The EndLess Century Home Renovation

If you have dreams of buying and owning a century home then you should plan on doing major renovations UNLESS you are buying a century home that someone has already done the major renovations too. The difference of course is that once someone has completed those much needed renovations the home is worth a lot more then it was before the update.

When you start renovating an old century home that hasn't been renovated in a long time there are a lot of things that need to be addressed and they are things that should be done in the whole house and not piece meal room by room;

• Electrical update of wiring and panel.
• Plumbing upgrade of drain pipes.
• Heating system and ductwork.
• Insulation.
• Structural beams and walls.

If you think of the nature of these 5 things in any home they are things that run throughout the entire home and replacing, repairing or upgrading them requires work in every part of the house. This means that you will be cutting and removing lath and plaster in every part of your home at some point.

Whenever you have to deal with lath and plaster its a dirty dusty job, its far worse then drywall dust. The more you can do at once the less time you will have to live a dirt dusty mess. 

The more you can do at once the cheaper in the long run it will be, if you hire an electrician to wire one area at a time over several months or years you will be paying more then if you had the electrician re-wire the entire home at the sametime.

Re-pairing or replacing the lath and plaster with drywall or other materials is always more expensive if trades men are doing smaller jobs where they have to come back several times and start the process over again.

So if you have that romantic vision of buying and over the years slowly fixing it up remember that you will be costing yourself a lot more money then you think and you will also be living in a lot bigger mess for a lot longer time.

Do as much work as possible at one time, hire the right people to do it for you and you can get to enjoying your home instead of living through one endless renovation. At the end you will see the value in hiring the right people with the added value in your completely renovated century home.

Rob Abbott

Village Builders Inc.

Making Those Spring Repairs To Your Home

Now that spring has finally arrived people are now slowly taking worrisome peaks around the outside of their homes, scared of what they will find. What do they find? All kinds of things and none of them are good.

With the long drawn out winter that we just experienced there are more chance that something has gone wrong on the outside of your home. Some of the things you already know about, you knew about them before the winter and decided to wait, some of them you found out about in the winter and some you just noticed for the first time this spring. Which ever it is they need to be repaired and usually they need a professional to do the repairs.

One thing that usually happens is that you hire someone to come and do an exterior or interior repair and they end up finding more things that are wrong, things that you didn't know where a problem; 1. because you didn't know to look for them, 2. because they were hidden from your inspections that are usually from the ground and are only a quick look.

The amount of things that can be wrong are lengthy;

• Damaged or plugged eavetroughs. The plugged eavetrough are usually the precursor to the damaged eavetrough. Cleaning them out will help prevent the damage or destruction of them later.
• Facia damage. Some times facia can be damaged from high winds, can be damaged if eavetrough are ripped off the house from snow and ice, sometime wood facia become meals for animals trying to get into your attic.
• Soffit damage. Wind can damage soffits, water can rot wood soffits and animals can eat through them to get into your attic to survive the winter.
• Siding. Wind, water and animals can damage siding. Also time and UV light are hard on siding, taking the paint off and exposing it to rot, rotents and bugs.
• Caulking. Caulking can be damaged or can fail after a long winter, this can allow water penetration around windows, chimneys, doors, siding corners and many other places.
• Shingles. Winter can be particularly hard on shingled roofs, snow and ice buildup and high winds can remove shingles or wear them thin. A lot of time you don't even know they are missing until the snow has melted off the roof. High steep roofs, roofs with water proofing under the shingles will resist water penetration but if not repaired will leak eventually.
• Foundation problems. Nobody really knows how dry their basement is until they have a big melt followed by a bigger rain storm, this is when you find out if your foundations waterproofing works, if the water runs away from the house or the window wells allow too much water around the foundation.
• Sump Pump. Most people have no idea how well their sump pump works, they only know when it stops working. Then of course its to late.
• Decks. Decks are something that take a lot of abuse throughout the winter, they usually have no roof or protection over top of them and they sit off the ground allowing the snow and wind to blow right underneath them. This can cause damage to the foundations and to the wood tops as well, damage and rot that you don't see until all the snow is removed.

Its human nature that once the weather starts to finally warm up people start calling around looking for people to come out and make these repairs, the earlier you call the better chance you will have to finding a good contractor to do the work and also getting scheduled in before they are completely booked for the entire spring and summer season.

The biggest mistake you can make is choose your contractor on price alone, remember you get what you pay for. Good quality contractors are not cheap, but their work is second to none and comes with a warranty, its worth paying that little extra.

Rob Abbott
Village Builders Inc.