11/6
Basement walls pour and revealed. Yeah it is underway.
Layout and assembling the wall forms
Footers
10/28/08: Construction has begun. Bob Demarr has started to dig the basement. On track for a March 09 move in.
7/21/08: Working with Fairfax county to get our approved building permit. NDI provided a complete package
7/3/08:The house is gone. DeMarr knocked the building down and hauled it off. See video
Big video download..be patient
Feb 08 Our builder American Standard Building Systems went BK with our money. This is a big set back. I attended several meetings with lawyers adn it would almost impossible not to mention very expensive to get to discovery. We belive (22 others as well) he ripped us off but with spending near 100K to investigate will will never know.
We have found a new Builder New Demesnions INC. We had looked at these guys as our number one choice but the salesman at the time waste a bit of jerk. So we went with number 2. Well we are back to number one. The other salesman is no longer there. We love working with Vince, very knowledgeable, helpful, and not pushy. Understands where we neeed to be. So far working with them has been very painless.
Also want to thank patrcik at GJB Engineering in helping redo the plans and get the need data for the permits.
More on the new plan to follow.
We return to take a couple year break from cruising and re-organize our life so that we can do a round the world sail, we found that we now needed a house. We initially commuted from the boat but Makai is docked 2 hours from DC without traffic. It was decided that a rehab house would be the just the ticket. The housing market was tumbling and there we many houses available that if they could be had for the right price could be redone and resold, thus helping rebuild the kitty for a new bigger boat. We started the search in the Herndon/Reston, VA area outside Washington DC.
House prices were tumbling. We started working our friend and Broker Joyce Braithwood of ERA Teachers. She knew what we were looking for house that need major TLC and updating, but basically sound structures. We looked a so many we had to start naming them just to remember what was what. We saw the cat pee house, cockroach house, the dead cockroach house, and on. The process was to review the house, estimate the middle average expense to bring the house up to ready to move in good condition and subtract that and 10% off the average sold similar house in the neighborhood. Since I do most of my own work and source my own material the profits would be in the value add of the labor and selling a bit of an upscale finish.
The problem we ran into was List price $550K, good condition neighborhood houses selling for $420K, and were offering $330K (usually $70K to repair): Outstanding mortgage $570,000. Yikes!! In some cases we were the first and only offer in 6 months to a year the house was listed. The people couldn’t afford to sell, so many of the houses went to foreclosure and the bank was not ready to reduce the prices to what was selling. The months passed we would review some of the houses still on the market. We would review the neighborhood sales or comps and readjust our offering price down. At this point we started to realize that Herndon hadn’t hit bottom and the type of neighborhood was really worth our time and money. So we started to look in the McLean and Falls Church area. I had resisted initially because the property values were so high and not really moving downward. We decided to build new and looked for a suitable property to a complete rebuild.
Financially it makes more sense. The Homes in the $900K to 1.7M range were selling and we estimated we could build for much less. With the builders suffering from the slow down they are starting to get hungry for work and are willing to work on price on and offering. So after a couple of false starts we finally got a property before the developer came in and grabbed it. This area is fairly strong and almost every place we bid on was bid over list for cash by developers. Location, Location, Location. We lucked in the Peabody house as we met the neighbor and the broker and we hit it off. He was excited to get rid of the eyesore, help his neighbor, and get a building that would help drive prices back up.
The Plan
Tear down the 1952 Cape Cod house (before it falls down) and replace with a panelized home from Owner Builder Solutions. The house will be ~ 3,800 sq ft, a walk out basement that will eventually be turned into living space, and 3 car garage. We will contract out the demo, excavation, foundation, shell, siding, roofing, some of the drywall work, A/C, and rough plumbing and electrical. Once the building is weather tight Sharon and I and who ever we can talk into helping will do the insulations (foam), drywall, paint, wood and tile flooring, install kitchen cabinets (our friend Don will supply the cabinets and install stone countertops), radiant floor heating and landscaping. . With the slow down in construction I am sure I can get good reasonably priced help to assist when and where needed. All of this inside 2 years! Yes almost all of our free time will be building
The House
Well we finally got a piece of property in Falls Church, VA near Mclean. 1952 Cape Cod house. We bought the land and they gave us the house. The Previous owner bought it in 1968 for $18,700 and never refinanced it (most of the neighborhood is like this). Today the land was worth over $400K. The story as the neighbors told us is he was married in ’68 and his wife left him in ’70. Never got divorced.
His life looks like it went down hill. He drank a lot, Budweiser and smoked. Most of cans were stacked in the house. 23 yard size garbage bags of aluminum cans came from inside. This excludes the cans that were just so disgusting they were shoveled into the 30 yard dumpster. The house was full of garbage and no maintenance was performed for the last 30 years. According the people on either side a back room collapsed at least 5 years ago. Yet he continued to live there, house opened to the elements, electricity, gas, and water turned off. In the winter he would sleep in his truck with the engine running or a kerosene heater going. Wore his clothes until disgustingly dirty and then threw them in a pile in the house. A very sad life.
Eventually the newer neighbors who were moving into this neighbor hood as the old folks died and sold off there homes called the County of Fairfax and December 2006 they came, inspected, and slapped a Condemned sticker on the door and hauled him off to an old folk’s home. His next door neighbor Corbet helped him arrange the sale of his house and even took out his personal effects from the house.
This is where we came in, since we were only buying the property and the house was of zero value we never got to look inside. Walking around the back one could see the room that had collapse through all of the overgrowth. It wasn’t until we owned it that we saw the inside. He did abandon some very nice though smoke tar cover hardwood furniture, side board, desk, dresser, bureau end tables and coffee table. All matched and are turning out to be very nice as we clean them up and move them to storage before the house demo.
Resources
As we move along I will add the resources that we used and how we got there help along with lessons learned. I have done home remodeling but this is the first house I have built. Tons of lessons.
Already Special Thanks to:
Joyce Braithwood our broker. I would recommend her. She knows what she is doing!
Paul and SenFen Huang
Terry Walker
Patrick
Corbett
Roger for the use of his trailer