We get to do the inspection this week. Right now it’s really up in the air whether we’re buying this house or not. The prelim inspections have discovered 20k of repairs that need to be done up front, before we occupy or get the house insured. And you know, we were already at the top we were willing to pay.
But we like the house and don’t wish to give up, so we’re going to travel to do the full inspection. Then I’d say it’s renegotiate or back out.
Either way, house reno is in my future. I’ll confess that if it falls through it gives me more time to finish what seems like a crazy amount of work, as opposed to a month. Waggles hand. You know, if a month at least I JUST do that, till it’s done. If six months or so… well, nine, as we’d probably list next March, it’s going to be a long slog of interfering with my work. The second also has the risk that the bubble will crash. I don’t think it’s a bubble, honest. I think it’s equalization of the prices across the board. But if the commie whores of the Junta work hard enough, they can crash ALL of the economy, and then selling a house becomes…. difficult.
I don’t know. This is going to sound stupid, but I can’t tell what the future will bring, not even in broad outlines, so I’m letting Him drive. Normally I shy away from that because I firmly believe “G-d helps those who help themselves.” But right now I can’t tell. So– I’ll do what I can and …. stop grinding my teeth. (If only.)
Speaking of tools of the trade, I should buy a spray gun and an orbital sander. I’m tired of doing everything uphill, in snow, both ways. I have spending the money, but this will be a pain WITH tools, much less without.
In either case cursed book still not done. And if this falls through I’ll have to admit it’s really good at making me waste time — 2 weeks so far — on things that go nowhere.
I’ll let you guys know on the house. Meanwhile I should be working, not randomly socializing on line and grinding my teeth.
For now there’s not much I can do but try to finish work so I’m ahead of that for whatever future problems surface.
And yes, finish the damned cursed book.
Sorry, not quite up to a post today. I feel like everything is up in the air, and possibly about to crash down on me.
According To Hoyt 
That counts as a post!
And I should be doing a lot of things, including finishing the rewrite. I’m likely two thousand words from done, so how come it’s like finding hen’s teeth, and then pulling them? But 1400 words in today, and in the meantime, I have baked a cake to make a trifle, and made 32 devilled eggs for appetizer for the North Texas Writers, Shooters, and Pilots Association. The casseroles are already made and thawing for a quick pop in the oven, the pudding is chilling in the fridge, and… here I am back online, instead of slogging through an emergency refueling scene.
If you can rent in the approximate neighborhood of the New Location, that sure would make chasing New House a lot more convenient. Long distance real estate hunting sucks. (Yeah, I’ve done it too.)
We can’t. Not until this is ready for sale.
My normal method is rent, move everything THEN finish setting up house, but that won’t work long distance, and rents in CO aren’t fun, unless the three of us are willing to cram into a studio.
Is PODing the packed stuff an option?
We’ll storage unit it. But the problem is more that we’d need to come back to paint walls and finish floors….
Man is a tool using animal, and orbital sanders are useful tools.
Yes, yes they are.
So is the drillbrush. The first time Calmer Half brought the set home, I thought “Is this a solution in search of a problem? The bathtub needs scrubbed, so lets add power tools?”
And then I tried it. And realized just how fast you can scrub down a bathtub surround and tub with a power tool. And now I love it.
Good luck with the new house and negotiations.
BIL and his sister did give about $4k back to the buyers to get their mom’s house sold (beyond what they had to do to rehook and update the electrical connection to the house, before it went on the market, windstorm + tree took out house power line). Buyers wanted a lot more. They said no, but wanted to give “something back”. Last item to settle the estate. Taxes had already been filed, what the house sold for was irrelevant, as the estate appraisal had already been completed and filed.
I’m kind of wondering if I should put the word out that we are looking for a buildable 1/2 acre lot with infrastructure to see what pops up.
This will I suspect end up being upward of 25k. The problem being the second payment for Guardian is delayed, and I have no clue how much it will be. So we can’t count on that. Which means until this house sells we’re strapped. And we still have to put around 25 to 30k in this house, to finish repairs that needed to be done, but weren’t worth it till sale possibility. (Like, the driveway needs resurfacing. The window needs replacing. the ice maker is not working.)
Orbital sander–yes, absolutely. They save both time and effort.
Spray gun? Maybe, but probably not. My experience with them is that they are finicky–you spend the time you would save using the tool fiddling with the tool to get it “right.” Also, you will need to fiddle again the next day because the humidity changes, or the wind blows, or whatever reason. They are finicky. I would only bother with one if I had a lot to paint in one day. That is not normally how I work. I usually only paint one or two rooms in a day, not a whole house.
I used to have one. It was okay.
