So my wife and I are looking to buy a home, and all of the neighborhoods we're looking in are older properties (~1900 to late 40's depending on which neighborhood we find a house in). So as you can expect many of them are going to have some things to be addressed, but I'm kind of in the dark on how much any of these things might cost.

Do any of y'all have experience with how much any of the following might run? (and these are not all at the same house, 3 different potential properties)

-Converting a half bath into a full bath. (Including moving a non load-bearing wall to increase the footprint)
-Installing central A/C in a house that is currently on window units. (1850 SF 2-story w/basement, built 1928)
-Building a 2-car garage.

Thanks for any advice from anyone who's actually undertaken one of these projects. My brother-in-law knows a thing or two about A/C (his line of work is commercial air and refrigeration) and he estimated $10k to $20k depending on if the electric panel would need upgrading, but he cautioned that since he doesn't do residential take that with several grains of salt. No clue really on the others.

4/17/2015 2:48:59 AM

We'll see you in the home ownership woes thread soon.

My house is only 22 years old, and the money we've spent on repairs, updating, maintenance, etc has me often regretting buying this house. not to mention the poor efficiency compared with more recent construction.

If i could go back in time, I'd have pushed harder for a newer construction home, given our decision to live in the southside.

That said, I totally get the draw of the area you're looking to buy in. Good luck!

4/17/2015 11:22:59 AM

I would include a bit more information on what you want in each of these things. For instance, for the garage, is it going to be brick? A 19x19 garage or a 25x25? Do you want built ins? All of those things will affect the cost.

For the bathroom, I would put your size dimensions, and what you want (Double vanity, walk in shower + tub, custom tile, etc), so they can get an idea.

A/C should be easiest to get a quote on.

Good luck!

4/17/2015 12:01:19 PM

As it turns out we loved the one we saw tonight and plan to offer on that, so wish me luck. Of my list of potential items there, it was the "building a garage" entry. And as it turns out what was described as a shed in the listing is actually an older 1-car garage so if I can run electric to that it might do for the time being. If that doesn't work or is smaller than it looks, I'd want to match the look of the house so it wouldn't be brick, but the rest is open to question. (19 x 19 wouldn't work, the largest of our cars is 18', that'd be awful tight.)

Bobby, I have no doubt that will happen I just really like the details and the character (though that word coves a lot of sins) of older places, plus the look of the established neighborhoods. There will of cousre be a ton of maintenance/repair but you have to look at it as part of the "old house experience", lol. If/when we head out to the 'burbs I'll probably go as new as I can too, and there's a high likelihood we'll land out there eventually due to the craptastic schools inside the city. But as we don't have a kid yet, that gives us at least 6 years before we need to worry about that. If you're familiar with northside, the place we're currently looking at is a 1930 colonial in North Ginter Park. It's not quite the Fan (out of our budget for anything decent) but it's still quite walkable with Bellevue and its shops/restaurants the next neighborhood over.

4/18/2015 12:55:03 AM