We're buying a huge freakin' house!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

We moved out here to WV so I could manage our rental properties, but I never intended to live in the apartment building that we own long-term. So we’ve been looking around at houses. Here are the criteria they had to meet:
Close enough to the rental properties that I can still effectively manage them.
Large enough not to crowd us (I hate being crowded!)
Cheap enough to not strangle us financially.
Big enough yard for mudgirl to have a dog.

Well, almost two weeks ago, we looked at one. It’s in the town of Grafton, WV (birthplace of Mother’s Day! And proud of it!), which is about 40 minutes away. Grafton is a slightly larger town than the one we currently live in, still nice and small, though, enough that I’ll feel safe letting the kid ride her bike pretty much where she wants to. It also has a hospital very nearby, unlike our current residence; given my propensity for developing kidney stones, I’ll feel comforted by that!

Here’s the thing: the house used to be an assisted living facility for senior citizens. It’s got eight bedrooms and six bathrooms, and is 9,000SF!

It needs some work, mostly cosmetic. New carpets, or new flooring of some kind. The wallpaper needs to go. The house is about 120 years old, though, and the solid hardwood wood work in the place is to die for. It also has five fireplaces!

We’re going to end up renting out some of the space, for sure. Haven’t decided yet how many of the rooms to do as long-term rentals (there’s a small college in Grafton, so we may find college students to rent to), and how many to rent out short-term, for anywhere from a night to a couple of weeks. If we decided to go the “country inn” route with maybe four of the rooms, I think we could do OK. There’s only one motel in Grafton, and my understanding is it sucks.

Hubby was interested in doing a bed and breakfast with it, but I know what that means: it means I get to get up at 5AM to cook gourmet breakfast food for people I don’t know. I didn’t like that plan, so I nixed it!

Pretty exciting, all in all. And it would be a hell of a place for a dope fest!

2

Wow! Sounds like a great find!

My grandmother’s family was from the Grafton area. If you run into any Shavers, I’m probably related to 'em.

3

I’ll keep it in mind! :slight_smile:

4

How do you plan to heat it? That could be a really nasty cost.

5

One of our first renovations will be to get zoned heating for the place. It’ll require an initial outlay of money, but it will absolutely pay for itself within just months, I’m figuring. I’m also planning on making as much use of the fireplaces as possible; it’s my understanding that they’ve all been converted to gas fireplaces, but I’d like to switch at least the one in the front living room back to wood. Nothing against gas fireplaces, per se, but I love a wood fireplace! And the front living room has the potential to be gorgeous.

6

Sounds good, keep most of the place just warm enough not to freeze the pipes and thus not go broke. That is a mistake that happened to a coworker of mind. Retired early, bought a huge house and the next year was when the heating oil prices shot up really high the first time. He had all kinds of headaches trying to correct the problem during the winter.

Good luck with the place and enjoy it.

7

Many congratulations!:cool:

8

My dad had a very similiar place.

Three bedrooms downstairs, plus a kitchen and living area with a family living space upstairs.

The rental from the students (was also a ccollege town) actually covered the mortgage.

Good luck and enjoy!

My recommendation would be to rent the rooms furnished, set it up such that each room has its own phone line and to have a separate circuit for electricity (if that applies there), even if you are planning on including utilities in the rental I think it would be good to be able to split out what is consumed by the tenants and what is consumed by you.

And yeah - make sure you have a separate entrance for the tenants (although that probably goes without saying)

9

Any chance of you doing a Reno Thread (with photos)? There was such a thread here a couple of years ago and it was a massive success. I’d love to see another one.

10

Holy cats! Congratulations! But, that sounds like a lot to clean. We’ve got 2100 sq feet, and I can’t keep up with it. Still though, beautiful woodwork is totally worth it.

11

Pics? MLS#?

12

Wow, I thought I won for “most crazily large house” but mine is only 5K square feet. Which is still WAY too big for two people, but we do work out of the house, and we looked for a year and a half and this house fit all our criteria - even the difficult/hard to find ones - the only issue being it was big. We decided to live with it.

9000 square feet! That’s crazy! But in a good way, especially since you are already in the rental business and can easily figure out what to do with a few extra bedrooms.

Congrats!

13

It’s a possibility!

I’ll get pics ASAP. Don’t have MLS, as it was being sold on Craigslist by a private individual.

bengangmo, the house has three floors, including a completely separate apartment on the top floor; the way it’s set up, it will be easy to isolate one floor from another. Because of the previous use of the facility, it already, by law, has entrance/exit from each floor. So yeah, definitely doable to not give tenants/renters too much access to our private residence area. Also, there’s a working speaker system in the house, so if someone needs me, they won’t need to be knocking on my door. :wink:

14

Sweet!

Dad always loved that he was right there to keep an eye on the students (you know how students are) but didn’t need to “take care” of them. He had internal access, but it was only one way.

Best of luck on everything…

15

For those who are interested, here’s the link to the listing for the house:
http://morgantown.craigslist.org/reo/2299679366.html

There is a great pic of the main stairway in there, showing off some of that killer woodwork!

16

norine, my word, it’s gorgeous. And the price is pretty much making me fall over. Congratulations!

17

Wishing you luck and joy in your new home!

18

Thanks! Even though it’s 40 minutes from here, it’ll be somewhat closer to the town I go into to do major shopping, plus my 20YO just moved back in with us, doesn’t drive (yet) and there’ll be a lot more opportunities in Grafton for her to get a job that’s within walking distance than there are here. You can practically see the downtown area from the front yard of the house!

Thanks!
:slight_smile:

19

Beautiful woodwork. Looks like a great house to play hide and seek.

20

I think you should turn it in to one of those theme hotels. Like, the Elvis room, the Jungle room, the Hello Kitty room. When you don’t have customers, you and hubby get to sleep in a different room every night :stuck_out_tongue:

It looks SO cool. It’s the size of NINE of my house!!! I love it!