We have the entire house to paint. It’s green and really intense yellow. It works for the house, but it doesn’t work in pictures. So, we almost didn’t come to see it. It looked in pictures, as husband put it “like cinco de maio threw up all over the walls.”
We haven’t changed the color because, as I said, it works when you’re IN the house.
BUT.
I have one of the smaller models of Graco airless sprayer, the kind that pulls from a hose stuck in a bucket full of paint. It was great when I had to paint the entire interior of the house white in a week (it was all mustard yellow walls and dark “rustic” stained pine ceilings and during the first winter was just dark and depressing as hell), or when I had to paint one long exterior wall after pulling the vinyl siding off.
I found that the only finickyness was getting the right size nozzle, and then making sure all the parts were cleaned afterwards. I first bought the type that has a built in pan on top for the paint, and it just didn’t work at all, though, so I think you really need to go to the “prosumer” level if you want good results.
I also recently acquired one of the handheld types but I haven’t had a chance to use it more than once. It does look fiddly, in that you need to adjust the paint viscosity and fiddle with the nozzle to avoid spattering.
If it’s “paint a house” check out the local hardware box store to see if they rent airless rigs, i.e.: https://www.homedepot.com/p/rental/Graco-PRO-Paint-Sprayer-249914/309006826
I bought an airless sprayer the last time I painted this place and it made the under-eaves stuff dead simple instead of horrible, and I used it on some of the exterior walls that have fiddly bits board and batten, but most of the house is stucco and masking that off to spray took longer than just using rollers. And that sprayer has sat in the garage since.
Can the sellers be persuaded to kick in a bunch of the fix-it money? I had to do so when the inspection showed that my chimney didn’t quite survive the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, though the stainless liner kept it from collapsing and/or starting a house fire. That was only a couple of thousand to fix it, but we ended up paying for it. We left other items (not considered critical) for the buyer
I’ve seen nice work done with a pro airless sprayer, but my preference is a roller with an extension handle if practical. I try to avoid working off ladders. Between the roller and a sash brush, I’m good. OTOH, we go for totally a bland color scheme, for the field, satin paint a tiny bit more yellow than pure white, and for the trim, semigloss in pure white.
Home Desperate has gone over to combined primer and paint. Haven’t tried it for interior usage, but I’ve developed an intense dislike for the exterior paint. To the point that I’ll probably hit the Sherwin-Williams store and have them do a color match.
I have a Rockwell Speedblock sander that’s in dire need of new bearings and a replacement power cord, as well as a Makita sander the same size. OTOH, the mini-club store does a weekly drawing and I won a Porter Cable random-orbit sander that takes the velcro-type perforated discs. That’s now my go-to sander. IIRC, it was about $60 a few years ago.
Whether sellers can kick in money is the question.
If they can’t kick in money, will they lower the price to meet the estimated cost of repairs?
I’ve done blow-and-go, I’ve done spray-then-backroller, and once I paid a guy to roller then entire exterior. That was amazing, and long-lasting.
The airless sprayer works better for interior, IMO, but I mostly use it for cabinets, furniture, varnish, etc.
How do the colors look if you bleach out the photos a bit?
Yeah, I’d fiddle with the color settings.
Look, the colors are weird. I just like the weird color we have.
Or part of why I painted both houses by hand. Mine, the exterior stucco had little texture and had been sealed with something like clear acrylic (tho I put about a quart of cyanoacrylic glue into the cracks where the texture layer was separating… worked great), and it was fast and cheap to paint (5 gallons for mid-sized house); probably took less time than fiddling with a sprayer vs wind vs dry air, especially the north wall where I had to work WAY the hell up on the extension ladder.
The rental, tho… the stucco had been TEXTURED!!! and probably had one spray coat of “stucco paint” (which absorbs but doesn’t make a good surface) 40 years ago… and it was like painting a sponge. Probably half the wall area of the main house, but it took 13 gallons. And I had to do a lot of fiddly working it down into the TEXTURED!!! spots that birds could nest in. Sprayer would have needed 2 or 3 passes and still a lot of handwork. So just did the durn thing by hand, and got it all in one pass. (And didn’t have to cover the windows.) Thank ghu for Behr paint.
Ah, like popcorn ceilings?
The Behr primer/finish paint doesn’t seem to work well under some circumstances. Maybe a corner case; we’re above 4000′ and severe winters are common. I have a couple of buildings that need to have their south face repainted, while the other faces are more-or-less OK. OTOH, some of it is the color. The house is yellow, and it fades, but not quickly. The others are a beige/tan color, and it’s tough. Fast fading.
I’ll get a couple of gallons of a decent primer and redo the relevant faces before using up the Behr paint. (I need to check the regional not-Depot home center; they sell Behr, but maybe not the primer/finish variety.)
