Buying A House: C or D?

Me, I favor little quality-of-life improvements that I can accomplish myself: a shelf here, a little home office under the stairs, a rack for pots and pans, a fire pit outside, fresh paint here and there.

I'm told that the only renovations worth doing (in a resale value sense) are those that increase square footage. Even then, the return on investment might be negligible or nonexistent. Not coincidentally, those are very high-dollar projects. And they can entail a year or more of project management, as well as life disruption.

Some people can live in a house that's being remodeled, putting up with (for example) having to cook on a hot plate and use a mini-fridge for a couple months. Others rent a house for a while during the time their normal house is undergoing renovations - an additional spate of costs and headaches that needs to be factored in.

to some extent "renovations" is also a code word for upkeep, and those things... are essential

I will never, ever again live in a house that we are renovating. If you think purchasing a home is stressful, wait until you do renovations. And yeah, I agree that renovating for resale is not worth it really. People have vastly different tastes. The worst thing ever is when I see a place I like and it's evident that they newly remodeled but you know you will have to remodel again due to different styles. Like, I hate granite anything.

yea we had our attic finished before we moved in and im so glad we did it that way

btw we thought about adding a bathroom up there but it was gonna had another $10k-25k to the cost. fuck that

I'm told that the only renovations worth doing (in a resale value sense)

I'm not even thinking about resale, I'm thinking about whether I want to move two adults and two kids into a house with one shower. So I think of the money as spent on something to improve our lives, not money I expect to get back.

And we would have it done before we moved in.

But I am gonna see how expensive it would be to put a bathroom in the basement instead, that seems to disrupt the house and my kids can walk down a flight of stairs if I'm in the shower if it's gonna save a ton of money, I'll just pay them $100 every time they shower down there

dang how long a shower do you take

FWIW, eephus, I sleep on the second floor but only ever shower in the basement. I leave the upstairs bathroom to wife + kids, and that's worked out well for us.

sorry, i meant a shower in basement "seems to disrupt the house LESS" and i really really hope it would be cheaper

So YMP you have this "1 shower upstairs 1 shower in basement" configuration? And it's workable? The basement in this house is mostly unfinished so I feel like you're not giving up already-finished space to do this, if it's functional and less expensive the idea is growing on me

Yes, we have a full bath on the second floor (shared by three bedrooms).

We also have a bathroom with a stall shower in the (mostly finished) basement.

When I was a child, I was heavily influenced by my grandparents' house, where my grandmother used the master bathroom, which was coded and decorated very much as "hers." My grandfather used a second smaller bathroom that was decorated very much as "his." It seemed very civilized to me, and very different from what I was used to (everyone sharing one bathroom). So when we moved in here I ceded the upstairs bath to wife + kids and started thinking of the basement bath as in some sense "mine." It is a very civilized arrangement. Also I prefer the womblike stall shower to showering in a bathtub. But that's just me.

anybody have any thoughts on RTA kitchen cabinets? I'm trying to avoid putting yet more ikea products into my house but the numbers ain't crunching any other way.

put in an offer on a house and feeling lots of anxiety about it. i love the house and i think it's worth what we're offering but the idea of going through another home purchase, selling our current home, doing the move, etc over the next few months fills me w/ dread.

it will suck but then it will be awesome :)

yea, it will definitely suck but at least you've done it before

My parents are selling their house and are buying a condo in the town where my sister lives.

I’ve lived in 13 places including four 2000+ mile cross country moves in the last 20 years and have bought three and sold two houses since 2007, so it’s both endearing and exasperating to hear my mom totally FREAK THE FUCK OUT. They’ve lived in the same place since 1976 and have no idea how the whole process works and the logistics of closing dates and moving and all. Like now do you understand why I was so stressed out when doing this? It’s a terrible thing to deal with.

and good luck btw hope the offer works out! was it accepted?

is there a home remodel/renovation/diy projects thread? I'm on a multiple front diy reno project and would love some advice/commiseration

xp it's going in tnite so probably won't know anything until tmmrw

nothing signed yet but looks like it's a yes

Grats man that's big

now i've gotta sell my house but i think it'll sell there's already interest

congrats!

congrats! offer getting accepted is huge!

is there a home remodel/renovation/diy projects thread? I'm on a multiple front diy reno project and would love some advice/commiseration

― Scam jam, thank you ma’am (Sparkle Motion), Tuesday, March 6, 2018 7:55 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think they are a couple but not really active. post it here imo

t’s both endearing and exasperating to hear my mom totally FREAK THE FUCK OUT.

