. the street is gorgeous and is one of the nicer blocks in the town. other houses on the street are priced $250k-$300k. we are tempted since we've seen a lot places that are much more expense that still need some significant work but i don't know if we want to get into that many projects right off the bat. we have some cash on hand for a couple big projects but i don't think we have $100k worth. we could always wait on a few things but i don't know.

i mean things like exterior/interior paint and wood floor finishing are kind of givens no matter what price we pay for a house but the bigger things like a kitchen remodel or attic finishing or basement waterproofing are a little scarier to get into now.

you could do it step by step? waterproof the basement and redo the kitchen, then save for a couple of years to deal with the paint, etc

that's true, though a lot of things seem way easier to do before we move in. since we're renting a place a mile away on a one-year lease, there's a temptation to try to get all the work done before we move in

some things freak me out about the place though, seeing significant water stains on the wall in the basement, wondering if there are major foundation issues to deal with. i think we'd probably have to go back and see it with a contractor since neither my wife nor i are really handy. there wasn't much in the property disclosure either since the owner died this summer.

xp to marcos: one family home in nashville. I have a two car garage and no car! A fire pit in a backyard! It's all very weird.

cool!

we passed on that northland ave place btw, just felt it was too much work to take on even though it had a lot of potential. i think if we were remotely handy we would've felt differently but since we would be paying a lot of people to do work it all would add up pretty fast.

Just now clicked through to look at the Northland house. It has so much potential (and it's beautiful to boot), but if you don't want to immediately deal with remodeling/repairing shit, it was wise to move on.

yea i was torn tbh. i couldve been convinced to go for it but t was more my wife that didnt want to get into it. but she is better w/ money stuff and has a much better idea of what we can afford and what's realistic to get into.

I looked at the street view too. Nice block. It's a good thing you have a wife to bounce concerns off of, because I probably would've made an offer on the spot and then kicked myself six months later.

holy shit, i thought cleveland had good deals. a colleague of mine at another university in ndianapolis just bought a house in this neighborhood, irvington. some beautiful little homes there:

http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/66-N-Ritter-Ave-Indianapolis-IN-46219/1218234_zpid/
http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/127-S-Butler-Ave-Indianapolis-IN-46219/1216439_zpid/
http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/5823-Lowell-Ave-Indianapolis-IN-46219/1217910_zpid/
http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/970-Campbell-Ave-Indianapolis-IN-46219/1218888_zpid/

i don't really understand how this works but it seems bad, which is easy to assume i guess bc its trump http://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/01/heads-up-homeowners-mortgage-interest-deduction-on-trumps-chopping-block.html

https://priceonomics.com/the-case-against-everyones-favorite-tax-break-the/

It sounds like they're not eliminating the deduction, just capping it at $200,000 / yr, which is more than you or anybody you know deducts from their taxes

things that shouldn't influence my decision to consider a house but kinda do: a bedroom where a kid has written the names of their favorite bands on paper and hung them on the wall

https://photos.zillowstatic.com/p_f/IS66wuv4jv5gt90000000000.jpg

Some of them get exclamation marks!

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the "we are number 1" foam finger that prominently features the number 2.

Either they misspelled "1," it needs another finger, or it's a Magrittesque joke.

we've been noticing a number of gut rehabs of older homes that result in big open floorplans. seems super trendy right now, is there evidence that it's peaking or on the wane? seems ubiquitous in a lot of new construction too. sometimes it's okay, sometimes it is weird to walk into an old home and see straight into the kitchen

Seems like it's been popular in new construction for 15-20 years now, and I do see remodels of older homes that open up the LR/KT/DR to some degree. Depends on what you want, but I wouldn't think it adds to the value of an older home unless your next buyer really wants that too.

It can def go to far imo but when you go into an original old house, esp modest ones, not giant Queen Annes or something, they have a lot of little carved-up rooms with doors that close to conserve heat, and it's kind of a lab rat way to live. If you don't need a "parlour" and a "library" and a "front hall" but you DO want to be able to fit non-antique furniture in your living room, a wall or two might have to come out.

