Useless Conversation

[Rasix]

Uhh no.  But he could probably do a really bad job installing P8 system if you ask him nicely and happen to catch him when he's not sleeping in his office.

[apocrypha]

Our house is old. It's full of these. When every single ceiling fixture in your house needs 8 bulbs shit gets expensive fast :/   When we moved in 3 years ago we bought a bulk job-lot of energy saving candle bulbs on eBay and so far not a single one has blown, so fingers crossed it won't end up being as bad as we thought it'd be.

[Yegolev]

That's some Charles Dickens shit right there, homes.

[apocrypha]

1905 the house was built, so a bit later than Dickens, but I suspect most of the fittings are considerably newer than that.

[Cyrrex]

Apples.  So 2012.

Cyrax, do you fondle the halogen lamps?  That can cause them to die very quickly.  Do not touch them with your fingers.

No, I know that.  I take an almost pathological care when handling them, probably because I already know my body is emitting halogen-destroying gamma rays that are already reducing lifespan.  I think the real problem is probably that these stupid little things are more decorative than they are actually good about giving off light, so you have to have dozens of them in your house...it is inevitable that they will be going out all the time, even if each one is technically lasting as long as it is built to do.  So you end up changing them all the damn time regardless. Or my new tactic, which is just giving up entirely and living with the fact that half of them are out at any given time.  Looks real nice!

We built a new kitchen last winter, and it has all LED spots.  Fucking glorious.  I bet it will be years and years before I have to replace any of them.

[Morat20]

Our house is old. It's full of these. When every single ceiling fixture in your house needs 8 bulbs shit gets expensive fast :/   When we moved in 3 years ago we bought a bulk job-lot of energy saving candle bulbs on eBay and so far not a single one has blown, so fingers crossed it won't end up being as bad as we thought it'd be.

I was stuck waiting on an oil change (I seemed to somehow hit the lunchtime rush) and was watching some home show on HTC. They found asbestos in the house. I thought to myself "Ha! My house isn't that old. I'm sure renovations will find all sorts of expensive crap, but not asbestos!"

Then I looked up "asbestos" and went "Fuck". I thought they phased that out a LOT sooner. I was thinking 60s, not early 80s. 

And god help you if you have a house with a 'popcorn' ceiling from the mid-70s or so.

[lamaros]

Yeah, same here in Aus. If your house was built in the 80s or earlier you very likely have asbestos somewhere.

[Endie]

I don't think I have near that many lighting fixtures and my house isn't exactly small (but neither is it 5000 sq ft   )

The old guy next door at work is being forced into retirement.  I sure will miss all of the whistling/humming/singing, nail clipping, phlegm coughing up, conference calls with the door open, and lunches consisting of reheated seafood.  

"door open"?  The person who works next to you is still in a different room?

You try working next to some fat lad who chews gum with his mouth open, eats apples and crisps at top volume etc etc when you're in an open-plan office and he sits six feet away at most.

Edit: oh and the endlessly-bouncing-knee thing.  With a real fatty like him that moves the floor perceptibly even in an office building.

[HaemishM]

Open-plan offices are the worst fucking idea in the history of fucking offices, right next to allowing people to pop popcorn in the communal microwave. There is no goddamn productivity increase that is worth the loss of personal boundaries that such a fucking travesty involves.

[ezrast]

I have yet to work in a cubicle.

It sounds nice.

[Morat20]

Open-plan offices are the worst fucking idea in the history of fucking offices, right next to allowing people to pop popcorn in the communal microwave. There is no goddamn productivity increase that is worth the loss of personal boundaries that such a fucking travesty involves.

I hate it, I really do. I've always hated having my back to open space anyways, but with cubicles I've got little choice. And these days the "modular" desk/drawers/etc" often make it difficult to impossible to avoid that. "This is clearly where the computer goes, so we will not allow you to place it anywhere else on this surface, and to do this we have restricted your ability to plug the damn thing in".

I shared an office once, way back in the day. MUCH better.


In other news: Anyone ever had any experience with adding an addition to a house? I'm eyeballing some work for when the mortgage is paid off, and am curious if anyone's done it, what they paid, and whether they felt it as worth it. Not in "improved my house value" but "Whether it was worth it to be able to have two people in a kitchen at the same time". (Seriously, horrible kitchen and the wife loves to cook. It's a more cramped kitchen than any apartment I ever had).

[Trippy]

I have yet to work in a cubicle.

