Home Renovation Story and Tips

I have been reading the New York Renovator Blog for about a year. The updates are filled with humor and reality. I've enjoyed following this blog and the work being done to this home in New York. There are many older homes in the Cleveland, Ohio area, and many people buy these old homes to restore. I've witnessed amazing after shots and some of the work is stunning. If you're thinking about rehabbing a century home, you'll want to check this blog out even if you just need motivation. Also, make sure you read her tips at the bottom of this article. Yes, it's long, but I think you'll enjoy her tips and stories. This is my interview with Mrs. Mecomber who is truly a vibrant and energetic mother and wife. She's now also... a renovator.

About The Mecombers: My husband and I are raising four children, three cats, a dog, and a bird on our 1.25 acre property in small-town suburbia, in central New York State. It's been a challenging endeavor, because not only have we had to contend with renovations, flooding, zoning laws, and learning the ropes as we go, we've also got a lousy New York economy, a recession-spiraling national economy, and high taxation. "Jack of all trades" doesn't even begin with us. And then, take Mr. M from one side of Americana (a middle-class Air Force brat with no handyman experience) and Mrs. M from the other (a lower-class country bumpkin who spent a few years roughing it in the Appalachians), and you've got some entertainment as well.

The house was built in 1855, by a young man for his new bride. This was a time when the Erie Canal had brought prosperity and hope to Upstate New York. The house has sagged with the economic decline of the state, and is now slowly being rebuilt by the family, while we live here.

The 1700 square-foot home is an American Greek Revival. It has a front entry hall with flanking dining room and living room, a kitchen and utility room, four bedrooms, and 1.5 bathrooms, added in the 1960s. Except for the bathroom updates and a funky new kitchen in 1970, the house remains the same as it did in 1855 (except for the electrical wiring patched in during the 1930s).View our photos here.

The house came on the market in 1997 for an asking price of $74,500. We got it for $62,500. Minor cosmetic improvements and some improvements in infrastructure (a new furnace, partial new wiring, foundation and runoff improvements, gardens, etc) has increased the value to $100,000 currently. The house is currently in moderate disrepair, due to the "renovating process" (the euphemism for half-done projects).

It is my goal to build the house and property into a somewhat self-sustaining homestead, where we grow our own food, tighten energy use, and live off the land as much as possible. We are one of many in the new and growing movement of "suburban homesteading."

What have been the biggest challenges in renovating your historic home? Financing. Without a doubt. Doing anything in New York State is SO expensive. I live in Upstate, so we have nationally higher costs, nationally higher taxes, and nationally lower wages. It's been our main impediment since we bought the place. It's also coupled with the difficulty of raising a family in an older home being renovated in bits and pieces. Projects seem to last longer than average!

The second biggest challenge was probably that we were greenhorns. Those first few years were tough, because it was a "know as you go" experience. So my front porch floor squeaks and my baseboard trim is askew. Those little things still bother me! But at least I can now joke about the time that I shut off the wrong circuit breaker panel switch before cutting into an electric wire. Thank God for rubber-handled cable cutters. Wow. Now I shut off the entire panel, no matter what. Live and learn!

What have you found to be the easiest fixes in your home or property? The gardening has been very enjoyable and inexpensive. I bought the house knowing very little about gardening. It's amazing how much a person can learn from books at the local library.

When we bought the property eleven years ago, the house had been vacant for almost a year and the property had become overgrown. Our first project was cutting down a monstrous stinging nettle bush. It was quite a project for greenhorns with only a small hammer and a handsaw in our arsenal.


What made you decide on this property and project? Has it met or exceeded your expectations? The main reason for choosing this property was that it was affordable and close to my daughter's private school. We knew the house was very old, would need updating. I've always loved old houses because I love their history and character, and old houses are usually better built than new ones. However, old homes usually lack the infrastructure for plumbing, electric, and central heating. Realizing this as the years go by has been a difficult realization. When we moved here, our children were very young and we owned very few electronics. Now, we have more but we don't exactly live extravagantly. We've grown but the house hasn't! This was something I didn't expect would happen.

