Next Project...

[Armistead]

A few years ago, mostly due to some health issues I was having, my wife and I sold out and moved to her home town. We bought a cheap house and few acres in the country. I've made some good progress with my nerve illness, at least it's stable, considering last year I was told I might live a year to ten years, hard to know. We both love history, old homes, etc., and have always wanted an old home to restore. God help us, we purchased this. Built in the late 1800's with 8 acres right on the edge of town. We paid $46,000.00 for it. For the most part, the structure and wood exterior are intact, really rather good shape, the inside, sound walls and beautiful walnut floors. Other than that...it's a total restore. I was a GC for years, later ran a a large commerical paint contracting business, so pretty much know what I'm in for...if we do it.

The man that built the house owned a large wrought iron business, mostly fencing, post, etc. His business actually sat on the original property when it was a few hundred acres. Why scoping the property and metal detecting, I found vintage wrought iron fencing and gates, some piled, mostly grown over by vines. If I didn't start looking hard I wouldn't have found it. This prompted me to buy the house. I have removed about 500 ft, but lots more. I suspect what I've found is worth about 20K. I'm also have about 40 70-100 year old plus large oak and walnut trees that will be harvested, about $15-20K.

The house is about 2900 sq ft. I'm gonna have the later additions removed, much cheaper that restoring, future electric cost, then secure the exterior structure, roof leak, etc....then a step at a time.

I'll sale the large flagpole to any Subsim member for a discount.:D

http://i651.photobucket.com/albums/uu235/Armistead1424/Armistead1424001/IMG_0551_zpsf8b21a6b.jpg
http://i651.photobucket.com/albums/uu235/Armistead1424/Armistead1424001/IMG_0547_zpsc993043b.jpg

[AVGWarhawk]

Great looking older designed home. Has character. Many new homes today have lost that character.

[fireftr18]

Nice looking house. Have fun with it.

[AVGWarhawk]

Do you have any more pictures? I would love to see more of this home. It has a lot of charm. Looks extremely inviting. Just reminds me of older times . When you start renovations a thread would be awesome!

[Armistead]

Yep.

I'll post more later and my friend who is a contractor plans to video the progress.

It's for sale if you want it, but price will go up as we work on it.:D It's really bigger than what we want, but once additions are removed, about 2000 sq ft.

[Sailor Steve]

Looks very nice, the property too. Eight acres is a lot from my point of view. :sunny:

[Wolferz]

Good looking home as compared to todays cookie cutter suburban dwellings.

I hope your health continues to improve to the point that you can take on a large project.

You and I share one common denominator. Living on borrowed time.:timeout:

I'm two years and counting beyond the average remaining life span of a stroke survivor, which averages around ten years.

All I can say is... What a drag it is getting old.:hmmm:

[AVGWarhawk]

Yep.

I'll post more later and my friend who is a contractor plans to video the progress.

It's for sale if you want it, but price will go up as we work on it.:D It's really bigger than what we want, but once additions are removed, about 2000 sq ft.

Location is everything! We just purchased a new home. It is new construction. Although a older colonial design with field stone fascia. Our last home was a semi-fixer-update home. We looked for similar but ended up having one built. The incentives to do so trumped purchasing a already standing home. Our plans are to live here for 10-12 years. Then we sell and make a outright purchase of a smaller empty nester ranch type home. Retire. At any rate, I really love the design of this home.

[Jimbuna]

Cool looking property...very nice indeed :cool:

[Red October1984]

Congrats and good luck!

Hope it all goes well.

[Armistead]

Location is everything! We just purchased a new home. It is new construction. Although a older colonial design with field stone fascia. Our last home was a semi-fixer-update home. We looked for similar but ended up having one built. The incentives to do so trumped purchasing a already standing home. Our plans are to live here for 10-12 years. Then we sell and make a outright purchase of a smaller empty nester ranch type home. Retire. At any rate, I really love the design of this home.

Location is everything. Our town died from once being one of the largest mill towns in the SE. The good thing is there was never large growth. Sure, we have a strip with Walmart, etc, but downtown is small, old 1800/1920 buildings. It's a very historical town with it's 3 rivers. I think the goal was for it to be a small historical town, but never quite got there. There are many large mills covering square miles just falling in, 1000's of mill houses, most of these became poor neighborhoods. Slowly many of these hoods are being restored. They're numerous old homes still standing from the 1800's, even some from the 1700's, not to mention dozens of restored plantations. Lot of Revolutionary history here as well. One thing for sure, great place to have metal detecting as a hobby.

[Father Goose]

I would say this project should keep you out of trouble for a while...but it probably won't! :O:

[u crank]

Well Armistead the next project looks very interesting. You know what they say, fun is where you find it. :O:

I did this once. Bought a hundred year old farm house, very cheap and gutted it to the frame. The results were very nice and it was our home for twenty years. Got a good price for it when we sold. We moved to be close to our Daughter and Grandson. One thing I said though was I would never do that again. If you have the skills and time the results can be very satisfying. I worked in construction so the know how was no problem but it was a lot of work for one guy. There were times when I thought I would never get it done.

Keep us posted and the best of luck. And the eight acres part sounds really nice. :up:

[WernherVonTrapp]

Beautiful house you found there buddy.:up: As AVGWarhawk said, older homes have more character, and personality. I love that covered wrap-around porch. Hope you're gonna leave that there. Hard for me to tell from the picture, but that looks like 3 large Oak trees in the front, and maybe a Norway Spruce on the right rear?
I'm glad to hear that you're doing better with your health. Any improvement is better than none. Keep us up to date on the repairs. I love old houses and have been in many of the old mill homes in Paterson. The wood working, moldings and carvings on some of those old homes is nothing short of astounding. I especially liked some of the old pressed-tin or cooper plate ceiling tiles I've seen. Anyway, best of luck to you and your wife with it.:yeah:

@Wolferz:
I've seen enough death of all kinds and between all age groups to say that we're all on borrowed time here.:yep::03:

[Platapus]

A house and 8 acres for $46K :o

I don't think you can buy a driveway for that amount where I live.

Good luck to you. :up:

[Armistead]

A house and 8 acres for $46K :o

I don't think you can buy a driveway for that amount where I live.

Good luck to you. :up:

In our area, numerous homes like this exist. The cost is not in the home, it's in how much it cost to restore them. The fact is many of them simply rot.

However, our county is overall a poor county compared to the others in NC. You can buy houses rather cheap. Many in surrounding richer counties are buying up houses and land here now, willing to make the hour drive to work in Guilford.

They key here with all the old neighborhoods is to know which ones are increasing in value, which ones are going down and buy as a neighborhood is going up. Just a mile away, the entire block is restored, houses cost 3-500K. This home is in between, one block is good, the one behind it is a mix of people restoring, but still many going to waste, but it's on the rise. For the most part it's in town, but with some land. In reality, it would cost about 300K to bring this house where it needs to be, with my connections and friends, I think I can do it for about 100K. That's with me and family doing a lot of the work.

[Jimbuna]

Sounds like a pretty cool investment :sunny:

If only I weren't so lazy these days, the wife and I are tinkering with the idea of moving into the countryside but I'd need to buy something that was ready to be lived in hence the price would be on the upper scale :hmm2:

[Karle94]

I too live in a house from the mid-late 1800s. It looks something like this:
http://img.akam.no/923/923997/original.jpg

It´s a classical Norldlandshus that were pretty common in those days.