It sounds nice.

It was very nice compared to open offices which should tell you how fucking horrible open office spaces are cause back when it was cubicles we all complained how bad they were compared to offices.

[Merusk]

Open-plan offices are the worst fucking idea in the history of fucking offices, right next to allowing people to pop popcorn in the communal microwave. There is no goddamn productivity increase that is worth the loss of personal boundaries that such a fucking travesty involves.

I hate it, I really do. I've always hated having my back to open space anyways, but with cubicles I've got little choice. And these days the "modular" desk/drawers/etc" often make it difficult to impossible to avoid that. "This is clearly where the computer goes, so we will not allow you to place it anywhere else on this surface, and to do this we have restricted your ability to plug the damn thing in".

I shared an office once, way back in the day. MUCH better.


In other news: Anyone ever had any experience with adding an addition to a house? I'm eyeballing some work for when the mortgage is paid off, and am curious if anyone's done it, what they paid, and whether they felt it as worth it. Not in "improved my house value" but "Whether it was worth it to be able to have two people in a kitchen at the same time". (Seriously, horrible kitchen and the wife loves to cook. It's a more cramped kitchen than any apartment I ever had).

I've always worked in Cubicles, for the collaborative architectural stuff it just made more sense. When I first started out and people were still hand drafting you worked at a drafting table in the open air. Offices were for management, and the cubicles made it feel more like the school studio environment.

Now that I'm a consultant there's no way in hell I'd work in a cubicle. I need the closed walls of the office to be able to talk on the phone with sales and clients and do my training.  Nobody wants to listen to me drone on for 5-8 hours teaching a class any more than I want to hear them do so.  I can't understand how call centers do it without more violence.


As for your addition, it's too subjective. How much you pay will depend on too many local factors for us to chime-in well. Things, like what's your ground like. Will it need excavation? Will there need to be any mitigation work done?  What are the permit, zoning, variance, and - if applicable - HOA requirements you're going to be up against.

There's a reason professionals deal with this stuff and, like anything else, you largely get what you pay for. If you're going to cheap out on it, don't. Think about your opinion on people who cheap-out on things YOU know well and are paid for and the results they get in the end.

For something major like a kitchen, consider you're not just going to be inconvenienced for a while, you're going to be sans a kitchen. Meaning the cost of eating-out every day,  or - if it's hectic enough - living in a hotel for the duration of the work needs to be included in your considerations.

In Texas, your ground sucks. You're probably going to need a post-tensioned slab for the foundation and that doesn't come cheaply. The housing I did in Austin and Dallas in 2001-2003 was ~$95 psf built cost for new work at the middle to low-upper end of the market. Reno work is generally more expensive because it costs to fit it in to the existing building.

So with all that said, no, I don't believe additions are worth it. Not unless you really love the house and don't want to or can't move to a new place.* You'll spend less and have fewer headaches selling and moving to a new place instead. That's why it's what people generally do when they want more space. (Remodels are a different thing than additions.)

* (Or if you have the ability to do it yourself the right way. As in you could build a house right now if I gave you materials and a rough plan, nothing more.)

[Viin]

If you are in Texas it'd probably be just as cheap to build a whole new house than to add an addition to your existing house.

[Yegolev]

That is probably true everywhere.

Just find a better house and move.  I'm absolutely not exaggerating.

[Chimpy]

I miscalculated how much dirt I would need to fill in a bunch of holes where I pulled out several small stumps/posts. I could have gotten away with 1/2 yard with enough to spare but I bought a full yard. Which means I could have saved myself a half hour of shoveling dirt out of the back of the pickup.

At least it was cheap.

And I needed the exercise.

[01101010]

I miscalculated how much dirt I would need to fill in a bunch of holes where I pulled out several small stumps/posts. I could have gotten away with 1/2 yard with enough to spare but I bought a full yard. Which means I could have saved myself a half hour of shoveling dirt out of the back of the pickup.

At least it was cheap.

And I needed the exercise.

Better too much than not enough. Can't begin to tell you how frustrating it is when you fill  a hole with what you think is enough only to be short, then have it settle further...

[Furiously]

There's no where to smoke at a 5k for cancer...

