u/makingahome70

The basement steps were almost finished. Finally, we had a safe way to get down into the basement. No more crawling and scraping my way up and down. My body was in bad enough shape without having to navigate an obstacle course just to get downstairs.
While I had the upstairs wall open, I went ahead and ran the wiring from the third floor down to the basement, ready to be hooked into the circuit breaker. That way, I wouldn’t have to tear anything open later.
On the opposite side of the basement, I had started connecting the sewer line plumbing. I dry-fitted the pieces until I had the right combination of inlets and connections. I hooked up the line for the toilet and kept moving forward with the plumbing in general.
I also hooked up the bladder tank for the cistern pump and wired it into the breaker board. We now had a water source in the house, even if it was only in the basement so far.
I got the water heater set in place, too. This was actually a gift from someone who follows our page. I began dry-fitting all the plumbing lines, preparing to hook everything together. I wanted to make sure I had plenty of shutoff valves and solid support for the lines.
I also ran a GFCI outlet to one wall for another small water pump.
I continued cleaning things up, including the floor. I took the cabinets that had been upstairs in the laundry room and mounted them on the basement wall.
I ran another outlet on the opposite wall for my shop tools. I used old 4x4 timbers from the old deck to support some new shelves. I organized everything and got my little work area set up.
The basement isn’t finished, but neither am I.
Every day, I fight pain, nausea, dizziness, exhaustion, and so much more. But I keep picking away at things, a little at a time.
As many of you know, I deal with a lot of health issues. I’m on disability, and I don’t get much. People ask me, “If you can work on the house, why can’t you get a job?”
Here’s the difference.
I can work for 15–20 minutes before I have to rest for anywhere from half an hour to an hour. You can’t exactly do that at a regular job.
Some days, the brain fog gets so bad that I forget what someone told me just 10 minutes earlier. That’s not exactly a good situation in a workplace.
I’m dizzy all the time. That’s part of why my legs look like I’ve run through a field of thorns. Falling is a real concern, and that creates liability for an employer.
I can’t even get up in the mornings without feeling sick. I never know from one day to the next, or sometimes even from one minute to the next, whether I’m going to be sick.
That’s the reality of my life.
Recently, I made a post asking anyone who was interested to visit our GoFundMe and help us finish the house. Within 20 minutes, it had 20 downvotes and a bunch of negative comments. I ended up deleting it.
I’ve been called a panhandler and a beggar.
The truth is, it’s been the generosity of the people following our story that has helped us get this far. People have helped us with materials and given us a chance to keep moving forward. Six years of work, one project at a time, and we’re still at it.
I never imagined I’d have to swallow my pride and ask strangers for help finishing a home for my family. But here I am.
And I’ll take the name-calling if that’s what it takes.
Because the only thing that really matters to me is the future I leave for my family.
I’m not trying to build a mansion. I’m not looking for fancy things. I want to finish our house and give my family a safe, comfortable place to call home.
That’s what this GoFundMe is about. The money goes toward the materials needed to finish the house.
If you’ve followed our journey over the last six years, you know this hasn’t been an overnight project. We’ve come a long way, but there’s still work to do.
If you’re able to help, even a little, it would mean more than you know. And if you can’t donate, sharing our story would help, too.
Please help us reach our goal and get this house finished.
Six years in, we’re still building a home, piece by piece, project by project.
Thank you to everyone who’s helped us get this far. We wouldn’t be here without you.
GoFundMe**:** https://gofund.me/3187c802e

