Re-roofing & renovations

[peanut]

Okay, turkey talk time. I especially hope to hear from Greebo on this one! We live in a house built in 1928. The last serious renovations were done in the 1970s. We plan to retire in five years. The house needs:

~ a new roof (we just had a quote for $10,000 for a 1000 sq. ft. roof!)
~ new windows
~ new furnace
~ to have hardwood floors refinished
~ new kitchen
~ new entryway and front door (not up to code)
~ new garage
~ new fence
~ new carpet in the basement

We figure the total cost for these renovations...ballpark figure...to be $65,000. The house was purchased for $90,000 thirteen years ago. Houses in the area, all fixed up, are going for $300,000 right now.

We are a one income family. However, I could take my entire inheritance and our savings, to pay for this work. However, we rate our children's education and traveling to Denmark as a higher priority. As I see it, we have a choice: pay for the renos now, or sell the house and travel and pay for the kids education.

Added complications...DH is going through a mid-life crisis and does not like his job. We were talking about letting him take his last year of work as a sabbatical, and pay for it out of savings. However, if we do that, we will not have the money to fix up the house. It costs us $25-30K per year to live where we do.

Any thoughts/comments anyone? We definitely have more house than we need. Especially with DD#2 heading off to university this fall.

Jean

[Russ]

He's going to retire with a wiped out savings regardless of which way you pay for renovations?

[The Muse]

I'm not familar with the home buying/selling process in Canada. Based on my experience in the US, you would probably have to fix at least some of those issues in order to sell the house.

Would it be an option to fix the issues most likely to affect a sale and sell the house? That way you'd get a fair price for your house, more than make back the repair $$$ and possibly have enough profit to finance DH's sabbatical?

I know it's a gamble, but if you do the $65K in repairs and sell around $300K, you'll get a handsome return on your initial $155K investment. That's what I'd do in your situation.

[della92]

I will respond only to the roof. Is your roof metal or shingle?

I see that you are in Canada, so there is always that difference. But I live in a college town in VA, so our construction cost tends to be run in the medium to high range.

Shingle roof:
A 1000 sq ft roof equals 10 squares (roofing terms). The going rate for a licensed and insured reputable contractor would be 85-100 per square. So labor should be $1000.00, a really good 30 year architectural shingle shouldn't be anymore than $75.00, so thats another 750.00, lets add another $450.00 for tarpaper & flashing, ice & water shield, etc. So we are at $2,200.00 plus the cost to demo-(maybe half ??)

Metal Roof's have skyrocketed with everything else, so hopefully its not copper, but for labor & materials a 10 square roof shouldn't be anymore than $6000.00. And for metals other than copper, that is a generous estimate.

I'm going to assume you have a metal roof-otherwise that estimate is way high!

[anelth]

I agree with The Muse -- fix it up and then sell it for almost twice your investment and then let your DH have his year off.

Della92, thanks for those figures. We will need a new roof in the next year or two also. Can you tell me if it is more for a two-story house?

Thanks.

[della92]

Residential, one story or two story wouldn't make much difference. If a roof has a lot of hips and valleys (or in other words the roof changes directions) then that could make a roof more costly.

[Greebo]

~ a new roof (we just had a quote for $10,000 for a 1000 sq. ft. roof!)

I would invest some time in learning how to do this yourself, have a huge barbeque for all your male relatives and friends, and have a roofing party weekend. Ladies cook, men work. (Or vice versa, I don't really care. ) You'll need a dumpster, several $35 roofing shovels, 3/4" plywood sheeting to cover the roof plus extra, shingles to cover the roof, plus extra, and SOMEONE on the crew who's done this before. Most of the work is just labor - strip the old roof, replace the sheeting, put on the new shingles. The tricky bits where you need experience are the corners, and laying our the initial pattern and putting on the ridge caps. Get more quotes too but this should cost you a LOT less than 10k.

~ new windows
~ new furnace
~ to have hardwood floors refinished
~ new kitchen
~ new entryway and front door (not up to code)
~ new garage
~ new fence
~ new carpet in the basement

Fence and carpet CAN be done yourself, but...read on...

We figure the total cost for these renovations...ballpark figure...to be $65,000. The house was purchased for $90,000 thirteen years ago. Houses in the area, all fixed up, are going for $300,000 right now.

You could fix the roof (for cash!), and list the house at 250k as a fixer/handyman special. There are investors out there looking for deals and if you sell for 250, your up 160000 assuming you didn't finance it to the gills along the way.

Any thoughts/comments anyone? We definitely have more house than we need. Especially with DD#2 heading off to university this fall.

