Oh, astonishing. Hubby must be made to understand your extreme love of the place. Please, hubby! Say yes!

You must immediately watch the movie "A River Runs Through It" and look at the house...it very much reminds me of yours.

That is a magnificent home!

When you have that home inspection with an engineer and contractor- it is worth it to first do your due diligence finding professionals who understand the period and the house itself. They will be able to carefully explain the project and work out a reasonable plan rather than scare your husband away from it. You have a gem there. Go for it!

It's a flat roof, there is no attic to run electrical wires from.

An engineering firm has looked at the place, but somehow this won't be shown unless someone has an actual offer in.

Which I think is a little weird... no?

Working on husband on hourly basis. He's still categorically against, but 10% less emphatic. Progress!

Might be easier to find another husband than to find another house like that ;)

You can accomplish a lot by sneaking things through closets and popping off baseboards and channeling behind them, patching and putting them back.

Beagle, I was thinking the same thing. My hubby would never consider an old house and I love them so.

Next life.

This house is amazing.

OK. I am going to be the Other Opinion. Fixing this house (correctly) will be a major lifestyle and financial commitment for a long time to come. I don't think you should try to talk DH into it. It would be like trying to talk an unenthusiastic man into marrying you: not a recipe for happiness. First get cold hard facts and some numbers from a structural engineer and/or a restoration specialist or whomever you need to contact. After that, if you still want to do it and think you can swing it, you can present the case to DH -- rationally, not just emotionally -- and go from there. Give him time to digest the idea; he might come round on his own. But if he doesn't, well, I have to say that the wisest course would be to wave a fond farewell to the house and let somebody else do it. This is not the kind of project that I would want to take on without the wholehearted support of my life partner.

And I just have to say it -- all that dark wallpaper gives me the heebies and the sagging ceiling would have me running fast in the opposite direction, so I do sympathize with your DH. :) Tastes differ, that's all. That isn't to say that the house isn't a worthwhile project; I think it would be terrific (for somebody else but me) and I hope you post lots of pictures if you do buy it! I'm just saying I can understand your DH's hesitation.

Before you start ripping out the wall paper above the plate rail, identify it.

There are some astounding hand-screened papers in houses like that, well worth restoring.

Dear friends,

I have loved a leper.

This is the kitchen:

I didn't take pictures of the bathrooms!!! Rotten to the core.

As it turns out, the place was hoarded to the rafters. According to the agent, they never threw out as much as a cigarette wrapper. The place took two years to clean up - and they're not done. The chandeliers were incrusted with decades of cobwebs and filth.

The floors are unsalvageable in many places not shown in the photographs of the listing.

Windows are rotted completely, many panes are broken.

The house is very small. The alley next to it was full of garbage. If the house was fixed and functional, it would fetch LESS than the asking price of $715K. Maybe $620K.

The place needs AT LEAST $400K of repairs that are not just cosmetic. Agent says $250K-300K, but as I look at it, one repair calls another... it's going to be way more than that.

If the place would be worth $620K once fixed, minus $400K of repairs, the break-even point would be for the house to sell for $220K. That's not counting a penny for your time and the interest payments holding the house for the 6-12 months it would be under heavy renovations.

The asking price is insanely high.

Sounds like they have a Boston real estate agent. That's how rubble heaps are priced here.

If I were you, and really loved this house, I'd arm myself with hard numbers. Get estimates for everything, and make the contractors document their guesses at unknowns--anticipating "at least" X amount in unforeseen work. Then get solid nearby comps for renovating houses. Bring them to the seller's agent and ask how they are possibly going to get their fantasy number. I can certainly see some premium for the trim work and such, but nowhere near the order of magnitude they want.

Insanely high indeed. I wonder if it's been the market since the various work (roof, etc.) was done.

Makes the curious "we'll give the you engineer's report if you offer" fall into place.

Love the blue pantry and lights. Less so the flowerpot (?) hanging from the pipe (collecting leaks?).

I have one of these in my past. Knob and tube wiring, galvanized steel plumbing pipe...tar dripping through the 3rd floor ceiling. Furnished and with the owner there, it didn't seem So bad, he lived there after all.

I went back when it was empty and felt that I had really dodged a bullet. It was subsequently sold for about half original asking price and was gutted, and is characterless, but the reality is, it would have been prohibitively expensive to do anything else.

I have seen the rare house that has stayed intact since 1912, but still maintained, but the reality of most of these romantic looking houses is that *Nothing was done, Ever, and all the un fun stuff that needs to be redone takes the joy out of the rest.

Oh. My.

northcarolina's "other opinion" comments are quite wise and seem even wiser now with the additional pictures and information.

It's such a shame it wasn't well loved over the years. Some of the elements are just lovely.

