New Home 120 Day Recap of What It Cost Me So Far.

In this episode i talk about my repairs and costs being in my new house now for just over 120 days. I want to share this experience because some of you may be in the process of moving into a new home so sharing my realistic costs may be helpful to you.

List of expenses:

Locksmith
Movers
Plumbing
Water pressure
Siding
Sewer Cleaning
Insulating Exterior Walls
Hauling & Cleanup
HVAC upgrade
Door and window
Washer & Dryer upgrade

Transcript

John Laforme: 0:00

Buying a home. Don't panic. Just listen to the rest of this podcast Welcome to my podcast everybody. My name is John laforme. I'm a certified home inspector and the owner of Home Inspection Authority. My podcast allows me to share my day to day home inspection experiences and knowledge to help homebuyers, homeowners, realtors and other home inspectors set realistic expectations with each other during the home buying process. So let's get right into it All right, everybody, welcome back. Today's special guests are me, myself and I, today I want to go over my experience being this is the about 120 days into my new home. So I want to recap and go over what this cost me so far to give any of you out there who are considering buying a house or in the process, what you might run into during your move in and right after your move and what kind of expenses you might incur. So before I get into that, I want to give a friendly reminder, everybody, have you changed your heating and cooling filter lately. If you haven't, in the past two or three months, run on down to Home Depot, grab an HDX brand pleated filter. They're only$5.98. I just bought one today, because I've been a bad boy and forgot to replace mine last month. So I just did it today. That's a 90 day filter, go grab it, it's a good deal. And that's all you need. Don't be spending 20 bucks on a filter. It's a really it is a waste of money. Change it more often. With a cheap filter. It's the smartest way to go. Alright, so a little bit about the house. Built in 1944 about 1400 square feet, three bed one bath. So you know honestly, the house was very much moving ready. It was painted. It came with window blinds, I didn't have to buy those in the paint colors are pretty decent too. So I didn't have to come in and like you know, Puke over the pink colors. It is like okay, the same bed I just got, I guess I'll just leave them the way they are. So at that point, it was just a matter of moving and all the furniture and everything. So the only room I painted was my home office slash podcast studio, which I'm sitting in right now while I'm recording this. And I just painted it to match. My last podcast studio webmail will place and it looks the same. I like this gray color are really, really really works. I like it. And so anyway, the very first thing I did before I actually moved all my stuff and was a call the locksmith and had him change all the locks. Because the previous owners were here for like 30 years, who knows how many of their friends and family have copies of the locks and keys and everything else? And so I was like, Okay, let's get that done. So Kevin Brennan from the local recommend that I call last Philo's locking key. And that's what I did, they came out, I took them about an hour and changed the locks and matched all the locks to one key to make it convenient. And the total cost for that was only $227. So I was pretty happy with that. And feel a little safer now that all the locks changed. So it was the first thing I did, I'd recommend anybody do that that's moving. Even if you're moving into an apartment, I would change those locks. Because you don't know if the landlord did. So getting into the movers. So the moving company I used was real rock and roll movers from Burbank. I've used these guys like three times now. I think that was my third time using them. And I've had a good experience and all three times. So they're very reliable, they show up on time. They bring up these three guys. And I hired them just to move all the big stuff because I didn't want to move all the heavy stuff like the frigerators big couches, entertainment centers, and all the bedroom sets. So had them do all the big stuff. And I myself with the help on my family filled up my van probably 20 times going back and forth but the distance between my old place and this new house was only about 10 minutes, max maybe actually probably more like six minutes to be honest. So it's pretty close. So I didn't have to drive too far. But yeah, I filled up my little work van at least 20 times with everything I could jam in there. Kind of like a clown car. So you know, like I said they did a really good job. The total cost for those guys was 11 $1,185. And, you know, I tipped him out like 100 bucks. So by looking at 1285, almost 1300 bucks, well worth it, my bank appreciated it. So it was well worth the money. So now let's get into some necessary repairs that I had to do, just to make the house comfortable. So I decided to