Past of History

[mxmiller]

I was thinking about renovating / saving a Historical House, in N.C. it is currently registered with the national historic society.

The size of the house is about 6000 SQFT.
And of course does not have AC. (Would eventually like to get this in. The 2 Main areas I have seen, (Of COurse Have not had a home inspection done yet. are a few spots around the Crawl space (bricks are falling out.) and the other one is the 4 Big (abotu 18in around) need to be replaced.

Is there any through on what I would be looking at (Either getting it fixed by a contractor and possible cost).

[Bruno1949]

Being a registered historic home all exterior ‘improvements’ will probably come under some sort of council vote or at least a lot of paperwork. This will complicate, delay, and increase the cost of any repairs visible from the outside. That could include everything from the type of fence or the kind of sidewalk or trees and bushes you can put in, to the color of the trim.

As for the falling foundation it could cost anywhere from hiring a brick mason to reinstall the original bricks, fairly cheap, to replacing the entire foundation after you jack up the huge house to get to it. That could cost $100,000. There is no way to tell from your description. No matter what, restoring a home like that will cost many many thousands of dollars.

It won’t be quick. It won’t be cheap. It won’t be easy. Figure on years, not months.

If the foundation is failing then the rest of the systems are probably failing too. New wiring. New plumbing. New furnace or boiler. New chimney and roof. Rotted or damaged studs and joists and window and door frames. The list can go on and on. Without a building inspection and full report you have no idea what you are looking at in the way of time and cost. And neither do we.

[Bruno1949]

The walls are solid. The house is straight and true. The floors are flat and level. It had a brand new furnace and water heater and AC breaker panel. It’s not a registered historic house, just a beautiful old house in need of some TLC and updating. It sat empty for two years and was a VA foreclosure.

Property cost: $32,400

New roof: $17,500

New front and back doors and storm doors: $1,500

Chimney repairs: $4.500

Electrical repairs: $4,000 and I’m doing them myself and I don’t pay myself $60/hr.

Plumbing repairs so far: $1,000

Refinishing Oak woodwork in the entryway: $800

Refinishing Oak floors in four rooms: $5,000 or more. They haven’t been touched yet.

Replacing the kitchen completely: $4,000 using reclaimed Oak kitchen cabinets from Habitat for Humanity resale shop and doing all the work myself.

I have more into the house for repairs/updates than I paid for the property itself. And I’m several years away from being done with the major stuff. I still have a bedroom with a caved in ceiling and bad structure, I have ceiling damage in the living room to repair. I have acres of paint to strip. I have a kitchen and back bathroom to completely gut and rebuild from the floor joists up.

And this was for a 2,000 sq. ft. house that was neither ancient nor in bad shape. People were living in it just a few years ago. Except for the roof there weren’t any major issues with the house.

Your 6,000 sq. ft. historic house with a failing foundation could cost $250,000 and 5 years to fix up completely. That is over and above the actual cost of the house.

Again, without a full inspection you will never know. And remember, an inspection will only catch the major things. Old woodwork is expensive to fix and refinish. Old plaster is expensive and hard to repair. Old windows and doors are never energy efficient. Old plumbing and wiring in the walls is going to be expensive to replace/repair and may require a lot of wall and ceiling repairs. And historic or not, the house’s systems have to meet modern codes.

If you do all, or most, of the work yourself you can save a lot of money but you will be working on the house for a lot longer. And unless you really know what you are doing you can do more harm than good to a historic house.

I’m not trying to discourage you. I just don’t want you to think the renovation will be done in a year and cost $3,000. Reality is something you need to deal with. An old home can be a real treasure but it doesn’t come cheap or easy.

I knew exactly what I could and couldn’t do myself in this house. I knew it wasn’t going to be perfect in a year. I knew it was going to cost me a ton of money but even now I’m only at about 1/3 the value of the property. I’m well ahead of the curve here.

Only you know your abilities and your available money. Just don’t jump into the deep end of the pool without knowing the depth of the water, or your ability to swim.

[Author]

Posts