So...my home is basically ruined.

When it comes to the electrical part, If you have a friend or family member help, You don't have to have it done by a 'card holder', Just inspected.

Glad they are footing the whole thing and then some! But IMO I would take his bid IF he can get there soon. You need it done by winter and we should be good until November around here.
Some contractors will though, Submit a bid that's crazy high because they don't really want the job or too much as is. But with 30" over and you said its in a 'historic' area, He will make good money and you will too if you do certain things to shave overhead. You have to remove and reuse certain 'materials' for the historic bullshit.

Too bad you was not closer, I could give ya a hand and it will save you tons of $$ and fall under iowa 'code' for certain things. But when you get the #1 guy and he submitted a good one, IMO find out when demolition/renovation can start!

 

Well....the lease for next door is signed through the end of the year. We can start moving there any time. We'll take some things over but the main move is planned for next weekend. Looks like we're going to be able to remodel everything we want to and while all of this is going on, I will probably remodel the kitchen myself. There couldn't be a better time to do it.

Yogi....I do live in the historic area but my house isn't on any type of historical list or anything where I'd have to worry about keeping certain features. The only thing I'd really like to keep, if at all possible, is the molding and trim. Kind of sucks that we just put new carpet in the entire second floor last year but....I'd hate to cover new hardwood floors with carpet.

 

This is our first night in the new house. Things are moving along as planned....maybe even a little faster. I figured it would take most of the weekend to get the main stuff moved. We had that done by about 1:00 this afternoon. So we've just been doing some cleaning in the old place and settling into this place. We still have some stuff to move out of the basement tomorrow but we're on track.

As far as this house goes.....I actually kind of love it here. Our house is an average, turn of the century, two-story 3 bedroom house with a decent sized living room. This house has much more room. The living room is huge. The basement has easily twice the usable space as our house. There are rooms we aren't even using and the room that is now my guitar room is almost exactly like my normal guitar room...minus carpet. Just doing a little jamming this evening showed me that I need to lay the carpet back down in my room in my house later. I've been joking about buying this house and selling our house and then we could just stay here. We may sell our house at some point but this place is just too big for us now and definitely in the future. But damn....I thought my living room was big....this one dwarfs ours.

 

Thanks for the update.

 

They started the demolition work yesterday. By the end of the day today they had maybe over half of that work done. It's so odd to walk through the house and see walls and ceilings that are just gone. The framing is still there but I can stand in one spot and basically see the whole floor with no walls, floors or ceilings. I guess it's a step forward.

 

Better than looking in and they have the tools, But sitting on their asses. Glad the ball is rolling good for ya, Claims and insurance are a bitch to deal with most* of the time, Glad you got to sidestep that part and almost a 'no questions asked' claim.

 

Wow, you have been through a lot in the last months. I'm glad to hear things are working out.

 

I was kind of waiting for the other shoe to fall and it kind of did today. My house was once a decent, 114 yr old house that fit nicely in our neighborhood. Once everything is torn out....it is evident that the only people who were shittier builders than the original builders were the people who did some renovations before I bought it. I was worried about what we would find in the framing and even kind of expecting this. Old houses can settle over the years but you don't see just how much until everything is torn out. We now need some fairly extensive work done to the floor joists and wall framing in order to pass city code. The bad news is that it will be expensive. The good news it will be straight and solid. That settling has bugged me for years. The biggest problem this may pose isn't the cost but the possibility of going over our 3 month limit.

 

If anyone wants to know.....Talk about going from bad to worse. The city inspectors came in today. The original framing was crappy and the amount of work it may take to fix it might be too much. The inspectors said we need to bring in a structural engineer to figure out what to do. Honestly....my contractors already figured out the problems but the insurance company wants to play by the city rules and they are willing to pay for the engineer. All of this means that we are back to square one as far as what will happen. The inspectors were very nice and understanding but they basically said....we can't pass this....get the engineer or knock the place down and haul it off in dump trucks. Who knew what could have been hiding behind those walls? I didn't but I'm pretty sure I predicted this maybe 4 or 5 times in this thread. Honestly, I would hate to do it but knocking it down isn't outside the realm of possibilities. I would be so bummed to see that happen though. Dammit!!

 

Seems they should make allowances due to age and historic value...