make the rear of the house, which was like a addition added on to the house. So I'd say probably back in 1980s 1990s. And unfortunately, it did not have a heating or cooling supply in there. So there was no heat source in there. And it's winter months when I'm moving in here. So I was like, let's make this the master bedroom. But I'm going to have to make it comfortable. So I had to try to figure a way to get a heating supply from my H pack system. I have a central system here. So I just needed to tap into that somehow. But it was really difficult because the room in question has a flat roof. And the main house has a pitched roof. So I couldn't get, I couldn't like just sneak it to the attic and drop it in. So I had to get creative. And I wound up coming up with the solution to my office closet. The ceiling goes into the attic area of the main house. So I cut a hole 10 inch hole in the ceiling in the closet. And I ran a 10 inch duct right through it. And then ran that out to the exterior wall, which will used to be the exterior wall into the addition. So I was able to put a supply in there. But I'm not able to get a return in there. So this is still an ongoing thing I have to figure out. So I might want to go in with a mini split system in there. After all, I didn't want to do that because I'm going to tear down that room and a couple years and and rebuild that whole back of the house. So I'm just trying to try not to do things twice as I'm trying to do. But anyway, just adding that duct that took me probably about four hours of my time to get all that done plus materials, I probably spent about $225 Just for the materials to get that that supply into that room. It was more it was just it was just a lot of labor intensive work. The materials wasn't much at all so so that's what I had to do to get that done. And now that rooms a lot more comfortable. It's not perfect, but it's way better than what it was. Okay, so on the same room I'm talking about on the exteriors, it had vinyl siding on it. And some of this vinyl siding was fallen off, it was cracked, it was loose, in some sections of it where they look kind of melted, because the previous owner had his barbecue like right next to the vinyl siding and he was cooking stuff outside like hello Earth Earth to person. This is really hot and that that siding is vinyl, it's just gonna melt. So some of it was melted already. So in because of the conditions inside that room, you know, after digging into it and like well, you know what, I think I need to just replace the siding. So I just said fuck it and I just went at it, get the pry bar out, get the hammer out, pulled all that vinyl siding off. And that that's when I realized there was no house wrap on the house. There was no there was no insulation on the exterior. And there was barely any insulation in the walls. So I took the time to rip all that off, put some house wrap around that whole section. And and then put some smart siding up, I had to do it because it was just it was just it would have looked really ugly if I didn't do anything. So and it made the house much more energy efficient as far as letting keeping the hot and cold outside and made the living conditions inside way better. So that took me quite a while because that was a big project. And that took me probably a total of four days. But those days were split up into hours because you know, I was really busy work and inspection businesses are very busy right now. So took a lot of my time, a lot of trips to Home Depot. But I got it done and it was well worth it. And at the same time I did that I had to replace a couple old damaged windows and doors that were in there. So it's a way better way better looking exterior right now and it's like I said it's much more comfortable on the inside. So all that work just on the siding itself, the siding. The siding material materials cost me about $1,300 But I did all the work myself. So I didn't have to pay anybody. I think if I had paid someone for that they would have probably charged between Five and 10 grant to do all that work. So I just saved a ton of money by doing that myself. And then the door window, I had to replace them at the door in the window cost about 900 bucks. So I'm into that for like, you know, 2100, something like that right around there 2200. So not bad considering, like I said, I did it myself because I'm able to I just I know how to do that stuff. So moving on. After that, I had to adjust the garage vehicle door, because I just wouldn't open all the way and every time you open and close it, it would like jump up and down. I'm like, shit, that ain't good. I don't want that thing to break. So that was a simple adjustment with a screwdriver. I didn't have to buy anything. It only took me about 10 minutes to fix that problem. So that door works fine. Now everything's good with the garage. But the sellers left a whole bunch of debris, like cardboard boxes. There was old Christmas stuff up in the up in the rafters of the attic, and