Elf's 3br cottage budget reno begins

[RumpledElf]

We're in, we have the low budget from hell to fix the house from hell, so here's the lowdown. I'll add stuff as we do it to this thread.

Purchase price - $65,000 + $3000 in setup fees (bank, stamp duty etc)
Current value - $96,000 if you believe the rates notice
Current rental - $60pw

We have up to $10,000 to spend on this project so it's all going to be low, low end stuff and DIY. The endgoal is just to bring the house up to a decent habitable standard and rent it, we aren't planning to make it look like a home magazine house, it would be out of place in the town. So we're aiming for:

Reno spend: $6,000-$10,000
Final value: $110,000-$140,000
Final rent pw: $130-170pw (we do not have a say in what the rent will be)

Estimated costs so far:

• Floors: $1,800-$2,500 (treated particleboard floors, some H2 joists, polyurethane, screws, fill for screw holes)
• Kitchen: $3,000-$3,500 (flatpax kitchen, sink, upright electric oven, 4sqm of tiles to hallway, no room to put a big splashback as there's a window above the sink, already have a modern mixer tap)
• Combustion heater: $800-1200 (optional but would be a better idea than having tenants using the open fire)
• Paint: $500-$700 (10xfill-in-a-tube, patching plaster for holes we will make while removing 1,842 nails randomly placed over walls and dubious electrical THING in one room, industrial strength undercoat for gloss walls in kitchen)
• Incidentals: $1,000-$2,000: (sugar soap, paintbrushes, toilet seat, bathroom door latch, door furniture, window locks, pre-made curtains and/or blinds, load of crusher dust, rubbish removal, lightbulbs, laundry trough, rear gutter + downpipes, rear fascia, rear verandah posts, letterbox, trim for vanity, screws to tighten down roof sheets, insect screening to replace shadecloth currently in screens, mowing/weedwhacking)

Think these are about right? The house is structurally sound, the subfloor is sound, the roof is rust free but could use extra screws, no cracks in walls wider than about 2mm to fix, ceilings don't sag (most are miniorb), all skirtings/architraves are good, and the bathroom is tiny and a horrible colour but we don't plan to do anything much to it as it will just blow the budget for minimal rental return. We have a fireplace surround and several spare doors in our shed to replace the missing fireplace and broken doors.

I have put a 'before' photo of each room online at www.giraffian.com/wolfe but here's the bestest ever horrible 'before' shot you've ever seen That's a disconnected water-heating system there through the side of what is apparently a really top-of-the-line woodstove. The house has solar hot water now.

 

[luce.rocks]

Hey! I've seen a 'before' shot similar to that before - in my gallery! I just want you to know: I feel your pain, even before you've started. Will be watching this thread!

 

[BoatBoy]

Cool, I love a good project and I must say love the combustion stove.

The old girl had one in a place out past Stanthorpe (near Texas) and it always put out oodles of warmth and hot water (gets down to -5 out there).

Food always seemed to taste a bit better as well.

I'd lkeep it if you can, but if a rental, tennants may freak.

Dave

 

[Property Mogul]

Wow...you are a braver man than me but then I haven't reno'ed anything. Good luck, I'll be watching with interest and hopefully learning along the way. Maybe you'll inspire me to have a go. Care to share where it is?

 

[Petal]

Wow that kitchen looks like it has "good bones" and if you reno aound that lovely looking combustion stove and it surroundings, the kitchen will look fantastic.

 

[RumpledElf]

Woodstoves are really common out here - I have one in my own kitchen. Practically everyone has a wood fire, we get to -10 or so here in winter and airconditioners don't make the grade.

Its in Jamestown in regional SA. Despite what I paid for that house, it is *not* a cheap town. Most expensive real estate for miles around and new houses going up by the dozen - we had to give way to a brand new Rivergum house being delivered under police escort on Monday.

 

[RumpledElf]

We found an upright electric stove and a letterbox - in the father-in-law's shed. He's a licensed electrician and a hoarder, so whenever he replaces an oven in someone's kitchen ... So that saves us a few $100. We went to look at flatpax kitchens in the flesh, discussed freight options, and it looks like a full new kitchen is going to set us back $2150 including freight and (free) appliances and (free) electrical work.

Also got told that finished particleboard floors are 'modern' and got my idea for a colour scheme seconded by the only property investor in the family, who thought that it was 'wonderful' that we'd bought a second house, and gave us lots of advice about property management (including an interesting suggestion to offer the house direct to the HR department of the company who is building the power plant that is causing the local rental shortage), asked about subdivision potential, told us it sounds great, asked for all the facts and figures about the house, renos, rental in the area, expected value after reno etc and lots of stuff we'd already considered.

