How old is "too old"?

[bloom2708]

I am 52. I won't consider building from scratch.

My brother in law built a house near Deadwood, SD. It took 1.5 years longer than expected and cost more than 2x the original plan.

Now that it is built, he has to do the driveway and landscaping and finish parts that weren't finished because of the cost overruns.

It is about 99 on my top 100 things to do. Maybe if you have to ask, you know the answer.

 

[Badger]

My wife and I built a house in the mountains when we were in our 50s. It was a 9 hour drive to get there so for 9-10 years I would go up during holidays and summer to cut wood and swing a hammer. I designed and built everything except for the timber frame and I did have an electrician hook me up to the power pole after I ran the wiring. It was a learning experience to see if I could build a home to live if everything wound up in the toilet. Glad to have had the opportunity for the challenge. There is no way I could do it now at 75.
However, since you are going to hire someone to do the work plan to visit the construction site a few times a week to insure the work is done properly with decent materials. You may want to have the contract reference material quality and workmanship, the contractors responsibility for correcting, and a time frame for completion with penalties for going past the completion date.

Cheers!

 

[engineernerd]

DH and I have, literally for YEARS, discussed buying property and building a house for retirement.

For those of you that have "been there, done that", would you do it again? And what age were you when you did so?
How long have you been in your home now?

We thought about building on a raw acreage lot (in east King County, Washington State), but we knew the permitting requirements would be extremely frustrating - the more charming the property, the more frustrating and costly the environmental review process would be.

We wanted to do other things with our time (and money). So we looked for a property with an existing, fully-permitted, mobile or manufactured home already on it with a functional well and septic system. Didn't matter that the existing mobile home was horrible, it was easy-peasy (and cheap!) to get a permit to replace it with a new doublewide in pretty much the same spot. Only one site visit from the building inspector, at completion, to issue the occupancy permit.

It was also pretty cool to watch the installation, which took either one day or two, can't remember. Practically instant gratification!

I guess my one piece of advice is, make SURE you know all the permitting laws before you pick a piece of land!

Same thing is true for a major remodel, though the scope for dashed hopes is less there.

 

[ychuck46]

Almost everyone is using PexA or PexB now. /QUOTE]

Personally I would prefer these materials. Easier to work on that copper; even at 70 yo I can still do a lot of the work myself on our big house, and plastic plumbing is one of the easiest to work on.

 

[SJhawkins]

Few thoughts, we bought a home in a acreage development 30+ years ago, lots are 2-4 acres. Not much of anything around us then. Fast forward to today we can take a long walk of about a mile and have dinner, pick up groceries, see to doc, etc.

We go for and old peoples Sunday drive and we are in the county again in about 10 minutes, beautiful area, we think dang we should move out here. We get back home and think it would be to darn inconvenient to live way out there, done that before.

Guess what I'm saying if it comes down to an old house with some land that need a pile of work that is close to what you want to be around vs a new home with a 30 minute drive from everything, get the pile of a house and make it your own.

 

[catii]

Built our dream home in 1978, while DW & I worked as VPs for Fortune 500 companies. Figured we'd be there for the rest of our careers - nope. My employer got sold, & hers was absorbed into an even-larger conglomerate. We still had jobs, but saw the writing on the wall.

Started our own consulting company, which was so successful, that our major client coerced us to reopen our HQ in Hawaii! Retired from that at age 70. Bought an older home, & are still remodeling it, taking turns as Project Manager, since we're both engineers. No real regrets, but it was definitely easier to start from ground-up!

 

[TXBev]

What kind, any special marks?

 

[pjigar]

We started out looking in the county nearby. It has its own set of issues with Wells and septic and the like.
This property has a view and is 1 mi from the grocery store and a mile and a quarter from Costco, home depot, the YMCA, the medical facilities.
That's what suckered me in. DW loves all of that above.