tons of ratchet up their dust and like 30 years of dust and dirt. It was just nasty had to put a respirator on when I was doing this. That's how much dust was up there not to mention all the rat rat droppings and everything else, and actually found two dead rats in the garage. So after cleaning all that out, I had to get rid of all that material. There's a lot of stuff up there. And then combined with taking all the old siding off, I had a big pile of construction stuff in my backyard. I didn't want to look at that. And I didn't want to you know, leave it there for too long because that's how you get rodent problems. You get rats living in there and everything else. So I just wanted to get rid of all that. So I went on Yelp and I found Henry's hauling on Yelp guy was great. He came out and took away all that stuff in one trip. 550 bucks. And I even took down No, he didn't take this part. He took all the siding stuff and all the stuff in the garage and any other debris I had laying around. And I also had a really old nasty metal shed in the backyard. So I ripped that apart. I left that out front of my house and it was gone in like 20 minutes. Some scrap guy must have just drove by as soon as I put it out there and just took it all so that was great. That didn't cost me anything. But Henry's hauling did a great job. Give him a call on Yelp. Really nice guy definitely had a pro service and he did cleaned up everything and he did a really good job. So hats off to Henry's howling. Okay, now let's get into some plumbing issues I had to deal with like pretty quick. When I moved in, my water pressure was 140 psi. That's double what it should be. So I had to change that out. And that right there was 550 bucks. I had Robert Dell plumbing do that for me. Y'all know Robert has been a lot of my videos, clear routes from the sewer lateral. I did have a root intrusion when I did my sewer camera inspection. So I had Robert also routed that out to clear it and he did that. And I had a washer and dryer hookups in the garage. I did not own a washer and dryer when I moved in here because the place I was renting already had one. So I didn't have my own. So then I had to go buy one and I'm like, Okay, I don't want to put this in the garage. I got too much stuff to go in the garage already. And I didn't want to inconvenience myself or my family with going in and out of the house to do laundry. I sound like a drag. So I went out and purchased a LG gas fueled wash tower. I gotta tell you, this is a really nice washer dryer tower setup. I was hesitant to pull the trigger on buying that right away. I was like okay, let me wait. Let me make sure. I mean, let me think about this and think about where I want to do this. So I decided to eventually upgrade one of the bedrooms and turn it into a bathroom slash laundry room. So I was thinking well if I do that, and then I need to go with a tower, not as not a side by side. So I gave it a lot of thought and I kept kind of, I don't know, procrastinating on it. And I kept checking the Home Depot website to see see how much it was, um, not not to Home Depot, the Lowe's, this is Lowe's and and that kept refreshing every day on that to see if the price change and it was originally at$2,700 and wind up getting it for 1895. I like like a week later, I was like, Damn, what the hell this thing broke that maybe somebody returned it as them but in the guide know, it's brand new, it just ordering your brand new and I'm like, That's awesome. So I jumped on that deal and that was no interest financing for a year. So that was a fantastic offer right there can't cannot complain about that. So after using the washer dryer, as long as I have, it's a great machine, it looks really nice. So it's easy on the eyes. So if you want to leave it in a room, that's where it's going to be seen and exposed all the time. It's, it's, it's not an eyesore, like a regular washer and dryer would be. So definitely think about that, if you're gonna buy one, because you got tight spaces like I do here, I have a ton of room in this house. So I got to kind of make all those little spaces effective as far as what I use it for. And the bummer of the washer dryer was this, I had to relocate the washer dryer hookups. And that was a bit pricey. So that costs about 20 to 52,250 bucks to relocate the plumbing drain lines, water supplies, gas, gas line, all that stuff. So that was something that hired Robert Dell plumbing to do as well. He did a great job. By the way, Robert always does a great job, he doesn't know how to do stuff half ass. So if you need a really good plumber give him a call. However, in hindsight, I think I should have got the electric version of the LG wash tower because of these crazy natural gas prices we just started having. So I'm kind of thinking I should have went electric. So I'm kind of second guessing myself on that one. But anyway, I already bought it. So I have it, I'll just deal with it. I also had to add a seismic shutoff valve to the gas meter. And