But agreed that poor design is still poor design.

Before moving into a small 1951 house, we did an extensive renovation that included turning the living room/parlour, dining room, and kitchen into one big L-shaped room, with the small wing of the L being the kitchen. Yes, you now see into the kitchen as soon as you walk in the front door, which was intentional. I wanted people (particularly at resale time) to walk into a small, old house and think "whoa!" when the inside is unexpectedly large with an elegant kitchen clearly visible at the other end of the room. But more importantly, the new open layout makes it much more livable. The original floorplan was 'obsolete', not merely unfashionable but also out of tune with how most of us live now.

The original kitchen was a small, closed-off galley in the back corner of the house with a small table for two, with an adjoining formal dining area and then the living room. That probably made sense in 1951 when Mrs. Homemaker was likely spending an hour or two alone preparing meals for her family, and kitchens were considered workplaces you didn't particularly want your guests to see. The original 1951 refrigerator was still there, and tellingly it didn't have any freezer space except a tiny section inside in the top corner which you had to open the main fridge door to access. Frozen, quick-to-prepare foods were uncommon then and microwave ovens nonexistant. Nowadays, kitchens are designed to be seen by guests and have attractive cabinets and appliances so there's no need to hide it. Plus dining is much more informal, and the open layout allows seeing the big-screen TV, the fireplace, or the view out the living room windows whilst preparing or eating food. There is both a dining table for 4 and sofas and chairs with coffee and end tables for meals and snacks, any of which we can use depending on mood and whether we're watching Netflix or want a place for laptops and phones. In all the new layout is far more casual and far more comfortable and usable.

Considering how dirty/cluttered my kitchen is it's probably a good thing that it's not visible from the living room.

our kitchen is so small & closed off, i hate that it doesn't open into the living/dining area, cooking for me is or should be kinda social & chatty...

I hate being able to see everything the moment you walk in. I like a little drama as you walk through, the house revealing itself bit by bit. Plus I want to be able to hear the TV when someone is using the blender (these two things overlap temporally in my house A LOT)

Our answer to this was to have a giant "pocket door" that can slide shut and separate the kitchen from the living room if we want some separation but otherwise stay open

Kitchens in French apartments (maybe houses too?) are generally desired to be separated from the rest of the house, by doors and also by being a little away from the main room. Our new apartment thus has this feature, and yeah, we'd prefer it to be more open to the house b/c yeah cooking should usually be social.

we are presently waiting on our kitchen to be installed as well. the room is there, of course, and it happily came with a sink already installed (not something you can count on) but nothing else. so we contracted cupboards and shelves etc. to be installed, but it takes a few months for them to be built (it's all custom apparently). we could have just bought ikea stuff or gone with craigslist-y things but neither of us is "handy" nor inclined to learn. It just means that we'll have had to use the dining room table for food preparation for 4 months and have dishes and food stuff on bookshelves in the kitchen. it's not bad, it's just weird for this American in Paris.

I like a little drama as you walk through, the house revealing itself bit by bit.

Exactly, it's an introduction. You want to get to know the space gradually, building up familiarity as you get to the heart of the household. Otoh the person who spends the most time in the kitchen, partic w kids to feed, may or may not want to be cut off from everything else in there. (I say "w kids" because if I don't feel like cooking I can just eat Cheetos and wine for dinner, an option I am given to understand does not come standard on the "with kids" model.)

