We first introduced you to Keith Szczygiel a few years back when BRO featured his beautiful house renovation on Whitney Place in the West Village of Buffalo. Keith (and now his fiance) represent the perfect example of preservationists who are putting their money and lots of hard work where their passions lie; rebuilding Buffalo and making it the city they know if can and will be. As with the Whitney story, Keith gave me a great narration of his process in tackling his latest project; saving another one of Buffalo’s irreplaceable architectural treasures. His story needs no embellishment from me other than to emphasize the incredible accessibility Buffalo offers to young energetic people. Real estate like this house is way out of reach to all but the elite in many cities. So without further delay I will turn it over to Keith:

Back in 2007 I purchased and began renovating 24 Whitney Place. During that process I added an in-law apartment for rental income designed to be switch back to a single family home easily if I ever need to. Once I reached the point where 24 Whitney Place was nearly done (not that it will ever truly be done) I decided to use the equity I had gained to buy an investment property. After a couple of months of searching I discovered 1098 Ellicott for sale in an area of the city I wasn’t really considering at the time but I knew was worth a look. As it turns out the house was located closer to the nicer areas like Linwood and Elmwood village than I thought. After viewing the long vacant house on a dark rainy Monday evening in October 2012 I knew I couldn’t pass up this “diamond in the rough” per the listing description. It was a 3,500 sq. ft. behemoth and distressed but had a lot of great features going for it. The asking price was $50k, I made an offer of $39k, and we settled on $40k.

The closing date of mid December 2012 soon came and it became apparent that I couldn’t afford to rehab this house for a year or more while still living at Whitney Place. I made the difficult decision to get the house “live-able” and move in so I could rent out my upper unit of Whitney Place for the income, which rented quick even in December. I immediately went to work on the infrastructure. My brother and I put in a new high-efficiency furnace, new electrical service and all new plumbing from the shut-off valve on. The first hiccup came when I finally had all the plumbing to the 2nd floor bathroom hooked up and test flushed the toilet for the first time. It immediately poured water down the back side of the main stack which revealed a ¾” wide by 4’ long crack. As discouraging as this was I went to Home Depot, rented a soil pipe cutter and installed new PVC which corrected the problem for less than $100 with the tool rental.

I then painted the upstairs bedrooms, made one bedroom into my living room, and there was already a kitchenette in another room upstairs to use since the main kitchen was nearly gutted, I was moved in by early January. Right around this time I started a new job as a project manager at Datesweiser Furniture, I turned 33 and also started dating my now fiancée Erin Carmina, despite the fact I was living in what looked like the house from the movie Fight Club. To say the least it was a crazy transition period in my life but well worth the craziness.

Over the course of the next few months I was able to secure a small $20k Home Equity Loan to keep moving forward on the work. I hired a couple of friends to hang / finish drywall and refinish the hardwood floors in the downstairs. The walls in the entire downstairs were stripped of plaster and re-skinned with 3/8” drywall by the former owner a few years back hence the yellowing on the drywall in the before photos. It was salvageable however. We also went through the stack of door and window casing removed by the last owner to decipher where each piece went, which we somehow figured out. To complete the dining room, den, living room and foyer the cost was around $4k total with labor, materials and tool rental. This made up 2/3 of the first floor so it wasn’t much money so to speak.

Late in the spring of last year Erin and I decided that we would like to make this our permanent home. We originally considered using this as a rental property when the renovations were complete so we could possibly buy something in the Elmwood Village / Kleinhans area, but the more we worked on the house the more we realized this had everything we wanted with exception to the $300k mortgage payment. So we switched gears on how we approached the subsequent renovations, namely the kitchen.

The kitchen was already partially gutted, we removed a load bearing wall to open up the floor space. I closed off the door to the basement for extra wall space and demo’d the closet off the adjacent side hallway to serve as the new door to the basement. We also changed one of the windows to an exterior door to access our future rear deck.

Installing a new LVL beam where the load bearing wall was located proved to be a near disaster. We had to jack it in place with a bottle jack that decided to slip out-of-place when Erin was pumping it. Luckily I was on a ladder holding the beam so no injuries were suffered except for the shakes from the adrenaline rush and some pride.