Things in the basement I knew would take awhile. The cleanup alone was taking forever. Never ending buckets of muck and garbage. But it was getting there.
The floor was covered with garbage, old boxes of stuff put in the basement to store but actually turned to wet muck. People’s memories destroyed. We managed to save a few things including a box with snow globes in it and some Christmas towns. But most things were ruined.
In the corner laid a wooden cross laying on its side. I wasn’t sure how to take that. The way the basement looked I thought maybe it was a warning lol. Or a sign for a ton of prayers.
The plumbing ran every which way. Crisscrossing and mostly unstrapped. So loosely dangling and waiting to come apart. So I went ahead and stripped all the plumbing out of the basement. I needed to just start new.
I also found a makeshift support on top of an old 2x4 they had put a piece of wood under an area in the bathroom. Not even the right area and definitely not safe. Nor was the metal jacks they had in a few areas that rusting on the bottom from sitting on 2’ of water. So I actually put in 6 large jacks and smaller ones in the crawl space under the dining room and son’s room. I just wanted to make sure this timber was supported. When I say timber I mean it as the beam was rough sawn and still had bark in areas.
I was sorting through all kinds of junk. Old insulation, garbage, bricks, and even an old tire. It was starting to look like a basement more and more. Things were clearing up. I could see actual floor and once it was clear I’d be scrubbing it to get rid of chance of mold.
In the midst of all of this in a tiny side room was a huge fuel oil tank. And it was leaking out a broken line onto the basement floor. So I grabbed a pair of vise grips and pinched the line closed. Now I had to figure out how to get rid of the oil. I’d worry about that later as I wanted the basement at least usable.
We had also found out about our sewer by this time. We’d hired a cleanout company, just to find out the septic was a rusted barrel. So we were back to no sewer, no water,etc. Well we’d got a government program that paid for us to get a septic with only us paying a $1000 down. As I was at this point in the basement cleanup, they’d finally did the new septic and the new main line was through the wall and ready to go.
Then finally we started addressing a huge issue. The “stairs” for the basement. Or lack of. Trying to get to the basement was a horror show. Trying to get in the basement after two strokes, PVNS and other crud, next to impossible without getting hurt. Which I did many times lol. So we got to working on installing new stairs so life wasn’t so hard.
Part 3 next week.
Just so you know a ton of this house has been through donations. We do have a go fund me going and the link is on my profile page if anyone is interested in helping us achieve the finishing work on the home after 6 years of major overhaul. I won’t be pushing it because I’m here to share my story not promote a fundraiser.

Next I used pieces of posterboard and put them down on the floor and giving me a template for the sheet vinyl. I trimmed leaving a couple inches extra to allow for any issues. I put the down the sheet vinyl and put my tub on top to allow for extra protection from water.
I began covering walls with mildew resistant drywall. And of course replacing the insulation. I had also installed a vent fan and a vent line out the side of the house.
Next was the cement board. This was my first time messing with it and it’s kind of a pain in the butt. But it was put in place and the seams done.
We decided to use what they call Carsiding to do our ceiling. My wife and younger boy spent days sealing the boards before we installed them on the ceiling. Giving a nice wood finish instead of just plain drywall.
My wife finished the seams on the drywall as well. This put us a step closer to tiling the tub and priming the walls!
Things were coming along but working over my head was not good. I fell more than a couple times but we kept moving forward.

Have you ever had a window ac and end up with water damage below the window. Or maybe running down your wall.
We had the same issue with water leaking down the window in an upstairs bedroom through the wall downstairs to a doorway. We were constantly finding the doorway dripping.
That’s when I made what I called the ac bib. I cut a nice size piece of rubber and pulled the ac out. I put the one edge under where the ac would hold it on the sill. The other I let drape down the side of the house some. The leaks stopped within a half hour. Never leaked again. You see the water from the ac itself was now going down the rubber. Instead of pooling up on the window sill and finding every little crack to escape. Exactly the same for the rainwater. The rubber guided the water off the sill and down onto a roof below our window.
It’s a cheap and easy fix that could save thousands in damage.