 

I'll know more tomorrow when the engineer gets here. I don't know how much historic value there is. It's a very old house in the historic part of town but a lot of houses around here have some kind of story. Mine doesn't as far as I know. But as we tear more out, we learn more about it's past and that's kind of interesting. Yesterday we were able to determine that the floor issue has been a problem for a very long time. We took up some of the old flooring (which was "depression era" flooring) and found a bunch of wood shake shingles and pieces of the shingle crates which were used as shims in a corner. The house used to be shake shingle on the exterior and roof. I tore all that stuff off to side it a couple of years ago. When the roof was being replaced they found the old wood shake roof with "1922" marked on it. If that layer of roof was put on in 1922 then that means the place was probably renovated around the same time with the flooring being added and the extra shake used to shore it up. The thing is....the house was supposedly built in 1900. That would be a lot of wear and tear for 22 years. But a friend of mine who is a master carpenter and highly knowledgeable of different eras of building methods looked the place over and said he sees clear methods in parts of the framing that would have been used in 1860-1870 or so. The tax papers say it was built in 1900.

That was probably longer than most want to read but it's interesting to see unfold. It means nothing to the issue at hand though.

 

If this was my daddys home, he'd of fixed it all by now. XD

 

Many homes have tax notes saying "1900". This means it was built before 1900, but they don't know how much before 1900. In other words build date is unknown. Many times these houses were added on to, possibly more than once, so only a portion would show vintage timbers and construction methods. You may not even be tearing into that portion of the house.

 

I probably could do most of the work but I don't think I have the time or the ambition. Plus, the insurance company is paying someone else to do it so...screw it...let them do it.

 

That actually makes a lot of sense based on what we are seeing right now. I was just telling my wife this evening that just because it says "1900" doesn't really mean that number is accurate. It could have been the year of the last add-on or the first year they started keeping a certain record system. Any number of things. There also could have been typos. Records had to be kept by hand. Lots of errors could have easily been made back then. Who knows?

Another interesting angle for me....I know that my family is traced back to when this area was originally settled. There were a number of families that came here together. Mine was one of them. We obviously haven't owned the house this whole time but it might be worthwhile to try to find out who did. If the house dates back to that period, there may be about a 1 in 12-15 chance that my family once owned it or even built it. The abstract may have additional information. I had it at one point. But I'll bring your post up tomorrow and see if anyone has any thoughts on it. Thanks for making that point.

 

The engineer was there today. The good news is that it isn't as bad as I was expecting. There should be some but minimal masonry work. We won't know exactly how much floor work needs to be done until I move some large fish tanks but I was getting them moved this evening and I'm pretty sure I discovered what most of the problem is. I think we're going to be ok. The engineer will be back next Wednesday to really dive into the project. I keep getting the vibe that they think it's crazy to spend what we may have to spend on this but I am the only person who actually knows what the budget is and how it works. I've kept that to myself to keep things competitive. But now I'm starting to have to transition to the role of general contractor. That's fine. I'm used to being in charge and managing people. I don't have solid numbers yet but my gut feeling is that we're going to spend 45-65% of our remaining budget on this structural stuff. That leaves plenty of money for all of the original work and also money to upgrade the electric. Knock on wood but everyone thinks we are on thin ice....I think we are fine.

And the engineer said the original house is late 1800's at the very latest and probably older....which lends credibility to my friends estimate of 1860-1870.

 

That's what I was figuring... Look for some fancy joinery and rough hewn beams on the boards on top of the foundation. Dead giveaway...

 

I had another guy in there tonight to look at the newest round of work. He agreed with the older dating but he noticed some things which were uncovered today that point to the whole house starting off as a single room house. We are now down to some seriously old flooring which is awesome looking stuff. I wish it was in better shape because I would just restore it and keep it. I'm trying to figure out a way to do that. This floor is what was under the floor that was installed in 1922. In one room of the house there is yet another floor. That floor is over the oldest framing in the house.

Another interesting thing from today is that we were able to see where someone built the original bathroom once indoor plumbing was installed. We assume the addition that has the kitchen must have been put on then because there is no other sign (holes in the floor for pipes, etc.) of a kitchen anywhere else. So the floor we are down to now was the floor when plumbing was installed and the floor below that was even older. This place really could date back to 1860. I also found out that two house across the street from me were built in 1860 and 1865. Another one not far away was built in 1860. So we're right in the ballpark. Historical district...indeed.

This is all pretty fascinating to me.

 

Speaking of floors, Stan's brother was in the basement of the house today that is going to his daughter...sweeping the tiled floors down there to help get it ready for his daughter to move in sometime soon....and a cloud of dust swirled around...as it had not been swept up in ages.....someone that was there today, said there is asbestos under the tilings of the floor down there...and those tiles are cracked....no wonder, I never wanted to spend any time down there....but Stan's brother is worried now, and is going to get his lungs x rayed....etc.

What can one do in a situation like that to get rid of it....pour cement all over the entire thing?

 

I'm no expert on asbestos but I can't think of a scenario where there would be some under tiled floors. I could be wrong but...what kind of tile? Ceramic or the vinyl stuff?