Have you been given any grants for the renovation of this home or have you applied for any? Was the process difficult? As a young couple with a low income, we applied and received a subsidized loan from the FHA, a specialized low-interest loan for rural development. The requirements were extremely strict (house could only be so large, cost only so much, have no fireplace, have no pool, etc) and finding a suitable house was a challenge. We looked at dozens of homes before we found this one. Then there were the skittish home sellers, who had heard that FHA/USDA loans were full of loathsome paperwork and roadblocks. This turned out to be untrue. When we finally found a home and a seller willing to work with us, the process of inspection and the closing of the sale went very smoothly and was fast. We were pleased. Buying this house was less expensive than paying rent, since the government program subsidized a percentage of our mortgage payments based on our income.

We also received a grant for weatherization in the summer of July 2008. I loved it. But unfortunately, we couldn't take advantage of the thousands of dollars offered to us, thanks to the original builder of the house. In a quirky circumstance, the interior walls of the first floor of the house are filled with bricks, mortared together, called noggin. We're not quite sure why this was done-- perhaps as a cooling effect during New York's steamy summers.

So we couldn't insulate the walls, which would have saved us $5,000 and saved us every heating season, too. The only way we could insulate is to gut the first floor and remove the noggin.

I've searched extensively for grants. We are not Native Americans, veterans, elderly, or extremely rich-- these are the groups that get grants. I have found some low-interest loans available, but they are government-sponsored and require a lead abatement team to remove all lead (and with it, their possible future liability for lead poisoning). Lead abatement is prohibitively expensive. Before I could even ever get my chimney repaired, I’d have to get a loan for $20,000 for the lead abatement assessment first. The bureaucratic red tape and all their hoops and hurdles drive me crazy!

What advice can you give to a new home buyer looking to purchase a fixer upper or an historic home? Think ahead! I cannot stress this enough. You may be a strong, strapping 25-year old with a blossoming income, but in 20 years, you'll be a 45-year old with an ache and pain here or there. Door handles might be more difficult to turn, low counter tops may be difficult to reach-- and more electronic gadgets may be impossible to incorporate into your two-decade old electrical system. Of course, it's impossible to see perfectly clearly into the future, but a little foresight is better than none. Build your systems so that it is easier to renovate later-- like a trap door with access to plumbing valves or joints. And NEVER tuck electrical junction boxes into walls between the studs, and then plaster all around them so the new owners have no idea they're there when there's an electrical system failure. Now how would I know about that?

A few years ago, I read a local newspaper account of a young man who had recently purchased a beautiful painted lady Victorian in Utica, NY. It was a lovely old home, with much original trimwork. The owner spent nearly $100,000 restoring the home (this was in the 90s). He replaced areas of broken plaster, spent a small fortune on intricate paint work, restored the old oak flooring and trimwork, and landscaped the plot. A month later, the house burned down; it was a total loss. The cause of the fire was found to be a short in the old electrical wiring. The young man had never bothered to replace the old wiring. He also had failed to insure the home. It was a devastating loss and a painful lesson.


How have you and your family dealt with all the effort and time it has taken to do all this work yourself? We are very tolerant people. Most of the time. Seriously, I am pleased that my children are exposed to the projects around the home. They are learning about electric, framing, architecture, thrift, self-sufficient living, gardening, and more. That's probably been the greatest outcome of all of this.

When we first bought the house, I had such dreams! But as you compatriots in the Rust Belt know, the economy in the Northeast went south (literally) and it's been more difficult to earn a living here. I've had to adjust my dreams now. I am at the point where I'm beginning to wonder if I will ever get this house fully renovated; we'll see. If you had asked me 8 years ago, I would have given an emphatic YES; today, I just don't know.

Renovation is hard work, because it's a lifestyle built around rebuilding your home. Some people have the temperament to endure a lengthy process; others don't. I think I do and I can endure, but I'm not getting any younger!