The yellow paint and earlier coats on some of the sheds are the Behr before they did the primer/finish mix.
I wish there was some way to document the fade-to color for exterior use in advance – this place was painted a light orange and it’s faded to basically a pink on all sides, without regard to southern exposure. I repainted a section of the front porch, which never gets any sun, after a repair and ended up repainting the whole thing because of the fade mismatch.
I painted the eves trim with a really dark green; about 3 shades deeper than Hunter. The house has been repainted a couple of times, but AFAIK, the 2006 trim paint is still going strong.
It doesn’t go with the beige, so when I redo the eves on a couple of sheds, I’m going for white.
I had a Wagner Power Painter start on fire in my hand, while it was still spraying paint. Nothing exploded, but I consider myself lucky and definitely do not recommend one.
finish the damned cursed book.
Can you drive out the curse by getting the book blessed? [Crazy Grin]
Seriously Sarah, take care. 😀
I think if I finish it it breaks the curse. It’s what happened before.
If it helps, you, me, and pretty much everyone I’ve talked to is pretty much in the same boat: “What’s going to happen next? No idea. Swing for the piñata and pray.”
Heck, just last night my rabid plotbunnies gave me a starter image for a xuanhuan fantasy. *Headdesk*
(Speaking of – if you want some political plotting done right, with flying martial arts, and a good but driven guy at the heart of it who’s out to reform the empire and does it, you might check out Nirvana in Fire. It’s up on YouTube at least.)
So. Yeah. Grinding away on Oni the Lonely, hoping to just keep going long enough for my brain to kick back into gear to write faster!
Never be afraid to walk away from a deal. The house we were going to buy in Texas turned out to need some significant work. I made them a counter offer, they said no. So I dropped out and eventually found a better place for the same price.
(oh, and three years later that other house is STILL for sale – for less than I offered them).
If these people won’t deal, we walk. We like the house, we love the neighborhood, but we’re too old to ignore material concerns, honestly.
I always assume there’s double what we see in things we don’t see. And honestly right now the house is uninsurable.
Assuming double is wise. *Shudders* You don’t want to see the wreck we had to deal with. Yes, theoretically, the house could have been fixed up for sale. Did Sib and I have either the time, money, or – most critical of all – energy to do the fixing? Nooooope.
Be picky. Be very picky.
This. Repairs on my century old hardwood framed beast cost more than I paid for the house, and honestly more than it is worth. I like the place, but there may come a time when the place doesn’t like *me* anymore, so…
Location, location, location. On the other hand, it sounds like you may be taking a starring role in, “The Money Pit”. Don’t know if you saw or remember the movie.
As you know, everything’s negotiable. But, with a little time, you can find something just as good and without the added anxieties.
I like your hubby’s sense of humor about the paint.
I wish you success whichever way it goes!
Uninsurable-as-is makes me think there’s probably a lot of deterioration that the inspector couldn’t see, cuz one part doesn’t get that bad without other parts being equally damaged or neglected. Double the repair estimate is probably realistic.
Realistic minimum.
Yeah. Something needing that much work may be functionally unrepairable. You’d be better to find a vacant lot with utilities, and a repo’d modular (last I looked, starting at about $18k plus foundation).
Trying to think what would generate 25 grand worth of needed repairs… a year ago the estimate on replacing my roof with metal was $5500.
And if it’s foundation — that will often recur, because it’s not the house at fault, but rather the ground beneath it. We looked at a house like that… had been fixed, needed fixed again; real problem was the hillside was slipping.
Roof. I can’t imagine why your roof would only be 5500.
We just spent 20k on ours, plus the 10k the insurance kicked in.
So — I have no idea. Different states?
Weird, I had my roof done in metal last year, with the chimney cladding as well, for about $21,000. 2100 square foot single story house. I do wish I’d spent another $2k on colour though, the shiny galvanized metal is visible from space!
Montana. Contractor lives right down the road and is a one-man band. Materials from a local company that specializes in metal cladding (but mostly roofing). Cost us $1200 three years ago to reroof what we call the “shotgun shack” in metal, and it’s about 600sq’, tho a simpler roof and I did the prelim cleanup myself.
35 x 40 foot bard with leaky high-rib roofing. Tore off old roof, put on a deck with 7/16″ OSB (back in 2017!) and re-roofed with lockseam. Total cost was $17,000. Dead simple roof, with the only penetrations a couple of braces for the woodstove chimney.
