That picture was from 2010 when it was listed as a short sale and foreclosed shortly thereafter. It has not been occupied except by a couple mice since. We have A LOT of work to do in this place to make it awesome and make some $$ on it.
We will be remodeling nearly every square foot of this place as well as building an outdoor living space.
I decided to start in the family room as there was a hot tub in there and it was hideous. I will be rebuilding and refacing the fireplace as well as all new electrical, carpet, walls, ceiling etc… Nearly a complete gut. I started opening it up and noticed that there was a good amount of ceiling sag to be corrected as well.
All three pictures combine for one huge room. it is 21’ x 24’ 8".
Before (from old MLS listing):
This is what I found in the wall (that 2x12 went further across, but it provided zero structural support. It was a heavy drywall nailer.
I called Anonymity (Dan) and asked him to come look at this horrible construction. He recommended ripping it all apart and making it right. So we did. Note how bad the sag is in that last picture. They had no joist hangers or any thing structural holding this together. There was a couple of 2x4’s nailed to the elongated floor joists where it meet the old roof line. This used to be the back wall of the house. My brother in law got to work tearing it all out while Dan figured out all of the measurements for the beam. I took down the fake beams and ripped out the existing electrical.
Once we got the 3 pieces of the new beam in we were able to force the ceiling and the upstairs floor back into alignment. It is nice knowing that the house is properly built, and this also allowed us to remove the single point of structure that was a 6x6 in the middle of the room. In the end we found some mold in the ceiling from the old roof leaking in, that has been replaced and the core issue fixed but due to the mold I decided to gut the room. I still have to pull down walls and the fireplace but that is for another less busy day.
I also started putting up recessed cans around the perimeter of the room as I plan on having multiple layers of light throughout the property so that you can easily adjust individual layers for the proper ambiance.
I will update once some more progress has been made. I have 3 weeks to finish this room as the carpet is ordered and that is our delivery time frame.
This is the second house that someone thought they knew what they were doing. What kills me on this one is I bet they had a permit and inspection. It is a very big addition to just “get away with”
I really didn’t want to move into this house, I just couldn’t swing buying it in cash lol. Also my oldest is getting to school age so we knew we would be moving out of the city. I still have other interests there and will be buying more houses in South Buffalo shortly. /troll
Yes, sort of. I am trying to get as much done as I can so that we will be comfortable. We are moving in the 1st of November so I really don’t have the time I was hoping for. The house is big enough that we can tape off one side, flip it then move to the other side.
I will let you know. I know that I have some stuff I need from there but a lot of it is coming from 84 lumber and my own office.
Nice! I have always had a thing for Tudors, maybe because my family moved out of a Tudor the day I was born. Lol Or maybe just because I like old euro buildings.
Lol I don’t understand ppl when they build shit. They could have just ran ceiling Joists the span of the room but instead they probably had 10x more difficulty doing it that way, while being completely wrong.
Or was that the part of the house they cut off ?
Either way still blows my mind.
Where you see the joists is where the house ended prior. They built an addition for an indoor hot tub :pat:and basically just cut out all of the studs and figured that with 2 - 2x4" header boards (not continuous either) and a 6x6" (pressure treated) post in the middle that it would all be ok. I literally couldn’t believe what I was seeing and that is why I called for help. I was hoping that he was going to tell me that somehow the 2x12 had a purpose but nope, he didn’t do that.
Also, the ceiling in the vaulted addition is not actually at the rafters, they lowered the ceiling by building a teepee like structure below the rafters to nail the drywall too.
lastly the old roof is still in my ceiling. Instead of cutting it back and bracing it over the foundation at the back of the garage, or the steel beam halfway between he garage and the back wall, they left all of that weight and snowload on the non existent old rear wall. I wish Mike Holmes was around, this would have made for good tv.
Edit: I forgot, the ceramic tile under and around the hot tub was thinset directly to the plywood subfloor. When the boards expanded and contracted like they are designed it caused the mortar to crack and the water from the hot tub to penetrate. Awesome work.
The family room is on hold until this weekend and as I needed to get my office ready for carpet. Both the family room and the office will be installed at the same time and since the office didn’t exist I decided to get it moving.I picked the smallest part of the basement for the office as I will be sitting 99% of the time and the ceiling is only like 75-76". The first step was to seal all of the walls even though they have proven to be very dry. I used two coats of the wet mud called drylok. That shit sucks to work with, my wrist felt like i jerked of 800 dudes not working middle out. Anyhow, that is done and tonight I will be spraying the ceiling white as well as installing foam sheets on the walls so that the framing and electrical can get done.
Also as a side note, it is good that I know electrical and have a lot of electrical equipment. We were sitting in the makeshift family room that is really the dining room and about 10:30 on Friday night last week the lights started flickering and turning off room by room. I ran down to the panel and could hear it hissing as I approached. The breakers were too hot to touch and after I popped the main and pulled the meter I was able to inspect them. They were actually melting!! I quickly changed out the panel and will now get the full service upgraded sometime in the next couple weeks. Priority one was keeping the house from burning down and getting the power back on. I don’t have any pictures yet but I will as it is a pretty clean job given that I had to work with existing wiring.
But really we know our time lines for everything. The family room got put on hold for a week due to the carpet being delayed and us wanting to get stuff moved in the house. It will be done by Thursday of this week (except the delayed carpeting) as we went all out on it today. The basement office will be done as well and the plumbing for the new shower upstairs will be roughed in. I will then sit down and determine kitchen vs. bathroom. I will have all of the pieces and parts for both sitting in the garage within 2 weeks from now as it is mostly all on order.
I will add more pics in the next day or so as we are currently putting in 12-15 hour days on this.
I can’t tell by the pics but, keep in mind if it is not a load bearing wall it does not need to be built like a brick shit house. Is it a gable end wall?
