Turning Dining Room And Bedroom Into A Family Room

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Hi All,



I have a question about rehabbing a home to make a family room.



Here are the facts. My Son has a 3/1 single family home with basement. There is a arch between the liv / din rooms , and he is thinking about building the liv room wall straight across to make a small door opening, then open the wall between the dining room and one of the bedrooms to make a large family room.



My question is Do u think this will decress the value of the home, by turning this into a 2 bedroom home without a dining room.



Another question is what would be the best approach to take down wall between the 2 rooms. I think it is a load bearing wall. This is a ranch home , 1 story with basement, and the crawl space is above.



He is a pretty good carpenter ( Has very good God given talent in carpentry ). He knows he will have to put a header in since it is a load bearing wall, He is just not sure what approch to start tearing wall down with since these walls are plaster and not drywall, and wanted to keep the dust and debris down as much as possible.



The reason for doing this is they have run out of room in the basement . They have the familyroom there now, but the kids and my Son have so many Large game tables in the basement now, there is no longer room to use it as a family / tv room, only a game room which they use very much.



Any suggestions would be appreciated .

Comments(7)

  • rbjj20th January, 2006

    Any good suggestions or comments ?

    Thanks !

  • rbjj21st January, 2006

    I really would like to hear some more suggestions on how to handle this project, and also if you think this will decress the value.

    Thanks

  • NC_Yank21st January, 2006

    Your better off turning it into a 3 bedroom, 2 bath.
    I did it with a fixer upper I bought for 60k ........I sold it for 130k.


    NC_Yank

  • jimandlacy21st January, 2006

    I would never take a 3 to a 2 . Much harder to sell/rent in my market.

    Jim

  • tomsteve19th January, 2006

    How do the walls look when you removed the paper?
    Any cracks? Why not just seal the paper with a fast drying primer like Kiltz leave the paper on a just skim coat the walls. The prime will seal the paper from peeling when you apply the skim coat. I did the same thing many times but found the walls had so many hairline cracks when the paper was removed. You must tape all the cracks (picture nail holes)or they will show up when the wall expand & contract. (summer-winter). If the paper is loose in spots just peel as neccesary apply KILTZ and than skim coat the peeled parts changes are you may not have to skim coat the entire wall.

  • Stockpro9920th January, 2006

    Eric,

    I would stay away from banks unless that is the only way that you can finance a property.

    There are two private parties in my city that loan at the 12% interest rate and that is far better for a 120 day hold than a 7-8% loan and closing costs.

    I myself have raised about 1M a year in private money from people that I too pay 12%

    GO to your investor club (or the nearest one to you) and start networking. You will find money for your deals..
    [addsig]

  • Eric520th January, 2006

    Credited advice. We have private investors, but I was just seeing if something like that would work. It would be nice to get a business loan or line of credit for 7ish%

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