Someone else in the family was horrified that we'd bought another house (how can we afford it!), then told us that we should move into it because its a better area (er yes maybe, but its a MUCH smaller house than ours and I don't want to be a sardine), then told us we shouldn't be looking at a new flatpax kitchen because we can't afford it, we should get a secondhand kitchen instead (er no, by the time you factor in transport to *find* a second hand kitchen and then transport to get it back here secondhand kitchens are actually very expensive, and a passably modern secondhand kitchen isn't going to fit our huge eat-in country style space) and also didn't ask anything that you'd expect, like 'how much did you pay for the house?' and 'what is the kitchen going to cost?'

Incidentally I also recently bought myself a brand new couch and got similar reactions from the same two people. I've been after a huge quality red leather lounge to go with a red leather daybed for some time now, so we ordered one a few months ago and it arrived last week. Person A tried to offer us their old, tired, worn-out 80s grey fabric lounge. We said we had a new leather one on order, the reaction was just to tell us that there's no way the shades of red would match. Person B went 'ooh, that's lovely', asked us what it was like, how much it cost, what kind it was, what the freight was like etc.

FYI, the new couch is virtually the same shade of red, appears to be from the same manufacturer as the daybed despite the 3 year gap in purchase times, has the same stitching/feet/finish and looks bloody brilliant and is really comfortable. Not that person A would be interested in all that, and will probably be equally disinterested if we manage to pull off doubling the value of the house and renting it out high enough to cover both mortgages, which is what we intend to do.

/rant

 

[Rockstar]

Also got told that finished particleboard floors are 'modern'
/rant

Hey Elf,

Do you mean fixing and polishing yellowtoungue chipboard as a flooring material?
Is that what you will be doing?
Ian

 

[Alabex]

what a great looking project... can't wait to see how it turns out!

 

[sailor]

Good on yer RE, this is such a fine project to do a reno. It sounds like heaps of fun, and an opportunity for everyone's creativity to rise to the fore.

Yahoo Groups http://au.groups.yahoo.com/ has heaps of different mobs. I subscribe to the free-cycle groups in my area. (They are all over Oz.) People put up stuff they just want to give away, others post for things they need. Often you'll find window frames, carpets, guttering, all sorts of stuff that's too good to dump. Might be worth a look in your area.

 

[Tizzy]

Well that stove is amazing!! I couldn't bring myself to take that out. I'd want to keep it. It looks like those Aga stoves. Can't wait for the "finished " piccies Elf.


...and I had a giggle when I read this comment about the front of the house on your photos site.


"Maybe plant 2xsomething treeish, deciduous and flowerish in the front yard"

 

[RumpledElf]

Do you mean fixing and polishing yellowtoungue chipboard as a flooring material?

Its 22mmx3600x800 tongue and groove 'structure floor' termite treated particleboard. Replacing really damaged baltic with it. We can't really afford to recarpet or do laminate floors over the entire house straight away, but we might in a year or two. This is an *extremely* tight budget reno.

The wood stove is staying in, just getting cleaned up and having the heating system removed from around it. I subscribed to freecycle a little while ago but they don't have any lists in our area, so we're mostly getting things new.

Deciduous and flowerish probably means crepe myrtle or jacaranda, but to be honest I haven't even thought that far ahead, anything I plant now will be trampled by tradies ...

 

[Rockstar]

Its 22mmx3600x800 tongue and groove 'structure floor' termite treated particleboard.

Budget material - but looks nice Elf!

I used the stuff in my flat under our PPOR and it comes up looking like cork. Looked a bit plain at first but then it turns more golden fairly quickly as the lacquer ages. Sweet.

I used a lacquer with Tung Oil already added - and rolled it on. Went on real easy.

 

[fernfurn]

what a dear little house, this will come up fantastic with the shadecloth/metal removed from the front. I can see it now painted in two shades of cream with a tree in front, and maybe a little hedge along the fence of cheap or begged lillipillie cuttings. Most of the work seems to be in the back verandah. Why do you have to cut the roof back, that seems an enormous amount of work, for what gain?

 

[willair]

Think these are about right? The house is structurally sound, the subfloor is sound, the roof is rust free but could use extra screws, no cracks in walls wider than about 2mm to fix, ceilings don't sag (most are miniorb), all skirtings/architraves are good, and the bathroom is tiny and a horrible colour but we don't plan to do anything much to it as it will just blow the budget for minimal rental return. We have a fireplace surround and several spare doors in our shed to replace the missing fireplace and broken doors.

Very solid house,all the roof frame looks hardwood,but that kitchen is a standout,just have to ask is this a hardwood floor because apart from a small re-level in the r-h side of the stove area you could save money and bring the floor back to life..imho..BTW well done with the low entry price i think you will do well, just add 20% on your quotes properties like these always seem to cost more because something always pops up that you are not prepared for....willair..

 

[RumpledElf]

That photo is the 'good' side of the back verandah, the other side has a half-smashed 'built in' cupboard and the slate flagstones on the ground have subsided really badly so we need to pry them up, put fresh sand under them and re-lay them, and I'm going to gravel the area behind the verandah too so there is a decent outdoor patch.