The kitchen had the worst floors of all the rooms. Floor joists were cut for duct work, water leaks rotted sections into a giant hole and once again I had a rollercoaster of a floor to deal with. Using some lally columns and self-leveler we got them to an acceptable flatness for tile.

We purchased cabinets from the IKEA Pittsburgh store. (Don’t get fooled into going to their Burlington Ontario store for large purchases, they are about 35% higher in cost for the same product. It’s worth the 3 hour drive to Pittsburgh.) Ikea cabinets are pretty good quality if you install them properly.

The countertops are EOS brand solid surface similar to a quartz material. The tile is marble that I scored on Craigslist for less than $2/sq. ft. We also have the original built-in pantry we dismantled that we will reincorporate into a niche in the corner. All said and done we have about $8k into the kitchen including appliances, materials, accessories, etc.

After we finished the kitchen we moved in full-time (we spent the majority of our time at Erin’s house in West Seneca during this process). We then turned our attention to the exterior. I hadn’t really considered removing the yellow vinyl siding since it was in OK shape, but after a hastily placed Craigslist ad I had a young eager worker at my house pulling all the siding off revealing the original wood clapboard for $500. The old siding was taken away by another fellow who used it on his west side rental property.

Now that the house was substantially complete inside I once again waved the refinancing wand to pull out another $44k for a new roof, exterior paint and porch work. We hired a general contractor for the main house and garage roof which turned into a nightmare. Long story short, after theft, drug use and multiple leaks we had to fire them and bring in a different roofer (R&R Pro’s) to redo and finish the main roof. They did an excellent job and made it right for a fair price of $20k.

I then patched in all the damaged and rotted cedar clapboard which was a fairly easy process. The material is inexpensive and comes pre-primed from Home Depot. We then had the main body of the house scraped and painted with 3 colors for $5k by Perfect Cut painting (another Craigslist find). While they weren’t “perfect” they did a decent job for the money considering all the other bids were for $15k plus. I would recommend them if you’re on a budget.

The side porch roof was badly rotted and a friend suggested we remove the back 6’ overhang as it was encroaching access to the driveway and improperly supported. Doing so actually made the side porch more symmetric and I gained better access to the rear driveway area. (Don’t worry, the corbel in the before pic will be reinstalled).

The chimney’s needed repointing, or so we thought. It turns out they were worse than they appeared. We elected to have the top 3’ removed off the rear chimney down to a stable point and cap it off. The driveway side wasn’t so simple. We ended up having it removed below the roofline as it would have needed a total rebuild. Since neither chimney was being used for anything and neither was visible from the street we decided this was the best course of action to prevent future issues. The total cost was $2,700 (Felgemacher Masonry). Now we have a giant pile of bricks and flues in our back yard we will incorporate into our future garden!

That leaves the front porch which we plan to tackle this fall. After numerous bids into the 10’s of thousands and the fact we are getting low on funds we will likely tackle this ourselves with the help of friends and family. After that is landscaping, replacement windows upstairs and eventually the walk-up finished attic. And of course there will be some trim I will probably never get to along with tracking down hardware that was scavenged by salvage company’s years ago.

It’s been a crazy and stressful 19 months of doing work on evenings and weekends but worth it because as of now we are only into the house about $108k including the purchase price which is far less than anything else we could buy right now and we built it the way we want it. Our neighbors are great and have been working on their homes as well. Our block is a nice little pocket of original wood homes that are all intact. In fact ours was the worst of them when I bought it.

The only unknown about our location is what Ellicott Development has planned for some of the surrounding properties. They own the properties that front Main Street and the vacant house behind us at 38 Northampton along with some vacant land on our block. A call into their office inquiring about the status of that house ultimately led to a hasty offer to buy our house, although no dollar amount was discussed. That doesn’t matter though, we plan to stay.

Up next is 876 Lafayette north of Gates. My friend /investor and I are tackling this beauty this fall as a long-term investment property. After that is 152 Oakgrove (with another friend/investor) which has been in the short sale closing process for nearly 9 months now. I will be sure to document those for anyone interested.