Jolt Country

We left off with our hero AArdvark moving into his new house in October.....

Oh yeah that's right! How did that go? Has the market and your life exploded?!

There is light at the end of the home improvement tunnel. So here are some before/after pix for perusal...

The old bathroom. Ick. Plastic tub surround like you'd get at a mall kiosk.



New happy bathroom. Replaced the tub removed the plywood under the plastic surround. Installed tileboard and real tile. replaced all the fixtures.

Ah, the kitchen. What fun.


The 70s. What a great time that must have been....



Double ug.


The new stove doesn't fit. Better take everything out.


You see that tile floor? That had to go, and boy was it unwilling to leave.


And Mostly, the new






Still need to install the new lights.

The bedroom closet, in beautiful duck green and white painted trim. Metal bi-fold doors.




Ripped out the carpet and accompanying dog stains. Installed a new floor. New closet doors and poplar trim all around.



All the old doors are the cheap twenty dollar hollow kind that they sell at bargain outlet stores. The new ones will be pine but nice, stained pine.

The back entrance from the garage.

Note the use of wallpaper to bring out one's inner redneck.



Had to build a new entranceway to accomodate the laundry room.


Rip down the wall and tear out the door. That's my garage back there. In January, to boot.


And the same wall after paint. Still have to do the power and wood trim. Nice new floor too.

Remarkable!

How...

How do you learn how to do things like this?

How do you do things?

Jesus dude, that's amazing! Have you ever considered flipping houses? That's just incredible!

How much work was involved in doing that bathroom? We would like to upgrade our shower and in my head pulling out the old tile and putting a new shower in and adding new tile should take about 45 minutes, although in reality I'm guessing it would really take 14 years.

That's incredible. I am rubbing my dick against the screen. You have taken a home that could have gladly appeared in Max Payne and turned it into something that nobody -- in either Max Payne or this BBS -- should rightfully be allowed into.

These pictures courtesy of

THE SOON TO BE OR ALREADY IN
MASSIVE DEBT AND/OR CHAPTER 11
AARDVARK

Jealous much, wheeled toad? Of course There's a mortgage. That's how people buy houses.

Thank you for appreciating, everyone. It's been sort of an uphill climb. We knew that going in so it was no surprise. What was a surprise was how nig-rigged everything was. The previous owner used duct tape for more house fixing stuff than MacGuiver ever did. There was plain lamp cord used for some of the house wiring in the walls. Any home improvements were simply laid over the top of the old stuff and nailed in. In short, it was a mess.Oo wait, here's an in progress photo that I forgot about...

The kitchen just before the old cupboards got ripped out. The pile of floor tile and other junk was about three feet high at one point. We had to buy a new stove, fridge and washer/dryer the day we moved in so we could live there.

The old garage door. Piece of crap, couldn't even open it.




And the new:



We also had to put on a new roof, but those pix are boring and most of it was done while I was at work so there's not much to see.

Re: shower tile. Get someone that can install it. It'll be cheaper if you pull out all the old stuff. We hired a guy to to the tile work (and some other difficult stuff) because I suck at it. Now, from watching him, I would be much better. Hopefully I'll never need that skill.

This is to be our last residence. The quote is "The only way we're leaving here is horizontally." Naturally we want to get it just the way we want. I could never do this fixer upper stuff for a living, though. It's taking a toll on the body. And there's still lots more to do. I have a whole music studio in the basement that's still unbuilt. After that there's all the outside work.

THE
WORKS WITH HANDS
AARDVARK

Tdarcos wrote:These pictures courtesy of

THE SOON TO BE OR ALREADY IN
MASSIVE DEBT AND/OR CHAPTER 11
AARDVARK

Vark just added about $50,000 of value to the house he bought. Do you understand anything about anything? You clearly don't. He could flip that house tomorrow and make a profit.

For someone of professes to know everything about every topi-- every NOUN in the world, the concept of good debt has amazingly eluded you. I'm trying to not give you a hard time, but you basically started it in the Wireless thread.