It won't take much to cut the roof sheets short (5 mins with an angle grinder tops), the 'wall' with the shower curtain on it on the left of the photo is a montage of random junk so it'll only take a few kicks to remove. We considered taking it right back to the kitchen wall but the window is louvered, the wall is the only cement sheeting one in the house and the plumbing runs through the verandah roof so it'll work much better taking it to the noggin just past the plumbing and rehanging the gutter, as it still leaves a decent sheltered bit by the back door and it'll protect the window with about 90cm of eave remaining. Its a bit hard to explain - suffice to say the current verandah is just so terrible its not worth trying to fix. The main problem is that it is so low, and it faces south so it makes the kitchen really dark. The kitchen is the second lean-to on the house and the back wall there is only 2.1m high. The verandah is illegally low. The attached photo might give you an idea of the quality of the construction, it looks like a pretty recent addition. The laundry in my PPoR has similar construction, just ... worse.

The logic behind removing the verandah is just that its not essential, it devalues the house and it will cost too much to fix it to comply with the order. We're removing anything that is uber-dodgy (ie, listed on the order to improve) - the back verandah, the weirdass metal and shadecloth at the front, the disconnected woodstove water heater, the outdoor dunny (also orange btw), the disconnected cold water supply that used to be windmill driven and all the crazy dodgy wiring out the back that randomly weaves its way in and out of the rubbish that the verandah is made out of.

Although, a pergola back there would look *really* nice. Maybe later We're on a tight budget because we're trying to pull $6000 cash out of thin air (ok, we're just putting off my PPoR bathroom reno) in a very short space of time without getting a loan, so anything that falls outside of being absolutely essential just isn't going to happen. Yet.

 

[RumpledElf]

Very solid house,all the roof frame looks hardwood,but that kitchen is a standout,just have to ask is this a hardwood floor because apart from a small re-level in the r-h side of the stove area you could save money and bring the floor back to life..imho..BTW well done with the low entry price i think you will do well, just add 20% on your quotes properties like these always seem to cost more because something always pops up that you are not prepared for....willair..

Oi, don't be posting while I'm posting

I've got an older, less square and more anciently constructed PPoR (and I had another one before that) so I'm well aware of how the little buggers always get more expensive. There's a leak in the roof on the r-h side of the stove, the flashing around the chimney is gone, its loosened the cornices there and dropped the floor. Easy to fix, but the damage is already done.

All the floors are baltic, we had someone out to quote on repairing/polishing them but the quoting guy basically went 'argh, can't do anything with those'. Only one room has a full floor of boards, but the board in the center has this huge splinter taken out (its about 4 foot long, 2 inches wide and 1cm thick) and someone has tried to fill the hole with polyfiller or something, so not even that room can be polished. One room has at least two joists missing, but the bearers below the joists are fine. The kitchen floor has a large hole BURNT through the middle of it. Burnt. The whole room is coated in soot. I really don't want to know how they did that. So, the whole house is getting done with coated particleboard, we'll put laminate timber floors in the living areas ... later.

 

[RumpledElf]

Went there today and *now* I get what the problem with the cold supply is - there isn't any cold water! We missed that, since all the garden taps and the toilets work. The header tank that was filled by the windmill IS the cold water supply. It was obviously more recently fed by a pump from the underground tank, but the pump is gone, the header tank has a hole in it and the underground tank is dry (none of the downpipes go into it). Its probably been like that for years. And someone seriously lived in this house without any cold water?

However, its trivial for a plumber to fix, since the mains water cold goes within inches of the dry header tank cold, and all the toilets are on mains cold.

The joists under the floors are a mix of timber that is so eaten it resembles matchwood held together with termite spit, brand new pine, and untouched hardwood. The bearers that are on the subwalls are untouched too. Termites are such fussy little things.

 

[sailor]

RE is the place septic or sewer? just asking cos when I renovated the Beach House, I had to put in sewer and fill in the septic tank. Then we discovered the old septic pipe up the outside wall was made of asbestos. #$%^& Hope you don't have any of that lying around...twas a nightmare to get rid of.

 

[RumpledElf]

Septic, there is no sewer in the town. Seems to be a remarkably shiny new septic system installed too, the bank must have done it while the house was vacant, it disappeared off the order to improve between 2007 and 2008.

FYI, if I was to replace the header tank, I'd be looking at about $700 for a new tank and $300ish for a pump, nfc how we'd get the tank up there, and I'd have to wait for the underground tank to fill. Or we could just get a pump and ignore the header tank. It'll depend how much the plumber and copper is, we need to get a plumber out anyway to connect a laundry trough and flip all the hot and cold taps over in the bathroom. Pumped water is pretty trivial to self-install - no copper.