[Sky]

I work in an office shared by 5 people. It's not usually too bad, I do it to be closer to the public areas to be on faster response but at the expense of having space on my workbench for stuff. I worked for about a year in a private office with a balcony during reno and it was gloooorious. But several flights of stairs and security doors from my primary service area. I got a lot more non-support work done back then, though. If I ever get to hire help, I'm putting them at my current desk and moving back into the old building :)

Re: Addition. We're toying with the idea. We've got a massive lot in the city backed on by woods owned by the school district, on a dead end street in a decent neighborhood.

We've been looking for a house for years, intensely for about 8 months. (Please don't laugh at the numbers, city folk) We can't touch a move-in ready place for under 200k without a lot of compromise (ie: one stall garage on busy street in a winter area is a big compromise). Our comfortable budget is $150k. Everyone bemoans the lack of good housing stock, the good architecture has never gentrified and we don't want to live in the burbs with wells and septic and volunteer fire departments (and no price reductions!).

So we keep coming back to we like where we are. My house is paid off at 57k for 900sq, but it's way too small for us and the layout is a bit too intimate for 2 loners, one of whom likes to play explodey video games with a good sound system. And drums. Houses in the neighborhood are small capes, and a 3 1-1/2 hit (an overpriced) 135k. But mostly they sit under $100k unless they're decked out, in which case non-addition houses are about $100k to the new comp cap of 135.

So I'm considering getting some bids on expanding the structure and possibly adding a second floor to the portion of the structure over basement (that slab is a 1930 mess, I bet).

Since I have a double lot with no structure on one lot, I'm also considering a new structure, a double garage with a large loft for studio/mancave/bathroom. But that also means adding services water/gas/electric/sewer, since it's not laid out where I can tie into existing.

We basically have few good options :) On the other hand, I own my home outright and it's awesome. Women.

[Merusk]

I'd build new. Anything she's going to want you to do will mean living out of a hotel for months. Building new means not having to worry about that and being able to do what you want. Then you can rent out the old place or use it as a pool house. :D

Though I'm not sure you'd be happy with the prices of either option. If you're outside of a major city, you're paying for the crew to go there as well as transport of materials.

[Furiously]

I'd second the build new. Additions are generally compromises at best. And the cost and roofline are generally
Bad.

[Sky]

Though I'm not sure you'd be happy with the prices of either option.

Nope. We're fucked. So far my favorite option is for her to buy a cape around the corner from here for 70k.

[Hawkbit]

For fun perspective:

In 2013 we bought our 1928 980sqft craftsman for $365k. Redfin is telling us they can sell it with starting offers at $495k. Of course, we don't want to move from Seattle and even if we did want to take such an awesome offer, we'd have nowhere else to move to for our jobs because there's little inventory right now.

So we've decided to update. Kitchen-only renovations are ballpark quotes of $50-90k and at least a year until the work starts due to backlog. Three different places have told us the same thing. Additions to give us more living space are ~$250/sqft if they can do it, which kills our tiny backyard but adds quite a bit of new living space. However, this puts us about $150k renovation with both the addition and kitchen, which just so happens to be about the amount of equity we have in the house now.

It's a bit of a bitter pill to swallow - our Ohio house we sold for $170k and was already 2000sqft. 

[Merusk]

The "joys" of coastal living. You're lucky in that you can afford a house at all, even at that price per square foot.

[KallDrexx]

After my failure at smoking last weekend I was determined to actually figure this out.  I did some research, got some hints on what I was doing wrong and bought a 7.5lb Picnic and a rack of spare ribs.  The result was pure deliciousness....



Probably should have let the picnic get a little warmer (thermometer read it at 195 but it could have been a bit more pullable).

I also just realized memorial day is next weekend, maybe I'll attempt a brisket.

[Yegolev]

er mah gerd dont add on to yer house

[Sky]

The "joys" of coastal living. You're lucky in that you can afford a house at all, even at that price per square foot.

That's one of the problems living in the rust belt. Material cost is flat, though I imagine labor may be higher in metro regions. But  $150k of reno on a house that was purchased for $365k (and purportedly has $130k headroom already) is waaay different than $150k or reno on a house that was purchased for $57k (and might go for $70k after my (existing) improvements/market upswing). If we do an addition, we'll have to die in the house because we'll never get that money back.

I figure our best option for an addition is to budget $100k and hope to sell it for that and lose all the current equity. It's an emergency plan, since we plan on living here for at least 20 years, but at least we might be able to get out of it without writing a check if things go tits up. Maybe.

Yeg, come build us a better house for 150k, kthx.

