how much it would fetch

In our case, the wall lining was masonite, painted a lovely shade of "toilet green" which went so well with the fake grass carpet. We also had aluminium sliders . If lucky, the original railings will be behind that lining board (doesn't look at all like asbestos). We removed the masonite and added VJ fake board to match the rest of the house.

$10k to remove is high, even if it is asbestos (doubtful from the look of it). We've had four lots of asbestos removals, and not reached $10k yet for essentially a full house (internally).

I respect your opinion, but MDF VJ looks perfectly ok as it is not in the same room as real VJ so you don't notice the slightly different widths.

Anyway, I'm not splitting hairs here, but only saying we have a house exactly the same layout and this one (like ours) has pretty much been left alone except for bad carpet and that closed in sunroom. Sooooo easy to return it to its former glory. Much better to rip out bad renovations than rip out something that doesn't suit the house but cost too much to ditch.

 

I cannot see any other walls that need "converting". Most of them look original VJ and one bedroom looks like it has been sheeted. My guess is someone wanted to "modernise" that room. Hey presto, remove the sheeting and the VJs will be underneath.

Seriously, there isn't much work in that cottage. New kitchen and bathroom, sure.

We kept the verandah enclosed with ugly sliders because one side is the "third" bedroom. Everything is fully sealed, outside with weatherboards. When we shift this house we will open up half the front verandah so there is some outside living and the other side we will replace the ugly sliders with timber windows and suddenly it will no longer be ugly.

Edit: Just took another look and it seems several rooms have masonite "modern" sheeting. Half an hour with hubby and me and that would be gone, back to beautiful VJ.

 

You are right. I saw "gaps" that look like they are masonite, but some rooms have half round dowel cover strips, so it could be asbestos. The belt rails are still there, so the VJs are under whatever the sheeting is. The VJs cannot have been removed as they are single skin.

So, apologies about thinking the VJs were there "on show". Removing masonite would cost nothing but half a day and if that sheeting is asbestos, that would likely be about $5k. Our son had ceilings and walls removed for three bedrooms, full kitchen and bathroom, hallway, two toilets, vestibule and downstairs storeroom removed for less than $5k and that included two trucks. It included all kitchen carcasses and bath, linen press from bathroom.

It cost him another $5k to have a plasterer replace all that but with VJ, there is nothing else to do but patch and paint the VJ underneath.

To my eye, this house is in good original condition, and even adding $5k to remove asbestos (if it is asbestos), it leaves a good solid timber house. This is what we've always bought and we could renovate this with our eyes shut. If I can find the photos of the one we have that is the same as this I'll post them up.

It was in similar condition to this. We spent about $15k all up removing a wall, ripping up carpets, ripping out bathroom and replacing it, refurbishing (mostly painting existing carcasses) kitchen and new cooker, sanding floors, painting throughout (we did that ourselves).

It is still ugly until we rip out the sliders at the front, but inside it is back to its former glory.

 

That Macaulay Street house is a cracker, and we've tackled that type of job enough times that I'd be very comfortable tackling that. The bit at the back is a bit weird and that (for me) would be the decider. Remove it (and lose some living space) or keep the odd extension?

Price sounds pretty good too. Did you think of buying?

 

I get quite excited by that sort of house in that condition. Perhaps I'm strange .

What was the reserve before they dropped to the sale price? Do you recall?

And I'd love to have got hold of that latest project of yours too. Lovely how the couch matches the curtains, matches the carpet. And all equally horrible .

We had one similar to yours with a double room (but the divider was long gone) where we did it up, couldn't afford to sand the floors, so coated them with estapol with black stain to mimic the japanning of old, had an open house Saturday morning to find a tenant. We needed rent badly, back in the days when we had no buffer (except my parents if we really had to ask for a payday loan from them).

About 5pm Friday when it was all done, cleaned up and ready for the open house next morning, hubby called and said he'd decided to rip out the office ceiling. The previous owner had added a suspended ugly ripple panel and office style fluro lights all suspended from dozens of metal hanging brackets. It was suspended about 18 inches down from the very high ceilings. It was ugly, but without knowing what was behind it, we needed to get rent flowing so had decided to leave it.

With hubby being there on his own that last day before the open house, he took it upon himself to remove it. The old plaster fancy ceilings (much like yours above) were peeling over the whole expanse, flakes and six inch strips of paint just hanging down everywhere. There wasn't three inches of "good" ceiling. I loved that he'd removed it, but we stayed there very late removing what we could, sanding the ceilings and doing a couple of coats.

Moral of the story... never leave my husband alone in a house on his own.

 

This is similar to what was there. What was the owner thinking?

Hubby pulled it out because it was really bugging him that it was so ugly when we had worked so hard to make the place look its best. It was always going to come out, but not at 5pm the night before the first open house .

I would keep the original ceiling if at all possible. I've stopped painting now after years of DIY painting. The last place we had painted, had a peeling ceiling and we had our trusted painter spend some time sanding it back to a solid base, and then adding something that allowed the new coat to stick. It took a bit of trial and error, and I think he also used a special sealer, but it has stopped the peeling.

We will get him to do that to the ceiling that had bad peeling but it is fairly dodgy in a good light so we may have to swap it for new rather than pour money into what isn't a great base. If we do new, we will replicate what is there because that is a fairly big "wow" in the room.

 

I remember once (probably 17 years ago) when we renovated our PPOR, we were so busy renovating an IP that we got a painter in to paint our PPOR.

I remember having some sort of epiphany whilst climbing up and down a hired platform for the high ceilings, up and down, working my buns off in the stinking heat of summer near a tin roofed queenslander ceiling and it hitting me like a ton of bricks... why are we painting an IP that we cannot claim the cost of painting on whilst paying non-deductible money to a painter in our house, possibly painting in air-conditioned comfort?

We didn't plan that too well.