I’ve done my own roofing, the house and 4 sheds now, but I swore I’d never do it again after the 3rd shed. Swore a lot when I realized I needed to do yet another roof. That one was lockseam, but I bought the materials (got a deal, because it was from a job the customer abandoned, leaving the roofers stuck with the inventory). Actual roofing material (10 x 12′ roof) was $336 least year, plus the OSB decking and the waterproof membrane. Should last longer than I will.
I don’t think the state allows metal roofing, honestly. CO doesn’t.
I’d double check to see if all metal roofs are disallowed, or only corrugated and high rib roofing. Those use a lot of through-screws per panel (typically 3′ wide) and can leak after a while. (Sometimes, the next rain…)
Lockseam is a different type. Clips are screwed to the deck and hold one end of the panel. The other is a snapfit over the adjacent panel, and these run 12 to 17″ wide. The clips are covered by the other adjacent panel, so fasteners are protected. The only exposed screws are for trim pieces, one or two per panel at the bottom, and a similar number for the ridge trim/cover. It’s pretty much leak-proof, good for 30-50 years, and is good in high winds. When we actually get snow, there’s little to keep the snow stuck on the roof.
Oregon code allows lockseam for residential usage, while all the types are allowed for outbuildings. OTOH, roofers tend to “forget” building permits… In the back of beyond, most anything can be roofing material.
We just re-roofed with good-quality asphalt shingles, and the estimates all came in at about 30K, which is at least 50% higher than last year. One floor, 1860 sq ft plus garage. The roof had to be sheathed with OSB, whose cost has gone insane, so ouch. Even for California, it hurt.
Wow. It’s almost like the solar roof shingles and needed refinements might now come in less expensive!
We thought we had a roof problem. Roof was replaced long enough ago that we don’t exactly remember *when* it was replaced. (We think mid-late-’90s.) Which means if there is a problem, it needs to be replaced. Roofer, thank goodness, said it looked good. We have it done right when it was done. Taken off old shingles down to the plywood, replaced any bad plywood (none), sheathed, shingled.
We may look into the solar shingles for part of the roof. It flat out makes no sense to apply them to the whole roof, as two of the 5 sections, are shaded by upper story section, and a huge Maple (most the year), again cost VS traditional shingle. A lot will depend on the extra costs to install to feed excess power back into local power grid for credit (will still have a fee because our “power company” also provides water and bills sewer fees for local government).
Looked to see what I paid (just material, I installed it) and it was just under $60/square and was $1,929.21 for roofing, trim, cap, and screws shipping pallet and trim box (pallet was 11 or 12 @ 20’2x4s and box was 4 @ 16′ 2x6s that I kept and were $254). The same prorib today is $58+ a panel for the longest sections, of which I got 31 which run $1800+ alone.
2009 materials cost for a house re-roof. The OSB deck was good, so it was shingles, underlayment and trim. For a 40 x 44′ house, cost was about $2850 plus dump fees. I took the old roof down to the OSB and redid the vent to a continuous one. Didn’t have delivery of materials (rooftop was not an option, nor smart in this application), so it took most of a month to finish the job. (Hammer and loose roofing nails. Slow, but it works.) 30 year architectural shingles.
Pain pills extra.
We had to do that in ’88, or rather they declined the offer, we walked away rather than offer more. The house we were renting went on the market with the house next door. Sure we “low balled”. But that is because we had no intention of keeping the house next door intact (it was coming down). The two houses had to go together because the other house (original farmhouse) property line for the house we were in, went through the farmhouse’s kitchen. No conditions from our end, but we definitely low balled the offer. Their real estate person really discouraged them from taking the offer. Not the “ideal” property for us as the backyard faced west (really hot), and other less ideal layout. But not moving was a bonus and somethings could be changed. Ironically, it took a year to sell, they got what we offered within days of it going on the market.
The house we bought we were rushed on. We lucked out. Are there items I regret? Yes. But we’ve also been here 32 years … so not THAT bad!
I saw a LOT of that when I looked at houses in Texas. especially the “bedroom” locations around DFW, but I ran into some further away as well. One in Alvarado was overpriced for so long eventually it got foreclosed, and the bank paid to have it torn down, sold it as a lot with utilities then it sold, and a Modular was put on it.
I feel your pain. We had to do a bunch of work to the house before the FHA would even think about financing it, with no guarantees that they actually would. (Spoiler: they did.)
I’m still waiting on documents for the woodsy property. It took the title company ten days to come back with the preliminary title report, but the report mentioned CC&Rs which were not described, so they had to be ordered, and it’s looking like it’s going to take another ten days…
There can’t be anything too terrible in the CC&Rs but I have to cover my bases. I just hope the sellers don’t get cold feet while I’m waiting, because once I say go all the financing is in place and will only take a couple of days to finalize.