What a shame that hoarding and neglect did such an injustice to this house. I would have loved to have seen it in its youth. But wow, I'd be running scared from this, especially since they won't allow prospective buyers to see the engineer's report. Ya gotta wonder what they are hiding.

Someone might buy it who wants to dump their money into a pit. It sounds romantic and might even be fun if you didn't have a day job or need a clean place to sleep.

But if you don't have money burning a hole in your pocket I agree with marcolo - make the case with the hard facts and make an offer that reflects your understanding of the market and the cost of rehabilitation.

We bought a 1920 bungalow that was in pretty bad shape and did a kitchen remodel, foundation repair, porch rehab and redid the stucco. But when the one and only bathroom started to rot through we opted to sell. With two young children to manage, a bathroom remodel would have required us to move out - so we moved out to a bigger home. I still miss my bungalow and loved looking at the pics of this Montreal house. Beautiful. Best wishes to whoever takes it on.

I think the missing piece regarding the pricing is the zoning - commercial/residential. The price is not relative to "the restore to livable house" perspective but to the "knock down and rebuild with retail at street level and multiple condo's above". This is a real shame, almost a crime but it happens often here in Vancouver, especially if a smaller house is on a subdividable lot - the price is set at the value of two new houses built, or even two duplexes and laneway housing.

I would be really suspicious of an engineer's report that you could not see. As tragic as it is, this house is slated for knock down in my opinion. Sorry.

This does make me mourn the fact that someone painted every surface of my house in lead paint at some point in the home's history.

Doors, trim, windows (painted shut, naturally). And looking at this I can see how the oak would have been really beautiful at this point.

As the owner of an old house I have to caution the OP - this house looks like it would be lovely. But, unless you have the 400k cash on hand to do the renovations you're really just buying trouble.

I have no problem with the idea of buying a house that needs EVERYTHING done because then at least I get to pick what's done and to what level, but if they money isn't there, it's not there.

The sellers need to come down on the price for this house to be worth it to anyone. I'd also make an argument about the things they're excluding.

It's an attached row house, so teardown brings added expenses. Plus, it is not in a terribly commercial section of St Denis. If it were further south I'd say yes, you could make a killing turning it into retail, but up there--I'm not sure.

The street is mostly residential, with the occasional house/doctor-lawyer office combo. I don't think they can built higher than a third floor. This being said, I do agree that the rational approach would be demolition.

I hope you enjoyed the AUTHENTIC KITCHEN photo inspiration! *cringe*

Uroboros5

I would love to be able to save the pictures, but on the website I can only save the links. How do you do this?

Oh My! That was just amazing. Thank you so much for posting. We all got excited and then let down at the prospect of (gasp) demolition. Lets call Sarah from "Sarah's House" HGTV. She can buy it and fix it! She'll do anything.
What a sad sad thing to happen to such a lovely treasure.

@ palimpsest

To take a screenshot, press the "print screen" button on the keyboard, and "paste" in MS Paint. You will need to crop in another program.

What's Sarah's cell number?

How sad about the house, uroboros. I'm sorry. Maybe a more viable one will come on the market for you. These old houses deserve to be preserved but that one does sound as though it might be beyond salvaging.

tomcarter101 could have a point. There was a house in my neighborhood, small, apparently in poor condition (the listing showed only a couple of exterior photos and they were selling "as is") but the asking price was higher than some of the nicely renovated houses have brought. I called the agent to find out what was up and it turned out the house was sitting in the middle of two lots (they must have been narrow because I couldn't tell just on a drive by). So they were aiming to sell to someone who would tear it down, split the property back into two lots and then build two houses. It did sell, too, and one of the new houses is up now. Not the same situation as your house but maybe there is something behind the scenes there too.

I would clean up the loose plaster, get a new mattress and sleep in here, as is. It suits me.

It looks like the print-screen button worked for Pal. For some reason my print-screen button doesn't work. She other route my teenager taught me was to hit Ctrl Alt Print Screen all at once. Then click paste into an open MS Word .doc

If you're using a Mac use: Command + shift + 4.

That bedroom has original curtains from the 1920's.

Not kidding. I asked.

I can't stop looking at these pictures. I have that "need to know" and I need to know the history of this house and who lived there and how on earth did it stay this way all of these years? At least the kitchen is light and airy compared to the rest of the house. And that classic blue paint.
Sorry, I don't happen to have Sarah's cell phone number...

Come on, that kitchens not so bad. A little paint, resurface that fabulous sink, polish up the latches, maybe even reuse the kitchen table. You may not fit a lacanche in there, but didn't I see a microwave?
DebraV, Im with you on that. I would love to know who lived there.

I saw the owner, she's a little old French Canadian lady from the city, I used to have a lot of relatives just like her, but most are dead. She was quite short, and spoke with an inner-city working class accent. She was the daughter of the builder and inherited the house.