Prior to the cistern we had decided to bury a tank near the house for our water. Due to freezing rain and such the tank collapsed from the bottom up. So we pulled it out and filled it in.
After that we had discovered the cistern but wanted a back up. So I cut a spot out on the floor of our building. Framed it in and had cement poured. Plus a drain leading out the back of the building.
We got another tank and put it on the pad. We had a trench ran between the house and the building. It was attached to a harbor freight pump in the basement. I built plumbing in the garage and hooked it in. Plus I installed a hose bib on the outside of the building.
Our main source of water was the cistern. We had to get water brought in for each 9-10 days. The leak in the cistern wasn’t enough to keep up with our use so it was unpredictable.
Our back up was the tank in the garage. Which worked fine when it was warm. But the water in the tank started freezing during winter. We battled frozen water, broken water lines in the ground and running out of water in the cistern.To find the broken line. I took a tape measure and ran it out through the water line till it stopped. I measured from the hose over the length it had shown me. I dug it up and sure enough was my break.
We got an alarm that went off when the water was low but it didn’t work half the time.
After all this struggle to get water the county came in and said they were running water lines to our area and there was a grant for the hookup fee, all you had to do is to hire a plumber to run the line from the road to the house and hook up to main plumbing. I wasn’t in the place to hire anyone and truthfully I knew I could do it. So we hired a guy to dig my trench. I laid the water line in, I hook it to the street connection, drilled a hole through the cement/brick foundation and ran the water line through.
I then hooked it up to all the shut offs, the main valve, a pressure valve, and into my waterlines. Having to have to unhook from the cistern and other pump.
After all that work it was still nice to not have to worry about the high cost of water hauling. I sold the tank in the garage. The lines are now hooked to the cistern for the hose bib. Allowing me water for my animals and such. I have a line I need to hook in from the back gutter to help fill the cistern. It has a first flush system attached to the downspout. In the basement it runs through a filter. Which I intend to add a uv filter later. I also have a ro system that runs off water pressure not electric. So if I ever needed fresh water and didn’t have the city water for whatever reason, I can still get it by hooking my cistern into the mains. It’s literally one capped off line to change over. After everything we’d been through trying to keep water in that house, I wasn’t about to depend on only one source ever again.
We finally had city water.
But I still planned for the day we might not.

Once I knew I had a solid foundation underneath me, it was time to start working my way up.
I removed the wall between the basement steps and the back porch and rebuilt it into a stronger, more secure wall. I also added a door leading down into the basement.
The old back door was replaced with a new steel door.

Then I started framing another wall to separate off a small area that would become a pantry. I ran the electrical for a light and put it on a dimmer.
After adding new insulation, I covered the walls with new drywall.

But before I could close up the wall between the kitchen and the porch, I had to run the plumbing for the washer. I made sure to include a vent for the plumbing before everything was sealed inside the wall.

On the laundry-room side, I added two puck lights to the ceiling because it was a longer area. Those went on a dimmer too.
None of this was particularly glamorous.
It was just one job after another.
And every day left me exhausted. By the time I finally stopped working, I was completely beat and ready for bed.
But there was something about standing there and looking at what I had done that made the exhaustion worth it.

This porch had been a mess.
Now I could actually see the rooms taking shape.
It was becoming a laundry room.
A pantry.
A usable part of our home.

And every time I finished another piece, I felt a little more pride in what we were building.
The house wasn’t just getting fixed anymore.
It was becoming ours.

“Your better off selling me the land. I’ll give you $8,000,” said a man we didn’t know as he walked past the house after we had bought it. He had seen us outside, cleaning it up.
Right then, I knew he had said the wrong thing.
First, Stacy doesn’t stand for someone telling her she can’t. As I watched her walk away from the guy, yelling over her shoulder, “Watch me!” I knew we were in this for the long haul.
And as much as I hate to admit it, I’m the same way.
I walked away laughing, saying, “Bub, you said the wrong words.”
As the years went on, we heard plenty of people amplify those same thoughts. But there were many more who cheered us on.
That house became so much more than a house.
Just like after my strokes.
My walking was probably at about a one. But with the help of a mischievous younger child, I learned to walk a little more each day. My son would take my walker and move it farther and farther away from my bed, making me move more to get to it.
My wife would take me outside into the grass and help balance me with a balance belt. Having me walk across the uneven yard forced me to learn how to balance in ways I couldn’t on a smooth floor.
Even when my body felt like giving up, they didn’t.
They pushed me to keep going instead of letting me simply lie in bed.
So, on top of the effects of my strokes, we had committed ourselves to the house from hell. LOL.
At first, the house was, in my mind, a safe place for my family if I were to die. But it also became part of my therapy from the strokes.
It became a way for me to learn new ways of doing things I used to be able to do without even thinking about them.
I quickly discovered that my body had absolutely no problem telling me when I had pushed beyond what I could handle. Sometimes the simplest things would leave me sick in bed for days while I recovered.
I had to learn a hard lesson:
I couldn’t compare the amount of time it took me to do something then with how long it took me now.
My expectations had to be based on my current reality—not my past.
And just because something took me days, or even a week, when it used to take me an afternoon didn’t mean I had failed.
It was okay.
Accepting that new version of me was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.
Eventually, I realized I had a choice.
I could lie in bed, hurting and exhausted…
or I could make myself get up, do something, and earn those feelings.
So I got up.
And I kept going.

