My 25 year old daughter bought her first house in St Paul. The house was built in 1884, has good bones, and is built with 101% cedar. It needed all new mechanical work, but it was flipped and all the wood floors were redone and 100% of everything was painted. I am a maintenance guy for a mid sized printer, So game on. Finding out 3 months in ........it was going to be a long game. I am not a slam it out guy, more slow and meticulous which is good and bad here.
Well, It will be 11 months now since I started working on it and she still has not moved in. 2 months to go. I started out gutting the bathroom and found out everything was knob and tube from the basement up. My inspector and I were both fooled by the fully conduited basement electrical done in the very early 70's. They hid the knob and tube runs in the back of the metal electrical boxes and both of us did not catch it. He was almost worthless, as I found 10 things more then he found and all the things he found.
ALL the work on this house is permitted, as if she sells it that will bring that cost of time and permit $ back 3 fold with the butchered/hack jobs on a good chunk of homes around St Paul on houses $300,000 below. She has been paying her $1,450 mortgage/insurance power/gas for say a year.
So far I have redone all myself
Full redo of electrical from the meter box to a complete rewire and added a ton of extra outlets/switches all 12 ga except 14ga just for lighting runs. I had to pull 50% of the basement conduit wire because of nonsense wiring and too many common neutrals that wouldn't work with a new modern AFCI/GFCI combo breakers. Also 2 bedrooms I ran a total of 4) 20 amp runs for my daughters 3D printing business, with 10 printers, She also has a tattoo supply company she will be running here too.
All new copper plumbing, I am old school and work with copper at work, for air line runs, and I had to do a 12 ft run going upstairs with no support access, so PEX I thought was out of the question. I just finished an air line run at my works 3rd building, so my soldering skills were almost at a professional level when it came to do her copper work. The plumbing inspector even commented on what do you do for a living "you did this Industrial". You can do pull up on any of my copper work.
All new drain plumbing including the stack.
The only thing so far I farmed out since I am overloaded with work and kinda burnt out. Winter was coming soon, and the old furnace was in a red tag nightmare. I bought a new furnace and new inverter A/C unit with conventional A coil that I bought/supplied ( HVAC Direct online. 96% furnace ACIQ Brand (Carrier). I had Two new 8 inch ducts ran to the second floor ( I helped here). A co worker at my wife's works friend is a professional HVAC installer for 5 years. All he does is residential installs. His bill was $3,500 including all the tin. I saved $6,000 from the place that I was going to pick out of 5 bids. Plus, I was able to up my A/C unit to an inverter that I would assume the bided out would have charged me $1,000 to $1,500 more for.
Shore up roofing joists that a large group of squrrils chewed up years ago.
Seal up massive window leaks from un caulked widow trim that will need replacing down the road.
With all this so far, I have not checked the receipts, but I est. $25,000- $30,000++ just in "parts".
An online housing/realtor site "like Zillow"I forgot the name, that scrapes city permit sites as their thing, has put her house "up in value" between $80,000 to the first 3 weeks it was posted $100,000 more then she paid for it. Because they est. permited work added to the house. I have no clue if it is right, but assume the $80,000 upping is close on a good day. Since my labor has been "free Dad labor".
Added note, her appentices dad has his own construction company and she is paying him to do the bathroom drywall as I am fine with that, as I am burnt out.
Well, It will be 11 months now since I started working on it and she still has not moved in. 2 months to go. I started out gutting the bathroom and found out everything was knob and tube from the basement up. My inspector and I were both fooled by the fully conduited basement electrical done in the very early 70's. They hid the knob and tube runs in the back of the metal electrical boxes and both of us did not catch it. He was almost worthless, as I found 10 things more then he found and all the things he found.
ALL the work on this house is permitted, as if she sells it that will bring that cost of time and permit $ back 3 fold with the butchered/hack jobs on a good chunk of homes around St Paul on houses $300,000 below. She has been paying her $1,450 mortgage/insurance power/gas for say a year.
So far I have redone all myself
Full redo of electrical from the meter box to a complete rewire and added a ton of extra outlets/switches all 12 ga except 14ga just for lighting runs. I had to pull 50% of the basement conduit wire because of nonsense wiring and too many common neutrals that wouldn't work with a new modern AFCI/GFCI combo breakers. Also 2 bedrooms I ran a total of 4) 20 amp runs for my daughters 3D printing business, with 10 printers, She also has a tattoo supply company she will be running here too.
All new copper plumbing, I am old school and work with copper at work, for air line runs, and I had to do a 12 ft run going upstairs with no support access, so PEX I thought was out of the question. I just finished an air line run at my works 3rd building, so my soldering skills were almost at a professional level when it came to do her copper work. The plumbing inspector even commented on what do you do for a living "you did this Industrial". You can do pull up on any of my copper work.
All new drain plumbing including the stack.
The only thing so far I farmed out since I am overloaded with work and kinda burnt out. Winter was coming soon, and the old furnace was in a red tag nightmare. I bought a new furnace and new inverter A/C unit with conventional A coil that I bought/supplied ( HVAC Direct online. 96% furnace ACIQ Brand (Carrier). I had Two new 8 inch ducts ran to the second floor ( I helped here). A co worker at my wife's works friend is a professional HVAC installer for 5 years. All he does is residential installs. His bill was $3,500 including all the tin. I saved $6,000 from the place that I was going to pick out of 5 bids. Plus, I was able to up my A/C unit to an inverter that I would assume the bided out would have charged me $1,000 to $1,500 more for.
Shore up roofing joists that a large group of squrrils chewed up years ago.
Seal up massive window leaks from un caulked widow trim that will need replacing down the road.
With all this so far, I have not checked the receipts, but I est. $25,000- $30,000++ just in "parts".
An online housing/realtor site "like Zillow"I forgot the name, that scrapes city permit sites as their thing, has put her house "up in value" between $80,000 to the first 3 weeks it was posted $100,000 more then she paid for it. Because they est. permited work added to the house. I have no clue if it is right, but assume the $80,000 upping is close on a good day. Since my labor has been "free Dad labor".
Added note, her appentices dad has his own construction company and she is paying him to do the bathroom drywall as I am fine with that, as I am burnt out.
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