I hear you. We get "city water" via co-op. Today's septic are a lot better. I would like a well but for garden water. I heard drinking water from a well is a lot of work and money.

 

[Music Lover]

I heard drinking water from a well is a lot of work and money.

We have a well at home and also at our cabin. It's not a lot of work and is inexpensive, around here it's far cheaper than a municipal water bill.

 

[old medic]

Some rural counties are just as strict. At least mine is.

On the 3rd visit to our rebuild, the inspector looks at the bedroom windows, get out a tape and informs me that they are a quarter inch to short for egress purposes. Thankfully the fire Marshall is a long time friend and gave us a variance.

 

[meleana]

Exactly how old are you? When we retired we found the last stage of a development being built in the state we wanted to move to. We were 63 and 65. These are cookie cutter homes in a lakes mountain vacation region. We worked with the builder’s realtor long distance. Phone, emails and texts. Only visited the house twice before we closed on it. Small one level cottage on essentially no land. HOA community.

We had a big house on 10 1/2 wooded acres and knew it would be a bad idea to age there.

After we moved I said even if we hate it here we’re never moving again. Moving is stressful- we had to do it twice because we sold our home a few months before the new one was ready. There was some stress dealing with the builder. Plus moving in general is more involved than people realize if they haven’t done it.

Right after we moved the pandemic hit. This past year out of the blue I ended up with spine surgery. Glad the moving thing is behind us and we have a smaller home and no property to care for. I’m now 67 and my husband is 69.

Our first home was a handyman special we worked on for 10 years before we sold it.

Second home was new build. That’s the one that was on the 10 1/2 acres. 32 years there . We were always working on it and the property and last 7 years there did a total remodel before selling it.

This home- we keep it simple. Little to no working on it. Still have the builders paint on the walls. Not finishing the basement. Sure we could go crazy and add more things to it, but been there, done that. At this age we’re in another phase of life. Lock and leave. Low maintenance. We don’t need an HGTV home.

 

[Fermion]

On the 3rd visit to our rebuild, the inspector looks at the bedroom windows, get out a tape and informs me that they are a quarter inch to short for egress purposes. Thankfully the fire Marshall is a long time friend and gave us a variance.

Our inspector made us put in a 3 inch radon reduction pipe even though we had a detector running in the crawlspace the past 2 years that showed less than 0.7 ppm.

(there is probably more radiation than that in your breakfast cereal)

 

[Ronstar]

Our county wouldn't let me put floor drains in my garage. My foundation design was set up based on pitching the garage floor to drains. Without floor drains, I had to make the 30' deep garage pitch to the garage doors with minimal slope. So now I get little puddles of melted snow and ice under the cars in the winter. That wouldn't happen with floor drains.

I'm tempted to rip out my garage floor, put in floor drains with a drain line drilled through the foundation wall to connect to downspout lines, new concrete floor with in-floor heat and epoxy finish.

 

[pjigar]

We have a well at home and also at our cabin. It's not a lot of work and is inexpensive, around here it's far cheaper than a municipal water bill.

Well are not common around here and water table is deep so hard water. So I guess well is location dependent.

 

[Fermion]

Well are not common around here and water table is deep so hard water. So I guess well is location dependent.

Wells here are 500 feet deep in some places, which is why we didn't put one in at our mountain property. In the city though, our public water is still hard with manganese (400ppm hardness) so we put in a fleck water softener and it works great. It removes everything and the ppm testing now is 0

 

[Music Lover]

Well are not common around here and water table is deep so hard water. So I guess well is location dependent.

Of course. Our house well is 50' deep, at the cabin 10' as we are 300 yards from the lake.

 

[REWahoo]

Wells here are 500 feet deep in some places, which is why we didn't put one in at our mountain property.

Wells in my area are 800+ feet. Last I heard a "turn-key" water system (drilling, pumps, pressure tank, storage tank, etc.) was around $60K. By comparison, we paid around $10K when we put in our well in 1998.