Oh, and I found the perfect exemplar cabin: https://vandervort.com/projects/orcas-island-cabin
“Dear architect, I’d like one like this, only easy to build and not as expensively trimmed.”
What are the three men in your life doing? You should let them do the grunt work with the tools and toil and sweat while you concentrate on your dulcet prose!
This country’s not going to save itself, you know…
One’s off doctoring. …
ah. Yes. Well, the two men are giving it all they got. The third is states away with his wife.
But most of the things that call for both work, and figuring out how to make it work is my job, because I’m the handywoman.
Well, that makes more sense then. My current “emergencies” don’t hold a candle to yours; but as I’m getting my new PC ready for a new job, waiting the results of a biopsy that might spoil my hoped for “XX Years Cancer Free” party, and wishing the Hoyts would just cave in and move to Texas anyway, I came across the worst book price I’ve seen in a long while:
The Conquest of Space $775.00 for 160 pages.
Why has this not been reprinted?!?!?
Wait… I remember now…
I hope you don’t get your party spoiled.
Thanks!!!! We’re all in God’s hands anyway, so from that aspect, it’s all good. I’m gonna party like it’s 2021 anyway. 🙂
Well, kinda quietly and in a socially-distanced way…
Another round of good luck from me and the kitties! Wish I could do more for all of you than that but you know how tired and brain fogged weekends go, especially when there’s quite a bit of room cleaning to be done all around.
Not related to the house directly, but even more reason to hate what the left is doing to this nation; even Memorial day is anathema to the left. Note, there are multiple student quotes in the below piece that perfectly exemplify how colleges are indoctrinating students to be Critical Race Theory Marxists who hate the USA. Memorial Day of course originated after the Civil War to memorialize the Union soldiers who died, and thus these leftists are denouncing those who died to end slavery.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/students-petition-cancel-memorial-day-imperialism
this was the way I felt when I was waiting 9 months for the apartment to open up– and then they told me it would be another year… However two weeks later I had an apartment and less than a month to move out of one and into another. Hugs–
*feels guilty for making a discord and providing a distraction to Sarah
Interesting to read you saying that you literally cannot sense where the future is going. Previously you’ve written that you had various senses of where things were going (e.g., the country going seriously wrong in 2020).
For what little it’s worth, I share that sense of uncertainty. A great deal may depend on what results from the Arizona audit, and it’s anyone’s guess whether that will audit be allowed to go to completion or whether we’ll see “accidents” happen instead.
–
Most visible in the news.
This is one of the questions.
New Hampshire is creeping into reports, but they are trying to skim over it.
Their problem there is it was a Dem who demanded a recount that found the issues with votes actually going to them, and other Dems instead of the Repubs as marked, so they investigated closer (maybe it was the folds from mailing the ballots back and forth? . . .) and found even greater issue s (no, unfolded ballots were worse in that district, reading wrong like 60% of the time, and always to the Dems advantage)
I can’t tell where it’s going to be safe for me personally.
If you think I said the country will go seriously wrong in 2020 …. well, I could see it, it was an observation, not a prophecy.
It will get nasty in 2021, but only in places. And I’m having trouble figuring out where I would be safe.
I hope you are correct that it is going to get nasty, but only in places. The Left seems bent on a full societal collapse, and if they are successful, then no place wil be safe and where you live, and what you have will be a function of what you can take and hold.
maybe, but all the left will take and hold is the inner cities nobody wants
“The Revolution will be unevenly distributed…”
Thing is, what they seek and what their actions will accomplish are two different things.
In general, realizing ideas is hard. If it is new, you tend to /need/ theory or to be paying attention.
They’ve succeed in making particularly noxious savages of themselves.
But they don’t understand civilization and savagery. They believe in incorrect theory, and blind themselves to reality. They no more understand American civilization than a fish understands a bicycle. The things we worry about being broken are sometimes entirely omitted from their list of things to destroy. And they confuse announcement of policy with implementation of changes.
They don’t understand how many Americans carry civilization on the inside, and or how many object to racial warfare for reasons of their own culture. So, every time an official institution is corrupted, and makes a bunch of woke press releases, they expect it to turn everything over. If they notice it does nothing, they are shocked and horrified.
Don’t know if it would work for you but mobile homes are still cheap (quick search 20 or more from 1 to 10 grand), add a wanigan, or even a his , her and whathisname’s cheap trailer & live therein on the property while paycheck to paycheck finishing the house. We, more or less, did that and were debt free except land payments, which we paid off in less than 5 years.
Though OK, I admit if I were to try to do that today I’d also have to buy a 40 foot conex to store and protect the books until I get the shelves up. -grin-
No. It wouldn’t.
