The Money Pit

This is the house we fell in love with. Such charm. Such character. Look at the Georgian overtone and the great brick chimney. Such potential. So much room! This could be great.

$75,000-100,000 should give it a new face and life, right? Several professionals assured us that's what it should take. Uh, they all were wrong. I've watched a lot of HGTV where it seems that every remodel doubles in budget and time, so I was afraid in the back of my mind that it would end up being more like $150-200,000. Bingo! My fear was more on the money.

I have to record this account about our house, not for others to read and give me pity, but so that someday when this black (literally) hole that's sucking our money into it is finally finished, I can look back at this post and say, "oh, yes, I remember when it felt so bleak and as though there was no light at the end of the tunnel." Hopefully I'll be saying it was all worth it when we sell it for a profit. Pleeeeease let us make a decent profit! It's dropping with every check we write!

We rented the Money Pit (Tom Hanks, Shelly Long) on Monday, and I have to say, we're getting pretty close to the horrors in the movie. They begged and borrowed to buy the house, then found it had to be practically torn down completely to fix it, so they had to find more money to borrow, and live with leaking ceilings (we've done that), holes in the floor (been there), bad plumbing and electrical (yep, can relate to that), and write endless checks (so painful). The piles of dirt and junk in front look very similar to what's been at our place.


I'm going to chant their mantra, "The house is going to be great!" I've seen that movie about 20 times in the past, but it was Hyrum's first time. I used to show it to my Interior Design class when I taught school. It's a good one. We've already sunk $100,000 into this remodel and have at least that much to go to get it finished. We thought $100,000 would cover it, but when we opened the walls and floors and removed the siding, we found the damage was FAR more extensive than we imagined.
Here's what the ceiling looked like where they chopped joists for the upstairs plumbing.

Here's the rot on the inside of the master bedroom window,

And here's what the rot looked like on the outside once we pulled the siding off.


With how extensive the rot became and all the structural damage that occurred when they added plumbing to the house years ago, we had to hire contractors to do the stuff that was way out of our league. We're now stuck with a shell of a house that's a skeleton inside, and no more money to move on to the next step. We're off to see if we can get a construction loan now. Hopefully all goes well so we can finish this Money Pit! If anyone has $100,000 just lying around, I know where you can invest it! Ha ha.


I'm sad to announce that we will most likely be tearing our chimney down and not replacing it. I've been really torn about this decision and feel like I'll be tearing down the charm of the house, but it's looking like it will have to happen. The chimney has been a liability to the house from the beginning since it pulls away from the house so badly, and after we stripped the wood off the fireplace mantle, we were shocked to see how bad it was all caving in. The exterior bricks need to be tucked (mortar shoved back in the cracks) on the top half, and to save it, we'd have to have someone bring in elliptical piers to support it, which means drilling down to bedrock or something...anyway, it will cost us a fortune to save it, or we can rip it down, recycle the bricks onto my front porch, and put in a gas fireplace that doesn't require a chimney. The contractors have been encouraging us to tear it down for a while, but I kept refusing. When they opened up the wall around it yesterday and showed us all the rot around it, that was the last straw. It's fine with me if I never see another board with termite damage, beetle damage or dry rot for the rest of my life.


Thankfully, the house is almost sealed up and weather proof now that the winter rain has hit. I'll have to post pictures once I take some. It's usually too dark for good pictures by the time we get home from work.