How much of this property have you hired out work for? How much have you done yourself? We have done 90% of the renovation work (so far) on our own. I have always done my own yard work, from breaking sod for gardens to installing handmade arbors and fencing. Most of the projects for the home we have done ourselves, but not all. When we bought the house, the conditions of the FHA loan were to get a new roof and insulate the interior walls and these had to be independently contracted out. The roof was completed; the insulation was impossible (due to noggin), so we spent the money on five new replacement windows (many of the windows were broken and all of them are from 1910 or so). And once a group of men from my church came and helped us rebuild our front porch. Everything else we've done ourselves. Rather, I've done myself. We have a unique situation in that my husband has had jobs that keep him away for long hours, and he doesn't like renovations. The renovations have been hardest on him. He grew up in cookie-cutter AFB suburbia. He provides the brawn when needed but for the most part he lets me call the shots.

I love construction, I love home-building. I always have. My step-dad (an electronics repairman by trade) was always building sheds and garages, and we kids helped with it. I loved it. And my real father was in the metal fabrication construction business for several years. It's in my blood. So I enjoy home construction, especially the planning and design arena.

If you had to do it all over again, what would you hire someone for now that you didn't previously? If I could, I would now hire someone to do just about all of the renovations. Not because I don't like it, but because I am just not physically able to do what I used to do. I'd spend all my time in the gardens and let someone else do the grunt work. Of course, they'd do the grunt work that I designed for them.

When it comes to the guts of a home, (Foundation, plumbing, electrical, etc.) What's the hardest project to take on and why? The hardest problems have been fixing the previous owners' "improvements." The folks who lived here had no idea what they were doing. Most of the difficult work has been enduring the sawed-off window panes, lead paint and the asbestos-shingle tiles that cover the lovely exterior trim work of the house.

As far as gutting to restore the house, it really depends on the person, I think. For me, I think I can do anything if I set my mind to it and am willing to learn about how to do it. If you're talking financially, probably the hardest would be foundational work. It requires so much planning, surveying of the topography, and large quantities of material.

The most crucial element of any project is planning. All the systems of the house (plumbing, wiring, framing) are like the systems of the human body (respiration, circulatory, etc) Each system works off another because they are so integrated. People make the mistake of seeing the house as having static components and not as a whole; they tend to view each system independently and don't take into account that the systems work together, and of changes that the future brings. This is why systems later fail, become inefficient, or become outdated.

Sometimes it's hard to bite the bullet and shell out the dollars for something you don't see using right away. One good example is installing Ethernet Cat5 wiring. When I gutted the living room, money was horribly tight. But I "splurged" and bought everything necessary for installing Cat5 into the walls. Now that we've been in the renovated living room for a year, I don't know what I did without the efficiency and cleanliness of a Cat5 installation! And now I wish I had installed even more jacks.

What modern improvements have you made, and have any of them been ecologically friendly? Plunk 20th century family into a 19th century home, and pretty much everything is going to be a modern improvement, ha ha!

It's absolutely amazing to see before my eyes the leaps and bounds technology has made for more efficient living. In 1855, when my house was built, the main concern then was keeping the house cool in the summer. Heating was not a problem. The forests were filled with trees for wood fuel, and coal mines were stuffed full of coal. So big drafty windows and non-insulated walls were a way of life. But today, saving energy is always on my mind when I plan any project, because energy is so expensive. My house as it stands right now is in the negative double-digits when it comes to efficiency tests! But my goal is to turn it into an energy-efficient power house. That's my dream, anyway.

Has the stress either financially or work-wise caused any problems in your family, or has it been a positive experience? Both. I've become a bit of a preacher, warning people of the dangers of renovating without a clue to what they're doing. My house is a testament to that. The wiring project for the living room was particularly stressful. I had to gut part of the living room last summer. A chimney leak had mildew growing in the wall. After inspecting the situation, I decided that I was going to gut not only that wall, but the entire living room- removing the plaster and trim, replacing the wiring, and insulating the walls. I had to retain the old windows because I couldn't get enough money to replace them yet.

When I opened up the ceiling and the walls and saw the noggin and the condition of the wiring, I was absolutely floored (so to speak). The wiring was deplorable. It was a miracle the house had not burned down. (I shudder to think of what lies within the remaining walls of this house; believe me, I am insured!).

