The "Looking to become a homeowner" Thread

[George]

Nice. Hopefully you can avoid meeting the warranty company's lowest-bidding "hvac dude" with the 15 year old work minivan (as previously joked about in this thread) with five ladders strapped to the roof with fraying bungee cords and bubbling, purple window tint.

That's another crack at home warranty companies, not the hard-working people who fix our stuff.

The house next to us is for sale for the fourth time since we've lived here. They had an open house on Saturday and I assume an offer was (or a few were) made that day. Houses around here sell in just a few days, usually. Apparently that's common in the USA lately, and in part driven by investors buying private homes sight-unseen in the hopes of reaping ever-increasing rent revenue in the coming years and decades.

I'm working from home today and right now in their yard there's what looks like a family with two teenage boys (*shudder*) and an older guy who I assume is a home inspector prowling around and pointing at stuff.

[Yeti]

I haven't been getting much done at my place, but that's just how it is with work these days.

I did finally get the bathroom back together. New plumbing and shower.



Bathroom still looks like hell, but nothing short of a complete gut is going to change that, and ATM I just don't care enough. The bozo who put the drywall up in the 80s used roofing nails like they did in the 50s, didn't tape half of his joints and just slobbed layers and layers of mud, and made corners by simply scoring the back of the drywall and folding it.

The basement bedroom is finally done-done, since I moved all of the junk out of it and got the last bit of trimming and painting done in and around the closet.



I need to get a bed, tho.

I also decided to make use of the drywalled space outside the bedroom, so I slapped down some carpet squares and baseboard. Before and after:




The furniture is still at my parents house, maybe I'll bring that over this weekend. I also threw out the remainder of my moving junk and cleared the basement to a somewhat usable space



But none of that stuff really matters, because....GARAGE! And driveway:


Driveway is about 70 feet from the sidewalk to the garage slab. and 16 feet wide. My neighbor took the opportunity to replace part of his fence, which makes things look nicer.


With some concrete poured between the garage and house as well. I had them rip out the old walk and back stoop, which had sunk due to a subpar installation. In the continuing theme of every person who worked on this house from the 70s until I bought it being an absolute clown, notice how they ripped out a line of the cap bricks on my foundation so the stoop pour would kind of go in there. Terrible idea, and now I have to find some matching bricks to fix that before I can put some steps up. The siding damage was there when I bought the place, also a victim of subpar installation.

GARAGE!


Curbed 24x24 slab. Due to the slope in my backyard, the back of my slab is nearly waist-height from grade, lol. The garage is going to be nothing special. 24' square, 8' walls, 16' door on the front, 2x4 framing, and a gable roof. But it's a goddamn garage, which is all that counts. I'm having the sparky pull 6/3 out there so I'll have about 50 amps to work with, and installing a panel. I'll be insulating it, and installing a Mitsubishi mini-split heat pump. Eventually I'll finish the walls with half-inch hardwood ply, assuming that stuff ever stops being 50 bucks a sheet Special guest appearance by my neighbor's unfinished, highly illegal shed. I'm not saying shit about it, because eventually my garage will completely hide my view of his whole yard, but I have a feeling the inspectors who show up to look at my garage will take an interest.

[Crazed_Insanity]

Where’s the garage? I don’t see nothing!

Anyway, just used up a LOT of concrete!!!

Yeah, that neighbor’s shed is really something…

[Yeti]

IMG_2624.jpg

Framers started work today.

[George]

Looking good, Yeti.

[Crazed_Insanity]

Okay, yeah, it's beginning to look a lot like a garage!

BTW, may I ask how much does it cost to build a garage from the ground up these days?

[Yeti]

It costs Too. Damn. Much.

[Crazed_Insanity]

Covid caused labor shortages and spiked material cost, so I guess that’s expected!

[Cam]

Just before we had the new fence installed, we cut all the foliage away from the old fence for easy access. There was so much that we even rented a large dumpster to haul it all away. Unfortunately, the stumps of all the bushes and trees were left. We have been slowly digging them up, doing a little bit at a time. It's better that way, right? This morning, I dug up ten stumps on one side of the driveway. It took me about two hours and I nearly died. Wow, it was really difficult work. At one point, I lied down (collapsed, really) into the driveway from exhaustion. I'm fine now.

[Crazed_Insanity]

Gee…, take care dude. Please don’t kill yourself while killing plants!