(no subject)

[vicarz]

Today is my anniversary of going to settlement on my DC house in Columbia Heights. I am nowhere near moving in.

The new plans, splitting the units into completely different drawing sets, were submitted 12/18/14. I believe there is a 90 day ("max") delay in the city responding, though when I checked with my contractor I didn't hear back.

When the plans are approved, I'm told the main build time is only 2-3 weeks. The plan was; possibly is, to do the top 2 floors first, then move in - discover all the detail problems (they say the last 10% of the work takes half the time), all while making the basement. This might make moving in spring to early summer?

When I started I thought of spending 35-50k to make the basement a legal rental on a 610k home, plus renovate the top floors a bit. So say I thought I might spend 700k a the high end. As I saw problems and began to realize how difficult it was to do part of the work, I slipped into the plan of gutting everything - that part of the plan I do not regret in any way. Since there were really no original elements in this 100 year old house left to preserve, it was definitely worth pulling out the electric and water (a pipe burst during the teardown - imagine if I had renovated with that behind the walls?) So the budget now is in the 200-250 range, making this a 800-850 spent venture. Value when done? A sloppy flip a few doors down sold for the 800s some years ago and values appear generally up. It's hard to compare now as any house this size is often bought and flipped into 3 condos for 450-500 each.

My goal was to rent out the basement and my VA condo. I changed that goal to renting 1 bedroom (or 2) in my house and the basement, plus the condo. Now, well more later but I may not be renting out any bedrooms and one will definitely be an office; so just renting the basement and condo.

But...only if I can move in some day. Ever. /firstworldproblems
(funny, like the damage and downtime from my surgery, I have enough comparators in not as good positions that I feel guilty lamenting about my problems)

Comments

[wantedonvoyage.livejournal.com]

I know it would be a logistical pain but any thought about getting the basement apt done and moving into it temporarily, so you could rent your condo out while the upstairs work is completed? Is it easier to get the owner-occupied CofO than for a rental?

[vicar.livejournal.com]

Thought about it, but it doesn't work for a couple reasons:
1) I'd be moving twice, with all the bumps and bruises that comes with. I'd rather hand the basement to someone willing to pay virgin-priced rent.
2) We framed the top but not the bottom, so it would take longer to do the basement now than the top.
3) One advantage to the city being dicks is that I'm walking out of the process with a CoO already. That wasn't the plan...

[wantedonvoyage.livejournal.com]

Okay gotcha.

Can I see the blueprints sometime? U have them digital? I love this shit (As you may have gathered by my wasting time designing houses I'll never be able to afford)

[vicar.livejournal.com]

I actually didn't know! I only have them hard copy...also too big to scan. Maybe I can pull them from downtown's website?

Short answer - not easily though I'm happy to share.

[wantedonvoyage.livejournal.com]

Yea check it out... I just started using this new program so more to follow.

[vicar.livejournal.com]

Oh! See, I keep fotos blocked so I can scan at work without it being too obvious what I'm doing (and I set views to look mostly like word documents - black text on a white background,
add in your bit pictures of starting letters, and I sort of breeze by and never see these. Oops!

http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/varsitynj/413436/201665/201665_300.jpg
and the other don't zoom in.
But...you must have laughed when I was posting excel spreadsheets of my design ideas when I couldn't get the drafting software to work the way I wanted / was too lazy to learn.

[wantedonvoyage.livejournal.com]

Most of this software is a pain in the butt to work. This one is really obstinate about making small adjustments to the dimensions. I haven't paid for it yet and I'm still deciding if I will, because I have yet to find any guidance on how to overcome this.

you must have laughed when I was posting excel spreadsheets of my design ideas

Are these posts still up?

[vicar.livejournal.com]

Mostly but would be hard to find. I do use a house tag, and there is this (at least 3 in there)

http://vicar.livejournal.com/pics/catalog/2958

[curvemudgeon.livejournal.com]

I can't see what you're using, but have you evaluated SweetHome3D ( http://www.sweethome3d.com )? When we started our "wouldn't it be nice if" designing I found that to have a pretty shallow learning curve and fair amount of flexibility. And the added benefits of being a) free b) Java based so when I went over to partner's house it was trivial to show and modify edits.

[vicar.livejournal.com]

Nah and now the design is firm enough I don't need to do more design, but it's good to know! However free and java-able is nice.

[shutterbug.livejournal.com]

I think what I hate about watching HGTV is that all the renovation shows, even when there are problems, still manage to get completed in a decent amount of time, like 6-8 weeks rather than months to a year. And of course, you get to watch it all happen in the condensed time of one hour. It's deceivingly easy.

Meanwhile in real life, you have what you are going through. Yuck. When I bought my house, I had to upgrade the electrical too, as I still had the old style breakers. I'm just glad it had grounded outlets. I had seen a place for rent in CA once where there were no grounded outlets anywhere. Scary.

If I have learned nothing else about renovating from HGTV, it's you will always have unexpected expenses, you will go overbudget, and even if you have a contingency fund, it's likely going to be used and emptied very quickly. *sigh*

I guess the positive side is that you aren't living in it right now the way it is?

[curvemudgeon.livejournal.com]

Well hello there, situational neighbor! Our builder just left from our pre-construction meeting and supposedly stuff starts happening Monday for the remodeling contract we signed at the end of June last year. We were beginning to think he'd never start and already I want things done (mostly due to the inconvenience involved in living here through it).

I suspect I'll be doing a lot of recovery drinking...