My parents are selling both their home (bought in 1981 for like $35,000) and my grandmother's former home down the street. Since Gramma died, Mom's turned the second home into a glorified art studio.

So when the Zillow pictures showed up the first time, and all I saw were these painted mardi gras masks scattered amongst cardboard boxes, I felt like I needed to say something.

excellent

Flippin' SWEET

https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/450-W-Grixdale_Highland-Park_MI_48203_M37779-89409?cid=soc_shares_core_ldp_fb#photo16

Saw that yesterday. Everything thing in the house is part of the sale, including the 2 cars.

wow

what ends up happening w/ places like that? =

very few of them end up keeping the decorations just like... that.. if that's what you mean

yea i was thinking about the gnome house from a while back itt, or that artist's house w/ flesh-colored walls ... they aren't priced cheaply enough for investors to want to come in and clean everything out

I'd double-check what they actually sold at, sometimes the listing price for a home someone really loves can be... enthusiastic

• Not a lot of punch parties there.

• Macrame ceiling.

• I've got 50 more photos to go?

• Feng shui of sleeping in corners

• Minecraft stairs

• OMG Elvis stage

• CARS

https://i.imgur.com/Zp155BJ.jpg

But would you really want to buy a house from Richard Milhous Nixon? That's the biggest question.

on the house front:

had someone out to check my water line yesterday and it qualifies for replacement under my water line insurance policy (yay!)

couple reps from a roof/siding company came out to give me an estimate on replacing those things, which I should find out in a few days

cool! what kind of siding are you gonna go with?

same company did insulated vinyl on a house around the corner, but I'm strongly in favor of fiber cement (hardieplank). that's what my garage is, and I can't get over the idea of vinyl being bad. I think it's fine now, but past experiences have biased me

got a guy here rn ripping out some truly awful carpet. laying down a fancy tile floor instead!

nice!

I can't get over the idea of vinyl being bad. I think it's fine now, but past experiences have biased me

ha otm

i love wood siding but hardieplank seems really cool, you have the look of wood without the vulnerability

we're done with big projects right now. exterior painting and finishing the attic sucked up all of our money so we wont do much for a while. next big thing will be redoing the front porch floor and supports, prob in 2-3 years. i have some small projects i want to do - paint a couple hallways/bathrooms, paint our front, rear, and side doors

the exterior of my house looks sooooo baaaad right now. like I had a whole new garage built and driveway poured a couple years ago and put it off again, but the more visible front the street part has flaking paint. the back of the house, the siding is practically falling off.

also rectifying the situation where whatever geniuses messed with the roof in the past just kept adding layers of shingles. I swear there's a fourth layer (!) under half the roof that crumbles if you touch it

haha wow. when we lived in boston the folks across the street remodeled their entire house, when doing the roof they removed so many layers of shingles that the house actually lifted slightly once the weight was removed! crazy

our siding sucks too. we did some patchwork carpentry repairs, which helped. scraping and painting helped too. but a lot of that wood is just old and rotted.

We're getting our place painted this summer, which fucking blows in terms of money spent to the amount of enjoyment I'll get out of it but the paint is kind of messed up and weird in lot of places so it has to be done. We're also kind of limited because the place is made out of concrete block (meaning weirder to paint) and has an addition with vinyl siding (which can't be painted) - meaning we have to paint it the same color or else the vinyl part is going to look totally different and kind of stupid.

what color is the vinyl?