While you certainly can tear off the roof entirely and rebuild the second floor, that is going to be quite costly. What's your budget for changes and has the home already upgraded it's plumbing and electrical? Insulation?

I know it has new boiler and furnace. I cant remember for sure but perhaps they may have 200 Amp wiring (and circuit breaker?). Insulation - maybe/maybe not. We haven't had a surveyor in yet. Need to wait till the end of the week.

Budget - we don't want to spend more than 50K on the house in total. Our would like to dos are:

Plan 1: Tear down dividing wall between two rooms to left of the house and make one big open plan living area, rip out carpets and put in hard wood flooring, new kitchen and bathroom units. Reposition current deck which is currently accessible from the side of the house and sits behind the kitchen and bathroom windows (not good!) to the left side of the house and give it access from the living room area. Add stairs to walk down to garden/yard.

Plan 2:

2 - Extend property backward by about 8 or 10ft - this would mean adding that amount of foundation, building out basement (which is a walkout) and extending the living room level which would include then the kitchen.

3- Remodel the new extended area to include: large living room, kitchen, dining, and ground floor bathroom (there is currently already a full bath on the ground floor but this would need to be re-positioned or just torn out and a new one put in a different position).

4 - Put in panaroma windows at the bank of the extended portion (not at this point, but eventually, put on a deck to walk out on to, and access garden from).

What can we realistically achieve? We can do flooring ourselves, painting ourselves. Would need foundation and shell (with plumbing and electrical all fitted) at the very least. Kitchen and bathroom updates - IKEA sourced ourselves.

I feel that if we ideally want Plan 2, then doing all of the things in Plan 1 may cause more expense later when we do get around to Plan 2 so maybe going with Plan 2 to start with is not a bad choice.

Please go easy on the unrealistic expectations!

Thank you GreenDesigns - This house already has two bedrooms upstairs with a full bathroom in between. The ceiling height is just a tad short for my 6' 5" husband hence the desire to raise it a bit if possible. But its not the end of the world I guess if we can't The downstairs living room space expansion would definitely be a more welcome and value adding extension I think?

However, its currently classed as a 4 bed, 2 bath. With our extension, it would become a 3 bed, 2 bath but more sq. ft and more modern interior.

Finishing the basement could add another bedroom but in the absence of any other storage space, we'd need the basement for that for us, and for future buyers.

Move on to more expensive homes that you don't need to redo. Remodeling costs more than you think it will. By quite a bit. And it doesn't give back the fictional HGTV ''gains'' either. Cost vs Value

Haven't seen any HGTV yet. We're trying to use the local market sale values to understand the gains on investment.

Don't know if engaging an estate agent is a good idea on this one to help us understand a bit better (it is a FSBO and neither sides want an agent for cost reasons) or would an appraiser be in just as good a position to advise on that?

For those scope of work options it would be necessary to see drawings and photos to advise you.

I have a sketch of the house and a photo of the exterior. Does that help at all?

I am not sure what part of the country you are in, but $50k doesn't go very far. I am in Texas and we are spending quite a bit more than your budget adding about 300sf to my house and remodeling the kitchen. I think plan A and a roof might be possible but of course there are a lot of variables. Redoing the 2nd floor would likely be pretty pricey.

Adding the second floor ceiling without replacing exterior walls or rafters is difficult if not impossible. Raising an exterior wall requires new studs (can't splice load bearing studs) and raising the attic floor requires larger rafter sizes. I would keep looking. The ceiling is below the code minimum and the code min is lower than I would tolerate.

What's the code minimum? It's an FSBO and will be sold as is I think.

I don't know the applicable code in your jurisdiction but I've never seen a min height below 7 ft. For it to be legal it would probably have to pre date any code.

I think it was built in 1978

Then the whole second floor is probably an illegal conversion that should not count in the square footage calculations, or in your offer. But, fixing that to make it code compliant will easily be more than your budget and any ''savings'' for knocking off that square footage from the offer.

This is a money pit, and I'm not sure why you are so keen on it. Unless you are a contractor that can remedy all of the deficiencies yourself, or you get it for 20K, this house will gobble you up and spit you out.

What Sophie said.

:-( We like the sweet old lady who owns it. No contractors here. Just first time buyers in the US. Quiet family neighbourhood. Lots of plus points I guess...if we can live with it as is.

You're not buying the old lady with the house. There are lots of quiet streets everywhere. As first time buyers, you need to be working with a realtor who will throw some cold water on you and slap some sense into you, then show you more suitable houses for your needs. You're being entirely too emotional about a business transaction. A losing business transaction.

BTW, you need to Netflix ''The Money Pit'', with Tom Hanks and Shelley Long. And laugh till it hurts. Because it's all true. A real renovation is even more expensive and painful. And a lot less funny while you are in the middle of it. Pay particular attention to the ending. ''Sweet old ladies'' aren't always so sweet or clueless.

It doesn't necessarily look like a money pit to me but it is definitely a house that a previous owner has butchered badly and it is probably not worth the cost of undoing those mistakes.

Haha GreenDesigns! We actually did watch that film on the recommendation of a real estate agent we worked with on the house we 'almost' bought. Now THAT would have been a money pit. Gorgeous old Victorian. GREAT condition and location but it had lead and that would have meant crazy reno costs if we ever wanted to redo the kitchen, bathroom, anything basically! We have a toddler so decided to pull out of the deal after inspections.

I had forgotten the old lady from the film actually! Thanks for reminding!

Still looking around. We won't be buying it without a proper home inspection which will cost us of course but we'll have a good idea of what we're getting in to and if still think its worth the hassle. Are home inspectors able to give ball parks for the work needed to bring a house up to date at all?