This is our retirement dream home. Looking for something in a smaller community we fell in love with this house and could see the potential for making it a true family home.
There will be lots of room for children, grandchildren and guests.
Once we bought the home we have discovered all the perils of buying a home more than a century old.
Like how everyone here knows about knob and tube wiring but fail to disclose. Fixing that problem took us over a month of pulling the old and putting in new.
We were lucky enough to find out our home inspector was a drywaller and he came and repaired the damage to walls and ceilings for free.
We then began extending the drywall in the bedrooms to below the baseboards.
When the house was re-done in the eighties they found the window and base trim to hard to remove so a simple answer was to cut the lathe and plaster at the tops of said trim and put up drywall. This left either large gaps at the top of the trim or no top of the baseboards showing. Ugh!!
This repair led to replacing all outside drywall, replacing the vapour barrier and putting in proper insulation. While doing this we took off all the baseboards and scraped and primed and repainted them.
We did try to save the the window trim but it was to fragile and split so we will have to have new trim milled later.
While doing this we found a lot of wood rot around some of the windows. This is quite extensive and we will repair it when we redo the outside walls. Mostly to find out how far the rot has travelled on the outside walls. Such a poor window replacement job as the windows were placed too far in and drained inside the wall. IDIOTS!!!!
We have re-claimed most of the wood floors. This was no easy task and cost us a lot before we took over and finished it ourselves. There was a personable contractor who would look after some jobs for us while we were still in our other home. He charged per hour per man and material. I would not advise anyone to do that especially if you cannot be on site to monitor the hours they put in. He started with three men and decided he needed to add another man and still our son and I got more done than his crew did in the same time frame.
Contractors can be your lifeline or your bankruptcy find someone you trust to give you advice and don't go by personality alone.
So far we have discovered wonderful neighbours. People we were told were unfriendly or rude have turned out to be such a treat to have around. One supposedly cranky couple found out music we liked and play music every night for us. Including giving us a John Prine cd to listen to, so sweet.
This is the beginning and I hope to keep a log of our journey,
Hause Frau
There will be lots of room for children, grandchildren and guests.
Once we bought the home we have discovered all the perils of buying a home more than a century old.
Like how everyone here knows about knob and tube wiring but fail to disclose. Fixing that problem took us over a month of pulling the old and putting in new.
We were lucky enough to find out our home inspector was a drywaller and he came and repaired the damage to walls and ceilings for free.
We then began extending the drywall in the bedrooms to below the baseboards.
When the house was re-done in the eighties they found the window and base trim to hard to remove so a simple answer was to cut the lathe and plaster at the tops of said trim and put up drywall. This left either large gaps at the top of the trim or no top of the baseboards showing. Ugh!!
This repair led to replacing all outside drywall, replacing the vapour barrier and putting in proper insulation. While doing this we took off all the baseboards and scraped and primed and repainted them.
We did try to save the the window trim but it was to fragile and split so we will have to have new trim milled later.
While doing this we found a lot of wood rot around some of the windows. This is quite extensive and we will repair it when we redo the outside walls. Mostly to find out how far the rot has travelled on the outside walls. Such a poor window replacement job as the windows were placed too far in and drained inside the wall. IDIOTS!!!!
We have re-claimed most of the wood floors. This was no easy task and cost us a lot before we took over and finished it ourselves. There was a personable contractor who would look after some jobs for us while we were still in our other home. He charged per hour per man and material. I would not advise anyone to do that especially if you cannot be on site to monitor the hours they put in. He started with three men and decided he needed to add another man and still our son and I got more done than his crew did in the same time frame.
Contractors can be your lifeline or your bankruptcy find someone you trust to give you advice and don't go by personality alone.
So far we have discovered wonderful neighbours. People we were told were unfriendly or rude have turned out to be such a treat to have around. One supposedly cranky couple found out music we liked and play music every night for us. Including giving us a John Prine cd to listen to, so sweet.
This is the beginning and I hope to keep a log of our journey,
Hause Frau
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