The previous owners, in the 1930s, had ripped up the flooring of the second story bedroom above, installed the knobs and tubes within the floor joists for the living room below, and relaid the bedroom flooring. They then coated the flooring with lineoleum and glue. The electrical wiring for the living room (and, as I found out, several other rooms) was essentially locked into the ceiling of the living room/flooring of the bedroom above. It was a mess of scads of junction boxes and wires connected with old tape.

My original intent was to hire someone to do the wiring for this room. I couldn't find an electrician-- most of them were into commercial work, and finding an available handyman was proving to be impossible. So I did demolition during the day and studied electrical books at night, and decided to do the electrical myself. It was a rollercoaster ride of ups and downs (and I did remember to turn off the circuit breaker panel this time-- I even did my own panel wiring!). The thrill of it all was months later, when I got the stamp of approval by the electrical inspector. But then there were those long summer nights I was up, patrolling the walls because I smelled the odor of burning wood; only to discover that it was my neighbors who had an ongoing campfire every night, for weeks.

But going back to when I discovered the condition of the wiring, I realized that the ankle bone was not connected to the knee bone, in this case. No, the ankle bone was connected to the thumb joint which was connected to the rib cage which was connected to the hair follicles and back again! I almost went insane trying to figure it out. In the end, I slashed the electric and decided to start from scratch. Unfortunately, this means that we still have no electric for the upstairs bathroom and the dining room and the hallway until I can gut those rooms... but I am terrified of the electric in the house, knowing what I know now!

The benefits have yet to be seen. Of course, in our renovated living room we enjoy a clean, energy-efficient (except for the windows), electrically-safe room. I can have all the computers running and know I won't blow a circuit or cause an overload. And it's THRILLING to have the knowledge where I can now install a receptacle or light fixture exactly where I want one.

As far as long-term benefits, I think of my children. Our national economy is unstable right now. I believe that skilled labor jobs will be the new trend. I want my children to be secure and, even if they never enter a skilled labor trade, at least have the knowledge or fortitude to tackle such a project themselves. So the benefits of all this work has been good for them.

What are your top tips for a new home owner when it comes to saving money and do-it-yourself projects that they might not realize?

Top Tips for the New Renovating Home Owner:

1. Plan for an elderly person living in the home-- you.

Even if you sell early, someone will be living in the house who probably won't be as agile or knowledgeable as you. Be a good neighbor and think of the next owner before you shoehorn a tiny sink and leaky toilet into a 20 square-foot closet or stuff unwrapped fiberglass pieces under the toe-kick of your kitchen cabinets for a future baby to discover. How I wish previous owners had been circumspect!

2. Plan for energy-efficiency as much as possible with even the smallest matters.

For example, take the time to spray expanding foam around the crevices and holes while you have the walls open. Use vapor barrier before laying on the sheetrock. Install large windows where the winter sun can shine in, etc.

3. Understand how a system works before you renovate.

My home has several "layers" of improvements over the past century and a half, and none of them are very good. One such instance is the central heating system. Some ducts are scrap wood nailed into "ducts," others are scrap metal banged into shape, and others are ducts with asbestos wrapped around them. Things were always "cobbed" together over the years, and no one took the time to look at the big picture. By 1997, we had a defunct and inefficient heating system that was costing us thousands of dollars to run but sending heat out the windows and cold air up the walls. No one here ever bothered to discover, until I did, that the physics of airflow and amounts of heated air per cooler return air is an incremental part of the HVAC system. I have to completely turn around the heating system, because it's installed opposite of the way it should be.

4. Plant a tree.

If you have the space, plant a few. You will really love yourself for doing this. Plan wisely, however-- keep in mind the size of a mature oak before you plug that sapling next to your garage door. Also, plant perennials. They are less expensive than annuals, and you can divide them to plant elsewhere in your yard, too. If you plant native perennials, the garden will grow without much attention so you can install the windows and parge the basement walls.

5. Know the history of your home.

There are going to be days when you want to throw down your crowbar and get a condo in the city. Knowing the history of your home will help you through those rough spots. And then there are the thrilling moments when you open a wall to see "1855, H. S. Rogers" elaborately inscribed on a framing stud.

Renovating a home has great emotional value. But now, as we see our economy spin and energy costs rise, renovating homes may become more financially wise, as well.