[Furiously]

For fun perspective:

In 2013 we bought our 1928 980sqft craftsman for $365k. Redfin is telling us they can sell it with starting offers at $495k. Of course, we don't want to move from Seattle and even if we did want to take such an awesome offer, we'd have nowhere else to move to for our jobs because there's little inventory right now.

So we've decided to update. Kitchen-only renovations are ballpark quotes of $50-90k and at least a year until the work starts due to backlog. Three different places have told us the same thing. Additions to give us more living space are ~$250/sqft if they can do it, which kills our tiny backyard but adds quite a bit of new living space. However, this puts us about $150k renovation with both the addition and kitchen, which just so happens to be about the amount of equity we have in the house now.

It's a bit of a bitter pill to swallow - our Ohio house we sold for $170k and was already 2000sqft. 

Where in Seattle do you live Hawkbit? I might know an under the table guy close by.

[Yegolev]

Yeg, come build us a better house for 150k, kthx.

Not possible.  For the reasons you indicated.  Still, if you are hellbent, you'll be incredibly dissatisfied with any add-on.

[Merusk]

You could build a $150k house. It's just not going to be a house most US families will want to buy so you're stuck with it until you die. Then someone else buys your land, bulldozes the home and builds something else. 

[Sky]

See how we have no options, then?

I think it's kinda ludicrous that 'buy the old lady her own house around the corner' is the best option we have.

[Merusk]

Yeah, but it's largely a cultural issue. A house that was built in the 40's/ 50's wouldn't sell to most of the market today, either. It's too small.

The American paradigm has been, "sell the house, move to another" since we moved off the farms. We're never going to have the ancestral home paradigm and that's not a big deal.

[Sky]

Yeah, but it's largely a cultural issue. A house that was built in the 40's/ 50's wouldn't sell to most of the market today, either. It's too small.

The American paradigm has been, "sell the house, move to another" since we moved off the farms. We're never going to have the ancestral home paradigm and that's not a big deal.

You're not accounting for an area that's saturated in post-war development where nobody can afford to build new (even if you could find space to build, which you can't).

The other thing is that people are paying way too much for the existing housing stock. We are (laughably) in the top 10% income bracket for our zip code, but we can't afford a move-in ready 3br/2ba outside of high-crime/low-income areas (my house is 1/1). For a decently (not even modern, let alone high end) move-in ready place, it's $220k+. Our top end budget is $150k (maybe 170 if I sell my house and use the equity to bring down the mortgage). So people are overpaying, can't afford to live in it, and either sell it to some other sucker (for a profit) or go into foreclosure and walk away. One Victorian at 170k we looked at years ago has about a dozen cars parked in the alley, they're clearly renting out rooms to make the mortgage payment.

Generally the 2 reasons a house goes on the market is the owners are facing foreclosure (meaning it's overpriced by avg 30-50%) or the occupant died (meaning it hasn't been renovated since the 80s if you're lucky, and the inheritors think they're sitting on a gold mine due to overpriced comps).

And somehow this nonsense keeps perpetuating. It's driving my realtor nuts. She's selling and making money, but the market is completely screwed up.

[HaemishM]

The real estate market is SERIOUSLY overpriced just about everywhere, largely because all those suckers who had to get foreclosed on in the crash had their houses bought up for pennies on the dollar by some asshole with enough money to wait out the market, or who turned it into a rental for 1.5X what it should be renting for in its location.

[Merusk]

I'm not sure how you're appraising that they're overpriced. If it's an area that's saturated with no more places to build AND people want to live there? Yeah, of course prices are going to go up.

Your budget for a home is also very low, even for the Midwest. Median home price in the US is 232k right now. $150k will get you an upper-end low-income to middle-income area even here in Cincinnati and we've got some of the cheapest COL in the country.
Here's 350 new listings in Cincinnati at that high point downward. The Anderson area is the nicest of the group, but you're at the low-end for Anderson homes.
Now, if your complaint is that the foreclosure rate is too high, that's a complaint with the banks. They're handing out bad loans like candy again apparently.

The real estate market is SERIOUSLY overpriced just about everywhere, largely because all those suckers who had to get foreclosed on in the crash had their houses bought up for pennies on the dollar by some asshole with enough money to wait out the market, or who turned it into a rental for 1.5X what it should be renting for in its location.

Property is a right for the ruling class, not the plebeians.    I expect the prices to go up even more when the next wave hits and more people are forced into renting.