Least I can do is put in a word with Him to put a thumb on the scale for you. Come to think of it, that’s the most I can do.
What a lovely way to put it. I’ll add a thumb as well.
I get a strong feeling this is going to be a really great story when the dust settles.
You are scaring me a little. I never realized that house hunting could be so darned stressful. I lived in apartments from when I left home until about 40 years ago when I bought a new mobile home. About 1990 I sold that and moved into to the house I live in today.
I have to get out of California so I guess I’ll just have to deal with it.
prayers for you and yours, Sarah
be aware that lumber prices are ridiculously inflated this year, and factor that into repair estimates
Incredibly inflated.
Mahoooosively inflated
So today, in Denver’s craigslist someone was giving away a pallet — 10 sheets — of 8 x 4 OSB. I confess my first thought was “it’s a trap” but upon reading more carefully I realized this person was clueless. They had this box in a garage of a house they bought and they wanted it gone.
I checked the address and thought — accurately — “we’ll never get there in time.”
I was right. It was gone within half an hour.
They are lucky there was no combat. Yeesh – free?
Yep. Free. I mean, I have stuff to do to this house before we sell, and I lusted in my heart for that ply. But there’s no way I was going to go across town fast enough.
We know. So far the repairs needed aren’t lumber….
We travelled last week to look at houses in an area and state we like. One seller outright lied about her house- said it was not on a floodplain when it clearly was and ordered her realtor to say the same. It was also 1/4 mile downriver from an earthen dam – in earthquake country. Later on we got to talking with her about her reasons for moving and she mentioned that the neighborhood was evacuated due to flooding. “But it did not flood at MY house!”
That sounds like grad school apartment #1. The first time the area flooded (because of development upstream, a flood-pond full of sediment, and such) my ground-floor apartment was spared. A decade after I moved out, another flood hit. This time the entire complex was under six feet or so of water. I suspect the flood pond never got dredged in the meantime.
To be fair, we’ve lived in a house like that. We couldn’t step on the street. We’d be carried away. BUT we didn’t even get water in the basement.
Buying a house with problems never ends well. Unless you have a thorough inspection, an accurate assessment of future costs, and a strong understanding of the stress repairs can cause, you’ll end up resenting your decision, and find you don’t like the house that much. If the owner doesn’t want to negotiate, leave the problems for someone else.
It’s a Victorian. It’s going to have problems. All of them do.
Though to be fair the new houses we bought were worse.
BUT yeah, if owner won’t negotiate, we walk.
House painting ARRRG!
Got remarried, new spouse had rented her home, but we were moving back into the home. Me “mr. fixit,” volunteers to repaint the home before we moved in. Bought airless sprayer – Campbell-Hausfield. Bought heaviest paint I could – the weight comes from the solids content. The higher the solids content, the better the coverage. Typically that means one step below the most expensive paint line. I used at the time Devoe, now I’d use either Sherwin-Williams, or Benjamin Moore. I painted 6,000 ft/day (wall + ceilings). The killer was a large bedroom with a raspberry color on the walls. The heavy paint (off white) covered it in one coat!
Today I’d buy a HF high volume, low pressure sprayer on wheels with a place to hold a 5 gal paint can. There are pressure rollers on poles connecting to the spray engine, which let you do even tall ceilings easily. Outside, I’d use SW – Emerald, expensive initially, but covers sooo much better, so you wind up saving in the end. Better coverage means the sucking sound from stucco stops quickly.
Masking, don’t use cheap masking tape, it does things to your mind, not to mention the paint job! HF upper quality items are worth buying, yeah, I know they’re from China, but while I’d love to buy German Festool painting, sanding, and finishing products, it ain’t gonna happen! It’s still true, there’s no substitute for cubic dollars <- old hot rod truism.
P.S. I also wall papered a number of rooms, as well as floated some walls with drywall spackle, then textured it by wetting it with a spray bottle and drawing a wallpaper brush gently down the wall to produce the ridge effect.
I have painted every single one of the houses we’ve lived in, including the first (rented) one. He gave us a break on the rent for painting it because he’d just moved out of state. (He sold it after we left 2 years later.)
Trust me…. I KNOW all of the pitfalls, etc.
The one thing I’ve never managed to do successfully is hang wallpaper.
I’ve done that. OCD helps. A lot.
nothing except maybe scaphism compares with the intense regret one feels on encountering, arguably by one’s own gross negligence, the stakes at the bottom of an artfully disguised money pit. ( I trusted a realtor.
Don’t do that!)
If we buy this house, it will be our fifth. TRUST me, we know. There is always buyer’s regret, and one of the houses WOULD have been a money pit, if I hadn’t done almost everything by hand, myself.
