Hoarder House // Trees? Porch? Frequently Asked Questions.

How did the house end up like it was?
The couple that owned it died and their adult children, who didn’t want or need it, inherited it. It sat vacant for at least 5 years deteriorating and being ransacked before we bought it to fix up. We found out after the purchase, from the building inspector, that the City was only a few months away from condemning it for the unpaid taxes and mowing fines. They planned to knock it down and send everything to the landfill.

Which brings up the next question we get asked, why didn’t we do what the city was going to do and knock the house down?
We have actually had better experiences with the homes we have rehabbed, than the ones we built from scratch on vacant land. And with this lot, we wouldn’t even have any of the advantages we had with vacant land. If you are in an area where an undeveloped lot is very expensive or doesn’t exist anymore, that’s where buying a liability house to knock over makes sense.

For us, we couldn’t justify the added cost to go back to a clean slate. Hiring out heavy equipment operators to knock down, dig up, and load everything, in addition to transportation and dumping fees for absolutely every solid thing heaped onto this lot would have added up by the second. Everything we were able to sort and recycle would have gone to the landfill in this scenario, along with the concrete , masonry, blacktop and trees because the government would have require us to excavate and build a modern foundation and basement. In this neighborhood, we never would recoup the cost of clearing and contracting out the new foundation, grading and driveway. No one would pay a premium for that in this neighborhood.

To us, rehabbing is also more satisfying to see something old be saved and its a more creative process. Thats a bonus.

We like being creative. Some of you have noticed we don’t use the same copyright-free music that most you-tubers use. I use software to make our music, from scratch. Lately my 15 year-old has been making a lot of it, because he thinks its fun too.

The next “question” is usually expressed in some exclamation of horror. We assure you that we love trees too. We agree that thoughtfully selected and placed trees should definitely be added back to the front of this house. We emphasize “thoughtful” because the trees we had to remove were undermining the foundation and backing up the gutters. They were definitely not planned because they were too tall and much too close, and the poor old silver maple was also hollow hazard, full up with water and rotting from the inside out. We would also like to mention that there are still at least 50 trees left standing on the property.

Another change garnering the same level of horror as the trees, was why was the porch removed?

We didn’t plan on taking off the porch when we bought the house. We enjoy the porch where we live, so, we fully intended to fix that low porch. Only, we found out that the porch was not fixable. It was essentially a rotted heap barely tacked onto the old siding , propped up by ugly old columns that were just sitting, unattached, on a concrete slab. We would have had to rebuild an entirely new porch with excavated footers and tie trusses into the house, properly. Creating a brand-new porch from the frost-line up.

This is where we are forced to consider math, again. A new porch here would actually not add more to the appraisal value as what it would cost us to build it. Thats what’s called a “negative return on investment,” and it matters for us because we have decided to sell this house instead of living in it.

Return on investment this same reason we aren’t building a garage or spend money on having it professionally landscaped, and why there won’t be crystal chandeliers, either. The people who live in the house care about some of those things enough to add them. If so, they will have a personal enjoyment value in return for those expenses in addition to the resale value, that justifies the expenses.

A lot of questions we get tend to be asking why we make the choices we do. I admit that its really hard making hundreds of choices about what we do and how we do it. Our guiding goal is to end up with a solid house that we would be willing to live in,( and we seriously did consider moving here). For instance, I don’t really care about a lumpy driveway but I wouldn’t compromise on modern insulation, windows, wiring and a roof that doesn’t leak.

How we predict the “return on investment” concept also plays heavily on the decisions. It will be a factor in how we complete this house. Because customization means infinite options and choices, no-one is going to completely agree how we finish the inside.

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