My own grandparents had the same prints of the the Virgin Mary and the Sacred Heart of Jesus on their walls. This lady also had a framed print of Sir Wilfrid Laurier!

On the front door, slipped in a wedge made by the beveled glass and the muntins, there was a yellowed prayer cut out from an old newspaper.

The rooms with some of the leftover hoard were waist-high with magazines, the paper was past yellow, into brown. There were some old canisters and glass jars (none of them precious, just utility) from perhaps the thirties and forties.

One room had two single beds that appeared really old, I would suppose at least two kids grew up there.

It's Miss Havisham ... except it's a house.

I thought Miss Havisham, too!

I do love the bench/bed? in the green room after the main bedroom.

I'm with northcarolina. This house has beautiful woods, plaster and glass, all broken. The systems are nonexistent. The structural integrity, little to none. All that could be fixed with obscene amounts of money, tears and years, ignoring everything else in your life. neglected since it's birth. It's almost as if it had been built with showoff finishes, woods and glass, but no thought to size and function. No attic, etc., A lovely daydream, that's all.

What cannot be fixed are the tiny rooms, save the dining room and a couple of others. There are reasons it is still on the market.

I have a 1922 house with knob & tube, no chases, 2 ft. tall attic and 2 ft. high crawl space. There are saving graces to my house, but it is not easy.

Was the sweet lil ol' lady the hoarder? It's a real shame; the weight of all that stuff has probably compromised the structural integrity more than mere age itself. And along with hoarding comes rot, mold and vermin, alas.

We have hoarders up our street and it's fearsome to imagine what's in there - all the windows display the backsides of squashed stacked cardboard boxes. Erk. When I haven't been cleaning regularly my partner takes to looking pointedly in that direction...

But man, what a shame, Oro! What gorgeous fixtures! Is there a good salvage trade in Quebec that will at least save the trim etc if the house is sold for demo?

I can picture her clearly from your description.

Especially love the detail about the framed print of Wilfred Laurier!! ;)

Given the ravishingly dreamlike Miss Havisham-ness of this house, I wonder if:
-- it could be bought,
-- its availability for a film shoots could be made known to the National Film Board of Canada (which has very good taste) and to the US film industry (which seems largely not to), and
-- the resulting fees could be applied to giving this beauty a renovation that makes it livable in the modern world without losing its ineffable charm.

As a separate question, to uruboros5, do you know how the neighborhood is evolving? The google earth street view makes the neighborhood look well preserved, but a bit grim, perhaps because the trees are bare. Is it gentrifying or looking to be on the verge of it? Or is is quietly deteriorating?

Thanks.

Like circuspeanut, my first concern upon reading the word "hoarders" was the structural integrity of the place. The wide-angle shots that have the floor sort of bending in the middle didn't help!

Anyway, not that I've EVER watched "Hoarders," but I've "heard" that once they clear out the crap, the resulting building is condemned anyway because the weight of the crap, and pest infestations, have made the place uninhabitable - and I think unfixable.

Not that I've ever watched it.

Wow. I unconsciously held my breath while awaiting each next photo. Incredible. Thank you for sharing!

Circus, your partner is very funny, giving you a signal toward the hoarders when you haven't tidied up to partner's liking! Does the signal come with a frown or a smirky smile? Would it be pushing it if you stacked a bunch of boxes, o, never mind.

@honorbiltkit

The house could be bought for the exorbitant price of $715K.

Funny you should mention film shoots, the agent mentioned that the place was being photographed for some project where they'd want to reproduce it, and something about film set that may or may not be related to said project. I doubt that they could film there, with the lighting producing large amounts of heat, and the need for space for camera and filming staff, in addition to actors.

The rooms are very tiny. I am including the room with the nice stairs in this description. There are several rooms that are smaller than a small walk-in closet. It's quite claustrophobic. The kitchen has literally no room for anything at all. It's basically just a sink, with the blue doors opening up for some storage.

The neighborhood started as a working class Montreal suburb. I would say that it's trending upwards, if slowly. St-Denis street is a main artery for car traffic. Not quiet!

I think that you might be able to reproduce the interiors (or some modernish version thereof) for $715K, in some markets, in a small house.

One of the most tragic things about allowing this home to have fallen into such ruin is that I'm wondering if the wallpaper in the dining room is the handpainted 'mural' type that was popular in these kinds of homes.

If so, it's really a shame. It's very detailed and beautifully done. Have to admit, the naysayers are right. It's small in size, but a massive money pit.

A gorgeous little hovel, that could have been a precious miniature gem if they'd even put basic maintenance into it over the decades.

Circus, I was thinking that too --- what a great source for "spare parts".