As is, I’ve fixed two almost-new houses on everything except structural. And I’ve practically rebuilt two victorians from top to bottom.
On one of the almost-new houses (we were the second buyers) we trusted the inspector, which we went out of our way to hire as not part of the realty system, being a local contractor/building trades person.
THAT was our worst mistake. He dismissed most of the work around the house as “oh, that’s easy” and gave us ridiculously low estimates.
One of those…. well…. there were parts missing, while he told us it was merely mis-installed.
I’ve since come to the conclusion contractor’s license or not, he knew less about building than I do.
You sound like we would rather hire you than the endless grifters who advertise minimal services at outrageous prices and then either do shoody work or don’t show up.
I have been through buying houses that need rehab several times. Here are my thoughts, sage advice, and voice of experience.
1) If you were working with a realtor, and they showed you this house, they knew it needed rehab. If they did not warn you, you need to ditch the realtor if you do not buy the house, and ask for a discount on their usual fee if you do buy this house.
2) Unless the seller is willing to come down the entire price of the repairs, if not more, move on. There is likely even more that needs repair. Unless you are about to sign a mega movie/TV deal and have money to burn. On the other hand, your money is about to be worthless so spending it now for something of worth is wise.
“On the other hand, your money is about to be worthless so spending it now for something of worth is wise.”
Came to that realization myself. Had some dollars put aside, put them into new windows and a driveway, as at least the windows will pay for themselves in energy savings, and the driveway was falling apart so much as to be a near code violation. Paper’s going to be good for decorating the walls at this rate. Still going to hold real money as long as possible though.
No. We press ganged a realtor into showing it to us. The disclosure said nothing about the roof.
Remember I do a ton of this stuff myself.
While I am not religious as such, ‘cursed book’ has me pondering exorcism. This is probably that thing which is known as a Bad Idea.
I’m picturing Ox with Book, Candle, and Bell…..
It probably says something (likely not good, or at least a bit strange) that my first realization of such things was chasing down the meaning of an H.R. Pufnstuf episode title, “Bell, Book, and Candle.”
Unless you have been ordained a priest, the proper response is a Prayer for Deliverance, not an Exorcism.
While it might look as if I was suggesting it, I would NOT be the one to perform such a thing. I know better than to meddle at that level directly.
Damn it… Someone posted an “oxercist” comic a year or two back and I wanted to repost it, but I can’t find it now. I hate missing a perfectly good setup like that. 🙂
Putting on my professional painter hat for a moment:
Spraying interiors is fraught with peril. Persnickety preparation is your best defense. MASK EVERYTHING. Get a masking gun, get paper, and get the proper blue masking tape in 2″ and 1″, get 2″ two-sided tape to stick down your drop sheets. Use plastic under the drop sheets so the overspray doesn’t penetrate the weave of the shitty canvas and get on the floor.
Do not attempt interior spraying unless the house is empty and you have either masked off all the floors/windows/trim/kitchen counters or there is wall-to-wall carpet that needs thrown out. Then you only need to mask the windows/trim/kitchen. OVERSPRAY IS A BITCH. It will get in -everywhere-. I have seen this elephant, and measured his tusks.
If there’s carpet you need to save, you tape plastic to the walls and then put a full-coverage tarp over it. If there’s hardwood, you tape down rosin paper over it, then tarp it. Two layers gives you some hope of avoiding overspray and extra work cleaning it up.
Colours. If you are doing white textured ceiling with colour on the walls, spray the ceiling and roll the walls. This is a time saver, particularly if you get a 4′ extension wand and use an airless. Every time you have to climb and move a ladder slows you down, the extension wand means no ladder climbing. Some people seem to do okay with using a piece of cardboard or something as a spray shield to separate the colours, I’ve never been able to make that work indoors. Overspray gets everywhere. Outdoors, that works awesome. Keep the paint off the bricks with a hand-held shield, you can spray a whole house very quickly. I commonly sprayed a whole wood siding building in half a day.
Suggest going white walls and ceiling. Doing that means you can spray everything right down to the floor, trim and all. Give the trim one coat of white semigloss if necessary to make it pop a bit. Do this by brush, it will be faster/cheaper.
These machines and guns etc. can be rented. For one house, I recommend renting. The cheapie Home Depot thing will suck and frustrate you. Rent the big one, the Graco that looks like a tractor. You can run two guns off it.
Spraying a textured ceiling. Use an undercoat of Kilz or a cheap oil based primer, even if it has been painted before. Because popcorn is THIRSTY and it will drink up gallons of latex paint. If you undercoat with oil base or alcohol base (Kilz) then the latex will cover properly and you don’t get that yellow bleed-through from dirt/smoking/cooking oil/whatever. Suggest Kilz, because you can re-coat in a couple of hours vs. a day with oil. Drying time is a bitch.