Oh, it's OK. He's making a joke on my sig. It only sounded like he was throwing a poverty curse on me and my family.


THE
ALREADY OVER IT
AARDVARK

Blargh I need to work on my house damnit

New window trim for the dining room. Two coats of tung oil and buff with steel wool when dry. I've moved the wood working area to the spare bedroom cause it's too cold in the basement, plus no more stairs.

A setback!

Because of all the cold and snow the ice damming on the gutters has caused a leak in the living roof ceiling.

I sort of knew it was coming when I saw how much ice was building up on the roof. We need about a foot of additional insulation in the crawl space. Probably hire someone to get up there and do it. My days of crawling around thru the trusses laying fiberglass insulation are pretty much over. Probably gonna get those roof heating strips as well.

RobB, you live in a six month glacier, what do they do in Co. to keep the snow and ice from joining you at inopportune times?

ICJ wrote:

Tdarcos wrote:These pictures courtesy of

THE SOON TO BE OR ALREADY IN
MASSIVE DEBT AND/OR CHAPTER 11
AARDVARK

Vark just added about $50,000 of value to the house he bought.

Well, he happened to do quite well in this case.

ICJ wrote:Do you understand anything about anything? You clearly don't. He could flip that house tomorrow and make a profit.

First, most home repairs return only about 70% of the amount of the investment, with kitchens doing better at perhaps 80-85%. Now, over a long period of time - usually 10 years - you can make back the investment as prices go up. Most people tend to move or refinance about every 3 to 5 years, so the odds are they don't manage to recover all of the costs involved. Also, if prices don't go up or don't go up much, repairs often don't do that much to increase the price.

Professional home buyers know you make your money when you buy the property, not when you sell. Buy it cheap enough and you can make money no matter how prices go in the future. But your average homeowner buys at retail or above, because they buy on emotion, and thus they pay a lot more.

ICJ wrote:For someone of professes to know everything about every topi-- every NOUN in the world,

Exactly where and when have I ever made, or even implied, such a thing? I simply state my opinions; do not think I have ever claimed any special extra knowledge of anything except on the two subjects I do know from experience, notarization of documents and computer programming.

You must get a lot of exercise from all the jumping to conclusions you make all the time.

ICJ wrote:the concept of good debt has amazingly eluded you.

Technically home ownership is not truly "good debt," which is defined as debt taken on for an income producing purpose. Buying a house to either fix it up and resell it based on the increased value, or to rent it out for more than expenses, is "good debt." Buying a house to live in it yourself is a consumption expense.

When the cost to finance a purchase plus taxes and insurance, plus possibly the potential tax benefits, are less than the cost of renting, then purchasing a property to live in makes sense. For a lot of people renting would be much less expensive or makes more sense than buying a place.

The big problem is people who buy a house depending upon the historical precedent that houses rise in value over time and expecting to use that potential increase in value, are the ones who get into trouble. True, over time houses do go up in value, but the problem is that they can also go down, and stay down, often for years.

My landlord has mentioned how the place we're living in is technically "under water" because he owes more on the place than it's worth if he had to sell it. But, in his case it's not a problem because he bought it as an investment property; the tenants (like me) pay the mortgage and the expenses, so as long as we pay our rent every month it doesn't matter that the property's mortgage exceeds its market value, because our rents do pay the costs.

Far too many people got into buying houses (that they themselves live in) as a form of an "ATM" machine where they could refinance and take cash out every few years as house values went up. But when values went down, and stayed down, some home owners could no longer refinance their house and could not afford it. I have a whole article on my blog from 2008 discussing the subject.

ICJ wrote:I'm trying to not give you a hard time, but you basically started it in the Wireless thread.

"There is no "try," there is only do, or not do." - Master Yoda

And in this case, you didn't even try.

Tdarcos wrote:"There is no "try," there is only do, or not do." - Master Yoda

I think you quoted Jackie Chan quoting Yoda.