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madmax67

Advice on good renovation contractor and cost for terrace

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Hi

I reconstructed my inter-terrace house about 5 years ago and due to our ignorance then and not seeking good advice, we ended up with a monkey builder which caused us much pain.  We brought up both sides of the walls to be higher than our neighbours, and instead of building a new wall, my builder added the new wall section on top of the old ones and both sides of the walls have been having a very visible loooooooooooong crack line.  Besides, he did not do a good job in waterproofing the new wall and we always have small rainy drops of water seeping through especially during this rainy season.

It shouldn't be due to structural problem as the crack remains as it is and hasn't gotten worse except it's super ugly.   We did ask the builder to fix it but after sealing the long crack its coming back again, and the builder's shop has since closed.  :(

We decide to do something about it next year when the weather is drier : 

- fixing the internal long crackline of the walls (hopefully there is a good contractor who is experienced to fix this)

- re-waterproofing the exterior that means repainting the whole house externally and internally

- I intend to remove the L-shape deck in my car porch deck which is of no use and retile it (not a huge space as my land size is 1600sf, so probably retiling about 500sf)

- my 1st to 2nd floor staircase is see-through type with wooden steps and i intend to redo this to seal up

- intend to remodel my living/dining/kitchen to move the dry kitchen to another section, and redo the common toilet.

Anyone has experience with these and estimate how much this will cost ?  Totally understand it will be difficult to provide an exact but I would like to find out what's the estimated damage$$.  Appreciate any recommendation of good contractor as well.

Thanks!

 

Edited by madmax67
 

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How long more are you planning to stay in this house? If for long term, maybe better to redo the walls rather than trying to fix. 

Does your dry kitchen has a basin? If yes, are you prepared to hack your flooring to do the move? If you intend to have a basin for the new location, then the floor need to be hacked to run a new waste pipe to connect to a floor trap.

 

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Actually we don't intend to stay for long, probably for another 2 years more.  By redo-ing the wall does it mean we have to hack the whole wall and rebuild? 

Thanks for the advice on dry kitchen.  I totally forgot we have a basin with piping.  If it's too troublesome, we will not want to redo the dry kitchen.

 

 

 

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Yes, best to hack down the entire wall and redo which will resolve the issue once and for all. You can try to keep patching but since the wall isn’t constructed properly, the issue will just keep coming back. Alternative is to remove the add on part and have that redone properly with the proper rebars added to join the new top wall to the old bottom wall. 
 

Honestly, if you are planning to sell in 2 years time, why bother to spend money to do all the changes? The money you throw into this renovation may not be able to increase your house value at all. Better to just leave as it is and then sell the house when you decide to do so in 2 years time. 
 

if you want, just do the repainting so that you can refresh the house a bit for the new year. Repainting won’t cost you too much. 

 

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