Wear the full-coverage paint mask with the carbon filters. Even for latex. Your lungs will thank you later. The little paper filter mask will not get it done. You have been warned. Strongly consider the full-face 3M unit with the face plate and tear-off lens covers. Getting paint mist in your eyes sucks, and Kilz isn’t good for you.
Exterior spraying. Put plastic sheeting on every car on the street if you can. Some shithead will try to get a free paint job off you otherwise. Paint overspray does fly quite far in a breeze.
Orbital sanders. Waste of time to use on walls, just pole-sand them with a drywall screen or that 100 grit sandpaper that comes in a roll. If you feel like you need an orbital to take down filler, you are using far too much filler. Skim it, don’t blob it.
Orbital sanders generally, for the one house I’d get the cheapie Harbor Freight one. It’s “good enough” and if it dies on you it is returnable for a new one. Get one with dust extraction, more on that later.
Good orbital sanders to last a lifetime, I have three or four of them kicking around here. I have a air powered gear-drive orbital, that thing removes material very fast, not such a nice finish. I have a very nice random-orbit air powered one, that one gives a nice finish. Those two were cheapie ones from Princess Auto, same as the HArbor Freight ones. Totally good enough for fine furniture, pretty cheap and I have had no trouble with them. For industrial use they might break/wear out sooner than the super expensive ones.
I have an electric random-orbit Milwaukee, that one I don’t use as much because I have the air tools, but it does a nice job and it comes with its own box and etc.
The above three all have dust extraction, which is very nice indeed for working inside the shop. You really want a shop-vac hooked to your sander, it makes life better. I have a couple of cheapie random orbits without dust extraction, I only use those outside for rough jobs due to the clouds of dust.
Hope this helps.
I would be very leery of any issues that make the house uninsurable until fixed. Those don’t sound like do-it-yourself items, they do sound like “will need inspectors to sign off” things, and until they are done, the whole investment is at risk. Even if the seller covers the cost, are they willing to get the work done before the deal closes? While whatever insurance they have is still in force?
Have you considered scheduling an extra day so that if you decide to walk away, you can maybe look at a couple other places in the area while you are there? Or back closer to your original desired location?
yes. Which is why they would have to cover the cost.
No. If we can’t get this one, we’re going to punt back to working on this house to go up for sale in March, if there’s a March, a US and a real estate market.
I’ve got it! The Leftroids are playing Jenga with the United States. How many pieces can they pull out before it all falls down?
They all want to pull out different pieces, and none of them even begin to understand what they’re breaking.
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Governments can’t create prosperity; at best, they can refrain from destroying it.
see today’s post.
“for sale in March, if there’s a March, a US and a real estate market.”
And that is the real question as the Marxists drive for full societal collapse. If you have insight, we would all appreciate it.
I am reminded of the story from the fall of Roman Gaul: A household including owner, family and all the slaves is booking down the road in overladen wagons, abandoning the estate and lands in the face of the incoming barbarians, trying to save what they can. Suddenly a rider approaches at full gallop from behind. The little column is worried, he looks like a barb, but it’s just one guy, and they can’t outrun him, so they stop. The guy reins to a halt, jumps off, and hands the majordomo a parchment, who reads it and hands it to the owner.
It’s an offer from one of the inbound barbarians to purchase the just-abandoned estate for basically pre-invasion market price, and the rider has the bags of gold to pay for it, but he need to get the owners signature to claim clear title.
Point is, it is not at all likely that something like a clear title deed or even a mortgage will become moot in any conceivable US time of troubles. Yeah, Bill Gates might want to relocate his post-divorce domicile away from the Seattle Peoples Autonomous Zone, but Bill has ex-Navy SEALs and Secret Service guys on his security contractor team, so he’ll be personally fine. Normal folks and normal properties, especially away from the urban hellhole cores, will be fine, and things like real estate will continue, even if the face colanders come out.
Very interesting, detailed, response. Much to think about if we face something short of full on societal collapse where nothing civilized survives and it is back to the caves time.
c4c
I feel like everything is up in the air, and possibly about to crash down on me.
I HOPE that is normal because I feel the same way. Nothing surprising or terribly bad in the remote inspection report, which I received this morning. Loan is in underwriting. Pictures will be taken here next week; listing to follow. On the bright side, Zillow is looking good.
We decided to go with the “free hot tub” moving option. Moving companies were quoting over $10,000 (sometimes a LOT over). U-Haul is under $1000 per one-way trip. We’ll make two U-Haul trips and use the savings to buy a hot tub (after upgrading the electrical service).