Neverending Battle of Home Improvements
Often times people display a startling lack of intellectual curiosity. I am as guilty of this as anyone else.
The facts before us:
1)Our hot water heater has serious trouble generating hot water in the winter.
2)The vent in the living room between the sofas blows cold air in the winter.
3)A few, er, mice found their way into our house this spring.
These things are all related, but it took #3 for us to actually tie them together.
A detailed search in the back recesses of our basement where we seldom venture led to a curious discovery. The window back there was missing half the pane of glass. Lest you think we’re incredibly stupid, there was something else in it’s place – the previous owner had set up some venting tube for doing wood working ventilation.
So… we decided to inspect all the basement windows and came to the conclusion that we need to replace all 6 windows. Approximate cost parts and labor $2000.
But wait, there’s more…
Two Thanksgivings ago we tripped the whole house. 2 Nesco roasters, a large percolator-style coffee pot, and the various appliances in the house shut our whole house down. Not cool. It’s very difficult to cook a turkey in a roaster when there is no electricity. These power problems have been vexing us ever since.
So we called an electrician for an estimate on an upgraded service 200amps. Our problem, it appears, isn’t overuse (or lack) of electricity on our part, it’s the fault of 50 years of questionable re-wiring of the house. That and about 5 obvious code violations in the basement. Yikes. Oh, and while you’re estimating, I said, how much to actually install vent fans into our bathrooms and fix some other wiring issues. At one point the guy half-jokingly says for about eight thousand I can re-wire your whole house. ha. sure. let me write you a check.
So every couple days another guy walks through our house and sends us an estimate. Sooner or later we should actually be finished with what needs to be fixed and can move onto silly cosmetic things that we just want to fix, like paint color and kitchen cabinets.
Self-reassurance
As you know, Ryan and I have been serial-movers in the past. I’ve usually felt a little guilty about always buying a new house when we move instead of a pre-existing home… especially during the last move when the market was going bad and I felt some guilt over not helping out a fellow house-seller.
There were always 2 reason we chose new instead of resale:
#1 – I could get exactly (or almost exactly) what I want without having to do extensive remodeling.
#2 – Even with a home inspection, you never really know what you’re going to get in a pre-existing home. With new construction, you can walk the house as it’s going up and know the location of every wire and pipe.
A lot of people use “charm” and “personality” as reasons to buy a resale. I don’t want to make you feel worse about your house fixing needs… but you’ve made me feel better about the decision to buy new this last time. Charm is lovely, but so is the knowledge that I won’t need to rewire my entire house.
Have you put any effort into seeing if you can get a government grant or assistance of some type to help you fix these issues? Who knows, there could be some obscure law on the books to help you out.
Ow
Holy crap. Dude was willing to quote a re-wire – but you don’t really need one do you?
What kind of violations? exposed splices or ulp knob & tube….?
Say it ain’t so…
Violations, etc
Oh, there are some bare wires coming out of an, um, junction box thingy in the ceiling. Some romex pulled around vents instead of being pulled through holes drilled in the joists, a switch mere inches (like 2”) above a basement sink, and a couple others which I forget. The guy quoted the re-wire because that’s what he does a lot of, electrical renovation in old houses. We don’t have knob and tube wiring, but previous owners have done some creative wiring in the past that have created and/or compounded the blowing the circuit problem.
But, on the bright side… we bought this house because of size, price and location. We knew that there would be some things that required fixing, repairing, or replacing.
Really, I just like to “complain” about things. And blogging about it gives me a place to look back to when I want to know when we did a certain thing to the house.
City of Madison Loan
http://www.cityofmadison.com/planning/cedu.html
I got the housing rehabilitation loan from the city for my windows and solar cells:
http://www.cityofmadison.com/planning/cedu/Documents/HRSPILsum.pdf
Good luck! And I love your house AND location!!!