Closing in two days

It's been a busy week and a half since my last post and a bit of a roller coaster as well. We had the home inspection last week and there weren't any huge surprises save for one related to the floor joists. The inspector noted that the joists had been notched and may not pass codes and that it could be a problem. I was somewhat skeptical of his concern but not willing to dismiss them without verification given the ramifications of having to replace the entire floor support structure. We made the call the afternoon of the inspection to postpone the closing for a full week to rule out any issues with the codes.

I was rather concerned about calling the codes department, having had some unpleasant experiences in the past. My past experiences have shown the codes department staff to be uninterested, unhelpful and simply looking to see how many dollars they can squeeze out of you. I left a voicemail and hoped someone would call me back within the next 24 hours. With the inspection contingency on a purchase you have a set number of days to request repairs (not an option on this property), walk away or remove the contingency. I had a nagging fear in the back of my head that we wouldn't get a call back in time and might just have to walk away from the property.

Luckily the next morning I got a call back from the codes inspector and he was surprisingly nice, helpful and even debated what permits I would need for the rehab saying that I can probably get by with one vs the two that are potentially needed for the job. But most importantly he put my mind at rest in relation to the floor joist codes issue. As I suspected and hoped, no work would be required on the joists unless they were rotten or infested and heavily damaged. I was completely fine with that answer since I have every intention of doing the job right. I wouldn't sleep at night if I found rotten or eaten joists in the house and left them. I also had no interest in replacing or reinforcing joists that have been in place for 90+ years with no issue.

We also went ahead and had a termite inspection performed just to be safe. That report did come back with some evidence of termites in the past but the good news is there aren't any now. There also didn't appear to be any damage to the structure of the house as a result. The inspection was performed by a termite treatment company and they said that the termite treatment on the property had been very well done and didn't require any treatment. I think thats a really great sign that someone who charges for termite treatment doesn't want to take our money.

We spent the better part of the evening a week ago in the bookstore looking for good books on remodeling old houses and some good reference books on various subjects. Being a cheap person, I didn't purchase the books at the bookstore, did feel a bit guilty about that but not guilty enough to pay 4x what I could purchasing them online. A couple of days later I had about 6 inches of books show up and have had my nose in them ever since. I've had a couple of people asking me why I purchased books on subjects that I'm pretty proficient in. The simple answer is I never want to assume I have it all figured out, there's always someone out there smarter and more experienced than you. Why not take advantage of that and learn everything you can about the things you decide to get involved in.

Every book so far has had at least a couple of gems that made them worth the price of admission. The one thing I wish I'd done a better job on with the books is taking notes on my highlights of each book. I've dog eared a few pages and so far remember all the bits I found of interest but I don't expect that to last ;) Maybe I'll come back later and make blog posts with my abridged highlights of the various topics and the lessons I learned in practical application.

I've done pretty much every job there is to be done on a house but not all of them on the same house and not all at this scale. This is where I'll either prove my salt as a remodeler or fail miserably and call for backup. I am going to do my best to avoid professional help for one simple reason, money. I see this house as a great opportunity to "bootstrap" into bigger projects. The more money I net off of this the more money I have for another house and some labor.

If everything goes well on this one I could see this being a very fun money making hobby. If things go extremely well I could see wanting to do more properties and slide into a mixed role of project manager and remodeler. Cherry picking the jobs I really enjoy and subbing out the ones I don't have the time or desire to do.

Back to my task planning and budgeting, only a couple of days till we start ripping things out.