All Forum Posts by: Aaron McGinnis

I may be able to help. 

The market is telling you... the price is right, but the house is wrong. You have to objectively figure out what's wrong with the house.

If your listing agent can't tell you something useful, you need to find a new listing agent who will do their job and tell you what the problem is.

If you've got asbestos in the wallboard compound, all bets are off. You're going to end up removing all of the wallboard (and trim) and then bringing the entire house up to code and then recladding and retrimming the house.

Balloon framing does not mean that there are not interior load walls. If you're unconfident of identifying them, bring in an engineer.

One of the biggest issues you'll run into is fire blocking. Expect for there to be a lot of additional work involved in it - you basically have to block the top and bottom of every stud bay. Ask your local code inspector if you can use Rockwool, it's a huge time saver if you can.

If you're building new walls, expect to have to order your lumber a bit long and scribe each one of them. 

If you're adding load to the second floor, it's not a bad idea to get an engineer's recommendation on the structure first.

[Around here] Batt insulation needs to fill the stud bay cavity. This is a pain in the butt with hewn lumber because R-13 won't get it done. Expect to go to R-19 or switch to foam. 

If you're dealing with a house that you've unclad and will be reinsulating, and the house doesn't have exterior sheathing or some kind of weather resistant barrier (most houses around here just had siding tacked straight to the stud), you're going to have a huge problem. Green building advisor has a lengthy article on the topic.

https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/article/insul...

Old house insulation strategy is where I see most contractors really screw the pooch. The temptation is to just start stuffing insulation in there, and it won't work long-term. 

Homeowners will source for themselves materials that are defective and cheap. They'll live with defects that they picked out for themselves.

When they buy a flip or hire a contractor to do work, the feeling is, "I'm paying for this to be new - so it needs to be perfect" ... which is why buying second hand materials at a yard sale or something isn't a good choice.

Also, the time spent hunting down a light fixture at a yard sale or CL is going to wipe out the savings of it. Time = money.

It sounds like what you have is condensation that's probably stemming from an underlying insulation problem. Adding space for air flow may be part of a solution, but you'll probably need to go a lot further and dig into what's causing the condensation in the first place. Badly installed or poorly-planned insulation can cause condensation issues, especially in places where snow and frost are part of life. Unfortunately, it's unlikely that there's going to be a simple bandaid solution.

What you need to do is get someone out there who understands the building science behind insulation strategies and can help troubleshoot the actual reason for the condensation to be happening.

Ozone generator. Never enter a smelly house without one. 

@Davian brown - one of the questions you have to figure out for yourself is... do you want to manage construction or do you want to manage real estate investments?

[Construction] Project management is a pretty well defined industry role and only worth so many dollars a year... and can very easily be a full time job, especially if you have more than one project at a time. If your business is buying you that job and you're happy with it, great. But you should expect compensation commiserate to that role. 

If that is the job you've bought yourself,  I would urge you to think about how to grow the business until that is no longer your role.

Spending money on a house you don't own is a bad idea.

Equity makes him a partner. Why would you want to do that?

Just hire a contractor and be done with it.