Based on what Uroboros says, it seems to me the issue is that to fix it could double the price, and the neighborhood won't support it. Was anyone else surprised by the lacklustre exterior?

In any event, thanks so much for posting it. It's so romantic.

This is sad...
In my neighborhood, there was a beautiful near mansion size house which was used as the Italian Consulate in its heydey (so they say). It had a spectacular view of the lake and the mountains. We called it the Italian Consulate and everyone knew which house this was. The house was slowly but surely sliding down the unstable hillside.

The young couple who bought it to restore it. It turned out to be a too much of a money pit. They ended up donating it to the city, and the property became a park due to its size and view. The house was piece-mealed for its detailed wood work to clear the space for the park. I think for the young couple, the donation and the tax write off was the best they could do financially.... This was more than 10 years ago.

In that case of the Italian Consulate, the neighborhood may have supported the house but the unstable hillside was too much of infrastructure issue.

I was reminded of a house that I had not thought of in a long time....

"...Posted by palimpsest : I would love to be able to save the pictures, but on the website I can only save the links. How do you do this?..."

put the coursor in the line above the picture behind the text:
6878 Rue St-Denis#8704652 (coursor here) and highlight the picture by scrolling down while holding the left mouse clicker.

When the picture is all blue, i.e. highlighted, right click on it and select "copy" and then "paste it" into a graphic program or MSWord document.

uroboros, I have to ask this, because I can too easily believe that you were just casually scanning the real estate listings when this decrepit charmer reached out and grabbed your heart. (This has happened to me, although with a less expensive and more readily fixable house, so I know it is possible.)

Here's the question: When you fell under the spell of this enchanting crone, were you actively looking for a smallish house in an lively urban neighborhood?

If so, and
* the size of the overall investment could be made clear by consulting with a contractor before making an offer, and
* anyone can conceive of a way to render the house livable without completely erasing its preserved-in-amber decrepit charm, and
* your DH magically became sanguine about the feasibility of what is needed and why it would be not completely financially foolhardy in the medium term,
WOULD YOU REALLY WANT TO LIVE THERE?

To me, it looks like urban nirvana. Having rooted around on Google Earth and various Montreal sites, I found a lively and lovely urban neighborhood with quite nice street trees and a Metro station only a long block away. Also, there is a restaurant nearby named Aux Derniers Humains, which has a menu as cool as its name.

It looks as though the only room that is preclusively small (for someone used to rowhouse-scale spaces) is the kitchen.
It is is a first floor-only extension off the back that is narrower than the body of the house, which is basically wide and shallow compared to other rowhouses in the neighborhood.

The kitchen may only be a bit chopped up, as it is listed as 9 x 13, which could make for a nice galley design. If one did want to enlarge it, however, I see two options.

Because the house is actually detached on one side, rather than part of a row, you could build out sideways to fill in the dogleg, which is exceptionally wide. Pop out some bricks, reinforce the new opening(s) with angle iron, et Robert est ton oncle. You would still have windows on the side of the house and if you created deep windows at the back of the new bit, you would have a nice perspective over what could be a charming garden.

Alternatively, you could move the kitchen to the basement, having it go back further toward the front of the house and having clerestory windows. You might need a dumb waiter, but who wouldn't want one of those?

I suspect that either of these options would not be extraordinarily expensive in the context of what needs to be done in the rest of the house, which to tell the truth is going to be more because you don't want to gut it. If Montreal is anything like DC, however, pictureseque urban neighborhoods are gaining value just because people are so tired of getting stuck in traffic.

Sorry to be so pushy. This house is haunting my dreams.

Cheers. hbk

Oh I hope someone can save this house! Wow. My imagination wouldn't let me live there, though; I'd imagine The Woman in Black or some ghost child coming around every corner.

Have any of you seen the Adams House Museum in Deadwood, SD? It was shut up from the 30s until the 90s and is the only other house I've seen left so intact. Thank goodness they were able to turn that one into a museum!

I looked at a house that was not this intact decoratively.

However, the house was built in 1810 and had two long-term owners, one from 1810-1920s, and one from about 1930-2009.
(it changed hands a couple times rapidly in the 1920s)

The 1810 part of the house had been electrified and given radiator heat. That was essentially it.

An addition in the 1960s (next to the stair ell) added a full bath and kitchen piggybacked on each other, and there was a toilet cantilevered off the third floor landing (with pipes running in the stairwell to the addition) and a toilet in the basement.

Essentially the house was unchanged in footprint since built. I wanted this house, they accepted a better offer, and in some ways I am relieved because I wouldn't have wanted to change the 1810 part of the house, but it really did need a bathroom that wasn't on the turn in the stairs and straddling two treads. I just didn't want to be the one to have to change the house that much.