My wife and I made a conscious decision to look for a house that needed some work, knowing that it could result in us saving a considerable amount of money.
But, that resulted in the worst timing possible, because we signed the paperwork and purchased the property in the months leading up to the pandemic.
We planned to start and complete the necessary remodeling work in the summer of 2020, but the cost of building material skyrocketed. Instead of finishing the renovations in a short span of time, we had to stretch it out over the length of a year. There was just no other way for us to afford the wood and metal needed to fix this old house if we bought everything at once. I bought sheets of plywood and lengths of two-by-fours whenever the prices dropped and then I stored it all in a storage facility a mile away from the property. One of the other things we had to do before we moved in was clean the old sewer line running from underneath the house to a connection point under our sidewalk. During the cleaning process, the plumber had to use a snake to break apart sediment that was clinging to the inside of the sewer line. Once the sewer line was cleared out, he put a camera down there and showed me the white PVC that could now be seen after all of the rigorous draining cleaning had ceased. Eventually I want to get a gas line installed so we can use a gas powered furnace and hot water heater, but it will take some savings before that can be achieved.