fixer-upper house woes

[DisneyDog]

We've been in our house for 2 1/2 years. It's about 35 years old, and we bought it knowing that it needed a lot of work. The people who lived there before us, for 20 years, never updated anything and took terrible care of the house (I don't think they cleaned for 20 years!). So, we have been slowing fixing up the house since we moved in. It looks sooo much better, but there is still a lot to do.

I got an inheritance recently, and it was given to me to get a new kitchen. It's not a lot by kitchen standards, but we will be able to do most of what we wanted. We were supposed to have the old kitchen demolished on Friday. The cabinets are almost ready, and pretty much everything has been purchased. The old cabinets are all emptied out and we are ready to go. The soffits (sp?) have been removed so the new cabinets can be larger than the ones we currently have.

Then, Thursday morning, I noticed a puddle of water on the kitchen table, coming from the currently exposed pipes above. The 2nd bath is up there. We had just finished our showers. Plumber comes out Thursday afternoon and we get the bad news -- everything surrounding the tub is rotted out (previous owner had apparently caulked over mold instead of cleaning it up!). We need an entire new bathroom before we can start the kitchen.

The contractor who is doing our kitchen is now, instead, doing our bathroom. I had to call my mom and beg a loan. Our master bath shower has been out of commission for a year because the pan is rotted out (we were planning on replacing that FIRST, oh well), so we have NO shower at all now. We are going to have to drive 15 minutes every night to shower at my dad's house (who has offered us no help, but could more than afford it -- another story altogether).

The kitchen will be done, but not until the bathroom is completely redone. Oh well, at least I'll have a brand new bathroom and a brand new kitchen when this is all done. But, I really wasn't prepared for all of this craziness!! (and, our Disney trip is probably put off even longer now!!)

Yikes!!

[offwego]

I feel your pain..this happened to us to except a month after we had finished the kitchen..and it was our only bathroom.

I hope this works out for you soon. Best of luck to you in figuring out how to do it all within your $$ :grouphug:

[DisneyDog]

Oh, it's not within our budget at all. That's why I had to ask my mom for the money. My grandmother passed away recently (which is where the kitchen money came from), so my mom just handed over (loaned) the extra money from the estate. I'm sure my grandmother would have given it to me directly, had she still be with us. Thank heavens my mom's side of the family is generous! Otherwise, I don't know what we would have done. So, it's all paid for, it's just a matter of living through the renovations. Honestly, I don't know what I would have done without my mom. I do my share of complaining about her, and I am going to try very hard not to do that anymore:blush:.

[brownie]

Ah, the joys of owning a home! The husband of the couple we bought our home from was a "carpenter," although you'd never know it from the work he did in the house. We've been in our first house for 11 years now, and boy have I learned a lot. I've also learned he wasn't electrician or a plumber!

Hang in there, and get the jobs done right. It probably hurts to spend all that money right now, but it'll be better in the long run.

[thrillme]

I'm a homeowner too and I feel your pain as stuff on a much smaller scale is starting to fall apart around me. I've tried doing some of the repairs myself but...alas...I'm going to have to bite the bullet sometime and call out the professionals (right now with all our Texas rain I'm finding some seals around windows and outside lights etc are due for some recaulking BADLY)

But...I don't know if you've ever seen "Money Pit" with Tom Hanks and uh...err...uhmmm...I don't remember her name...maybe Shelly Long??? It might be a cute movie to watch.

[PirateLover]

We weren't in the same boat as you exactly, because we had plenty of money to do our remodeling, but we had a sub-contractor cut out on us. He just stopped showing up! This was when we were having our whole downstairs wallpapered. When the paper got put up it was just really ugly and we didn't like it, so this subcontractor convinced us to fight back with the main company. They took it down and he began papering the rest of the house... but then he never finished! The main company had to come back and finish it, all the while bad-mouthing the sub-contractor and how we listened to him.

He was also supposed to do a bunch of other stuff for us like re-do our bathroom and kitchen and and he actually left all him materials at our house! A Shop Vac, ladder, various tools. But he never returned another call. Oh well. So we had to find other people and ended up living through things being "Under construction" months past the time when we thought everything would be finished. It's hard but you'll get through it.

[DisneyDog]

Thanks for the support, guys! It's amazing how much we've done with this house within the past two years...and how much more there still is to do! I figure, by the time we finish, we'll have a brand new house!

We've replaced the hvac system, got almost all new windows (still a few more to go), removed tons of wallpaper, got a new stair rail, all new bedroom closet doors, tons of painting (still more to do), lots of electrical upgrades and all new toilets, we are working on replacing all of the internal doors...and the outside is an embarrassment, but it will have to wait. It's a nice suburban neighborhood, and all of the houses look perfect except for ours. But, I guess the neighbors are used to seeing an eyesore there for the past 20 years, so another year or so won't phase them. I just hate living like that.

I just keep thinking, at least the house is big and we never need to put on an addition!