that was about 350 bucks right there. And I also wanted up adding a copper ground rod and then bonding the ground road to the water supply and the gas supply because the House did not have this when I moved in. So that just makes everything safe. That there cost about to do all that probably another 350 bucks to install those things. And the last thing I did up up till now was I added blown insulation into the exterior walls, because back in the 40s, they weren't putting insulation in the walls. So I hired a company called insulation labs and Van eyes, their website, their website is installation labs.com. So let me explain how this works. This is interesting. I called a few different companies. And I got like two different quotes. I tried to get into third quote, but the company was just really just not very organized. So I just forgot about them and dealt with these other two guys. So the first company that comes in to give me an estimate, they were like, Okay, well, we'll come in the house, and we'll drill holes in your interior walls. And then we'll put foam foam plug on the wall in the hole. And then we'll we'll put some drywall mud right over that, all you'll have to do is just paint over it when you're done. I'm like, Hmm, that sounds like a lot of work to me after the fact. So I'm thinking I hire them to put holes in my walls on the interior. And then they're going to say they're going to patch them. But if they're not good at patching them, it's going to look like shit. And then I'm going to have to get someone in there or myself and spend hours upon hours of sanding drywall, which is the most the worst job in the world ever, I think. And I didn't want to deal with that, really. So I was like, Hmm, let me think about that. So I waited for the second guy to come through. And then they came through and they were like, Oh, we can just drill holes in the stucco. I'm like what? Didn't even that didn't cross my mind about being an option because the other person never mentioned it. So one company says we got to do it from the inside. And another company says we can do it from the inside or the outside. I'm like wait a second. You can do it from the outside. How does that work? He goes yeah, we just drilled two inch holes. I have a shitload of them. I mean they probably put 100 holes in the outside of my stucco. But then they put a foam a little piece of foam circle right into that hole fits perfectly and then they put the stucco right over it and they took the time to do it really nice. So all they had to do afterwards was just roll paint it with my paint to match the house and already had some so that was easy, but it came out really good. So what they do to get that blown insulation in the walls first they have to drill the holes like I mentioned, but drill one high and drill one low in between each set of studs along the exterior walls. And then they can as long hose as a guy on a truck Got all the insulation, the other guy is standing on a ladder. And he's got the hose and he puts the hose in the hole fills it up and just starts pouring out, they stop and they plug it, they go the next hole and bam, bam, bam. So those two guys were doing that. Another guy was the one drilling the holes. And then two other guys were there, going after the holes were filled and kept with the foam, the other two guys would do all the stucco finishing. So they would make it look really nice, match the stucco. And then that was it. So those guys were there from, I think about six hours. So it was like 1234. Like five guys were there for like six hours, they did a really, really good job. And it definitely made a difference in the house. So it's not a perfect science, the loan and installation just so you know, it's not going to fill every crack and crevice in this in between the studs. Sometimes there's fire blocking in there, sometimes there's rack bracing in there that's going to get in the way. So don't expect it to be perfect. But overall, I think it definitely made a difference. I could feel the difference in the house after they were done. So I would definitely recommend insulation labs, they did a fantastic job. And they gave me multiple options. And the grand total of that was $3,900. And I thought that was a good price, too. That's seems pretty reasonable for what they had to do. So anyway, that's a one day job. You don't need a permit for that. You don't have to deal with the building department to get a permit. It was pretty straightforward. And I think it was a great result. So to wrap this up right here, total expenses, up to now about 13,600. These are things that had to get done, just to make the house more comfortable to live in and safer. So hope this helped everybody. But just want to mention in a future episode, I will be talking about my building permit application for a second full bath I want to install. So that's going to be coming up in the future episodes. So let's end this one with this note. just received my first property tax bill Ouch.