For me the ideal is a kitchen big enough to have the main dining table in there, so it IS social, just not also interfering with the rest of the ground floor i.e. the living room. W/2 (noisy) kids it's important to me to be able to get a little separation sometimes i.e. one kid and me in the kitchen and the other kid and my wife in the living room

Or both kids zonking out watching a movie and my wife and I able to eat dinner without explosions cutting through the salad

I like a big kitchen-diner but prefer if it's cut off from the rest of the house for noise management etc. I've lived in a few terraces where the kitchen has it's own floor and that's ideal imo

We used to go to open houses (the uh, public viewing of a property an agent is trying to sell) and see those weird houses with like eight tiny rooms in the front (a foyer, a large closet, a sitting room, a parlor room, some sort of nook) gradually leading to a giant den in the back. Usually not part of the original structure with different flooring, paneled walls, maybe even a wall unit for A/C, those rooms combined with the others made the house unbalanced.

We've got a two-story house that's pretty open. Our living/dining rooms and kitchen are all pretty much in the same room as are the stairs and upstairs hallway. The bad part is that the interior wall of the master bedroom upstairs faces the empty upper half of the open room downstairs. So what, right? It's empty except for the sound waves that emit from the television and bounce off the other side of that wall. We swear that the volume on the TV can be marginally audible downstairs, but loud as hell upstairs, even though the bed is three times further the distance from it than the couch.

Smell management even more than noise management is what puts me off the open kitchen idea. Totally in favour of other people I visit having them though.

David Lynch is mostly concerned about atmospheric management and declares that kitchens should be in a separate building to the rest of the house

Had this dilemma when we renovated our last flat - had this neat configuration where we intended to put sliding/folding doors across to shut out the kitchen (which also has washing machine, kettle, etc to make noise) from the living room. Never had time to put the doors in before we moved out and now kitchen is on basement level floor next to dining room (no door between them) but on a separate floor from living room/tv etc so all is perfect.

The houses on my block are all 1939-1940 brick colonials, essentially identical in layout when they were built. Some have been renovated more than others, so it's like a little controlled experiment.

The main floor is divided in half by a central staircase. One half is an 18x10 living room, and the other half has a reasonably elegant 10x10 dining room and what is, by contemporary standards, a tiny kitchen (8x10). We've got a door in between the DR and kitchen, and personally I like it that way. But some neighbors with recent remodels have the kitchen/dining area open. Or some have a pass-through kind of deal, often with a breakfast bar.

Most of these houses keep the general layout of the frontmost rooms, and express their differences in the back: mine has the original open porch. Some have enclosed the porch for a mud-room kind of thingy. Others have put an addition that is usually a "family room" or den of the sort that pplains describes: much less formal and very different from the style of the preexisting rooms.

saw this bank-owned place yesterday, true fixer-upper but it's on our current street and we love this location a lot http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1294-Belle-Ave-Lakewood-OH-44107/33494342_zpid/

lots of original wood trim throughout

Smell management even more than noise management is what puts me off the open kitchen idea

Both of them are a nightmare with open kitchens, we deliberately avoided any houses with them when we were buying. Also, shit in your kitchen gets super grimy super quickly, do ou really want that to be the case with all your records/books/artwork/whatever?

i like the idea of a kitchen opening into the dining room. i've seen some cool layouts with a bar and bar stools replacing the wall between kitchen & dining room but i'm not sure about seeing the kitchen immediately when you enter a home

im still kind of terrified to buy a fixer upper but the idea of it being down the street from where we currently rent is appealing, we can monitor progress more easily, we have a place to live until the major things are done.

a bank-owned place though means there is no property disclosure so a lot hinges on an inspection

You'll need a lot of uppers to fix that last one.

yea it seems like it huh

Oh yeah parts of it are nasty. Neat though! Amazing price, right? Depends on the structural integrity, imo, and how resourceful/handy you feel this decade.

i think if it were on any other street i'd say fuck it. but we love this area. we are a block from the major commercial road, a block from a lakefront park. it is also the dead of winter and we've been looking since last spring, inventory is at a bottom and and we're getting impatient.

That house is very similar to what my wife and I bought in terms of style, age, and condition. the thing I'd worry about is your ability to heat it in that climate. Our house gets pretty cold and we're in Oakland CA.