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Author Topic: Can anything be done with old stone foundation basements? [Locked]
Fat_wong  2 stars
Posts: 293
Registered: 2007-2-6 07:59:17
Halloweve posted:

Fat Wong is right, that's what I had done. I don't think we went 6 feet out tho, I think 3 feet. Old houses rock!



well, 6 feet is for down.


but really you should go down to the bottom edge of your foundation. and 2-3 feet out.
Cawlin  4 stars
Posts: 1,759
Registered: 2005-2-22 07:58:42
Well I know something about owning a very old house - the one I grew up in was old like that, without a level floor or a square corner in the place. When we took out the "storm windows" and put in the screens each year, we had to have the screens and the storm windows numbered so we could get them all back into the right windows back in the Fall again because none of them were the same goddamn size. The first year we found that out was a treat.

Let's see what else was a problem - oh yeah, the very neat looking and traditional slate roof - what a HUGE pain in the ass that was when it started to leak... or when the wind came up and sent 3 pound spinning slate decapitators flying across your property or onto your cars. The roofers never did get the leaks fixed around where the old chimneys were but had been removed since the house no longer used fire places.

The basement was almost completely wasted space - I can't even begin to catalog the number of things that were ruined by mildew and mold down there over the course of time my family lived in that house.

The rooms were oddly shaped with huge cast iron radiator heaters that were 3 or 4 feet tall, stood out from the wall almost a foot and were 3 or 4 feet long - taking up 30% of all usable wall space in the already too-small rooms.

Closet space was grievously minimal - great if you were Amish and had two sets of clothes - your holy clothes and your Holy clothes for churchin on Sunday, but if you had more than that, you were SOL.

Windows leaked like sieves, air and water, those beautiful wide window sills (because the walls are 18" thick are useless for decorating because they're always wet because unless you entirely rip out the windows and redo them, there's no amount of "caulk and weather stripping" that will help. You need to use those big windows for shelf type storage space too because you can't hang siht on stone walls like book shelves... yeah I think almost as much stuff got ruined on the leaky wide window sill of my bedroom as got ruined in our swampy basement.

Wiring and circuitry - what a fkn joke... you have no more than half the outlets you will need for anything approaching a modern lifestyle, and those outlets will all be in terrible places. Your switches and light fixtures will be in stupid places and if you want to run new ones, yay for plaster and lathe - you can just run some conduit though along the baseboards and up the corners if you like right?

Living in an old house is for people who really love inconvenience or for people who really want to actually spend all their spare time working on their house. Sure they're charming, but when the guests leave and stop raving over how charming your country home is, you have to live in it while the leaks and problems ruin not only your belongings but your savings and your patience...

Yeah I watched my dad spend just about every spare weekend hour struggling to make our 100+ year old stone farm house livable that when someone came along and offered to buy the property, he couldn't make the deal fast enough and was willing to live in a hotel if he had trouble finding a new home to live in just so he wouldn't have to delay the sale on that old farm house.

 

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Ptilk  4 stars
Title: Creepy old pirate
Posts: 2,359
Registered: 2002-2-13 14:52:58
I had no idea it could be that cheap to do. Never had it done, but I did have a sewer main replaced once. Had to dig up like 80 feet and put in new pipe....cost over 12K. Ouch. So I was thinking it would cost something like that.

Maybe I just got ripped off, but it was the cheapest estimate I got from 4 different contractors.
Cawlin  4 stars
Posts: 1,759
Registered: 2005-2-22 07:58:42
Ptilk posted:

I had no idea it could be that cheap to do. Never had it done, but I did have a sewer main replaced once. Had to dig up like 80 feet and put in new pipe....cost over 12K. Ouch. So I was thinking it would cost something like that.

Maybe I just got ripped off, but it was the cheapest estimate I got from 4 different contractors.



It was that cheap to do because he rented the backhoe himself, and substituted 3 laborers with himself and his relatives. He dug a trench around a 25' by 30' square roughly...

 

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__Bonk__  5 stars
Posts: 5,122
Registered: 2009-7-25 03:04:52
I dont know if that feat is possible for a fat Outposter to do.

 

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Fat_wong  2 stars
Posts: 293
Registered: 2007-2-6 07:59:17
__Bonk__ posted:

I dont know if that feat is possible for a fat Outposter to do.






fat outposters work smart, its how we can stay plump!


not hard and stupid like some people
BubbleDude  2 stars
Title: Perma-N00b
Posts: 488
Registered: 2003-2-27 21:04:24
Fat_wong posted:

__Bonk__ posted:

If you buy the house figure on putting at least $50,000 to $100,000 of improvements into it. You should budget for that right now at teh start

+



you really know nothing about houses. Quit giving advice.

 

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BubbleDude  2 stars
Title: Perma-N00b
Posts: 488
Registered: 2003-2-27 21:04:24
An old farm house I lived in as a kid has one of these:



Coal.

 

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SoBaKi  2 stars
Posts: 487
Registered: 2002-2-26 09:31:13
Dry river bed, 10Mil plastic, good gutters and landscaping.

There really is only so much you can do with a house that old.

 

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Cawlin  4 stars
Posts: 1,759
Registered: 2005-2-22 07:58:42
BubbleDude posted:

An old farm house I lived in as a kid has one of these:



Coal.



Yep, so did the one I grew up in. How many times a week did you have to haul out buckets of ashes? For me it was 2 or 3 times a week, 3 or 4 buckets each trip during the winter... MAJOR suckage...

 

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