As for the rest - if you sell the house, move somewhere smaller, you still have to figure out how you're going to live if DH isn't working or transitions to a lower income job he loves.

Not sure what other advice i could give here other than, don't finance anything!

[peanut]

thanks everyone!

rcannon: if we fix up the house, either we take all our savings, or we take a loan, which will mean we won't be able to save any further for retirement because we'll be using the money we set aside now to pay the loan out. Either way we'll have to sell the house. If we use our savings we simply won't be able to afford to live here the five years immediately after DH's retirement. He's taking early retirement and will have too reduced an income to afford to stay in this house. The early retirement is non-negotiable according to him. He hates his job and is only in it for the pension...which is crappy.

If we borrow the money to fix the house, the only way to pay it back without depleting our entire savings (and placing us in the above situation), is to sell the house.

Either way, I see us selling the house... unless I'm missing something here...

The Muse: That's what I was wondering. There is a time issue though. DH and I aren't getting any younger. With our health issues, we'd like to do our traveling now, while we can. Which means if we do the renovations, we won't have money for traveling. So I'm thinking taking a loan for renos??? But then there's the cost of carrying it. Hmmm...I might need to talk to a bank to figure this all out...

Della92: Our roof is shingle. It's a two storey home, but part of the roof is a one storey. The roofer I talked to said no one wanted to shingle the two storey homes in our area. It was too dangerous, and why should they when they can make just as much money on a less dangerous job of a bungalow?! She was quoting me for something called a "laminate shingle". For what it's worth, I phone eight roofers last Thursday and this is the only one I've heard back from. And she claimed it was a mistake I'd heard from her. She thought I was someone who had called a couple weeks ago. She was 2 weeks late returning phone calls.

Our roof is a hip roof on top...I think. It is basically two sides, but the top front and back are chopped off at an angle, giving it four sides. And then the lower part over the sunroom is just a straight peak.

Maybe it's best to just wait for a couple of weeks and see who else calls back?

Jean

[Russ]

I would definitley get more quotes. Hard to believe there is that much work to be had.
And a hip roof is not easy to shingle.

[Greebo]

What's a hip roof?

[peanut]

Greebo: DH will not do the renovations. He claims he's done enough. He did an excellent job on our first house, but he's dug his heels in on this one. He might be moving on redoing the kitchen himself though. Like I said, he did an excellent job the last house. I trust him with indoor work, but not with the outside ones. And he certainly would not be caught roofing a two-storey house! He couldn't even stand it to be at the top of the ladder painting the first floor eaves.

We put in the fence to one side of us several years ago, and we both agree it looks pathetic. We went cheap and it shows. We live on clay soil. The fence is very wavy now. DH simply refuses to do the one between us and the neighbors. He wants to hire someone to do it. Sigh... the truth is, I did not marry a handyman. He is a great detail person (it was a lovely kitchen in the other home!), but he'd rather be doing research or reading a good book.

This is either a sell or hire someone to renovate issue...at least, so far, from DH's perspective. The 10K quote on the roof has kind of set him back on his heels a bit. Especially when I pointed out it was the cost of a trip to Denmark...and he had a choice.

We have no financing on the house. The mortgage is all paid out. We own it free and clear.

"As for the rest - if you sell the house, move somewhere smaller, you still have to figure out how you're going to live if DH isn't working or transitions to a lower income job he loves."

Yeah, you're right...He's reading some books on that right now...if he quits this job, we'll probably be doing a cross Canada move. Sigh...mid-life crises should be illegal!

Jean

[Greebo]

I'd go with selling it as a fixer then. If you borrow the money, you lose anyway, so why bring the risk of a mortgage on top of everything else.

There are always investors looking for bargains.

[peanut]

Greebo: a hip roof is one that goes up from all four sides to a point at the top. Ours is a bit different. It goes up from two sides, but then at the peak towards the ends, it angles down about 10'.

I'll wait to see if anymore quotes come in. Our community is really short construction workers right now. Contractors can basically charge whatever they want and they get it. It's a bad time to be hiring people to do work. And I hate the frustration of having to work around strangers in my home. I wish DH would do the work, but I understand him not wanting to. There are things I am good at that I don't like to do too. And if he doesn't like what he's doing at work, I hate to ask him to do more stuff he doesn't like at home...

In the meantime, I'll be phoning realtors then...thanks everyone!

Jean

[Russ]

a hip roof barn

[joyofsix]

I'd sell it as a fixer-upper. Find yourself something smaller or an apt or whatever it is you can do on his pension.