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Backstory: My wife and I are considering putting in an offer on a house, with the goal of gutting a good portion of it and fixing it up. The house is very small by US standards: about 13' wide x ~40' deep, total square footage including the partially finished attic is just over 800 sq ft. However, the price is right, and we have been considering all options to get out of our 1 bedroom apartment and start a family. The space is not a problem as we've taken on a fairly minimalist lifestyle. Current predicament: We took a second look at the house today with a friend who is a contractor to do a proto-inspection before going through the offer process. Luckily, nothing big turned up that I wasn't already aware of...with the exception of the roof. Now, of course roof issues are always a red flag. What our friend told us is that, due to a venting/moisture problem in the roof, the decking has some places where it's begun to rot. Additionally, the rafters are 2x4 and not 2x6. At the moment the roof isn't leaking, the moisture is coming from inside the house (the basement, as there are some grading issues that need to be fixed which would hopefully cut down on the damp). Nearly everything else "wrong" with the place is within my capability to do myself or at least get a handle on, but replacing an entire roof, with decking and potentially new rafters is out of my individual ability. My wife and I had kicked around the idea of eventually bumping out some dormers in the place to open up the upstairs. However, if the roof needs all this work, we were wondering what the cost would be to just go for it right off the bat, or at least in the near-ish future. I've seen estimates online for anything from $5,000-$160,000. It's all over the map, and hardly anything is priced out for a small house like this. We would be looking for only the rough framing and external work, as we'd probably be doing the interior finishing/insulation ourselves. So, has anyone here had any experience with a major roof replacement/renovation like this? Is this doable if we think the cost is worth the home's value? Or should we run? EDIT: Forgot to mention, right now the house has a shed-type roof, with a ridge perpendicular to the long axis of the house and from there sloping front and back. EDIT2: And I just found the DIY subforum. I forgot it was under CC. If a mod thinks this fits better there feel free to move it. LogisticEarth fucked around with this message at 12:02 on Apr 14, 2015 |
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Apr 14, 2015 11:52
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Call in a contractor and get a quote? This isn't a question that can be answered without doing our own inspection of the property.
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Apr 15, 2015 16:01
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Rhymenoserous posted:Call in a contractor and get a quote? This isn't a question that can be answered without doing our own inspection of the property. I wasn't looking for a detailed price quote, just ballpark numbers, or pitfalls to be avoided, for similar jobs that people have had experience with. Either from homeowners who did similar expansions or people in the industry. Obviously the most accurate number would come from contractor quotes following an inspection, and we are talking informally with the contractor who walked through the house (as I mentioned in the OP). However, he's a work friend and we don't want to try and push his generosity too much. Before going through the process of getting contractors out to a house we don't even have regular access to, I'm trying to do a little more homework on the topic.
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Apr 16, 2015 02:27
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