The back porch was a complete mess. The wall studs were rough, the floor was rotted, and honestly, the only thing I could do was try to make it as sturdy and close to right as I could without tearing the whole thing down.
A complete teardown just wasn’t in my budget.
Once we had the walls lifted and the new rim joist in, we lowered everything back down and started working on the new layout.
I decided the original joist direction was part of the problem. They ran the long way, which made for a pretty long span with not much support. So I decided to run the new joists the short way instead. That gave me a much shorter span and made it easier to support everything properly.
I reinforced the board attached to the house with some small concrete pillars on footings I poured. Then I started setting the joists, working my way across at 16” on center. After that I added blocking to help keep everything from twisting.
I cut the floor pieces but didn’t put them down yet. I still had some areas to seal up, plus I needed to run the electrical and the plumbing for the washer.
And this is where the porch started turning into something different.
I decided to split the long room into two rooms — a laundry room and a pantry.
There was also a wall at one end between the basement and the porch. At one time there had been a door there, but it had been covered up, leaving an outside door as the only way into the basement.
I had other plans for that.
So that wall was coming out.
More to come…

The next project on the house was the back porch, and it was in rough shape. It had settled so much that it was barely holding together.
As I started tearing it apart, I found old newspapers stuffed under the floorboards as insulation. The floor joists spanned the entire porch and had been loosely sistered together at some point, but there were no supports underneath to carry the load. It was no wonder the porch had sagged over the years.
My father-in-law and I decided to tackle the foundation first. We built forms and poured a new, level cap on top of the existing foundation. After that, we built a new rim joist and slowly jacked the porch up, taking our time so we didn’t damage anything. Once it was level, we carefully lowered it onto the new rim joist.
To help keep everything from twisting, I also installed 2x6 braces running wall to wall.
This was just the first phase of the repair, but getting the porch level and properly supported gave us a solid foundation to keep moving forward.
Has anyone else uncovered old newspapers in the walls or floors of an old house? It’s always interesting seeing what previous owners used decades ago.

The next room is the living room. When looking it over at first it didn’t seem horrible. But upon closer inspection i began noticing more and more. First was a very obvious dip in the floor. It was near the chimney and oddly it was the same on the second story in the same area. As I went into the basement I found a very bad attempt at reinforcing the beam and some dropped joists. I started there. Using metal posts to sturdy up the beam.

Then I got to doing more demo and realized the wide open area between the living room and dining room, was the source of the issues. They had removed the wall that was there. That wall was a structural wall. It shouldn’t have been removed without proper reinforcement. So I built a new wall in between.

As we were working one day a huge piece of the ceiling plaster fell nearly hitting the kids. At that point I decided all ceiling need redone. So I lowered the ceiling a couple inches and built a new ceiling. New insulation of course. And of course type x fire rated drywall.

Then the front wall was next. Termite damage to a couple studs in the wall. We had Orkin in and I removed all the infected wood and burnt it. Replacing with new wood.

Finally I removed half the floor. From the basement I jacked the joists up one by one. Securing each board in place. Then reinforcing under each joist with wood.

We finished adding drywall. And then we had carpet put down. Yes I know drywall should have been finished first but we’ll deal with it. So now it’s down to finish work in this room. Another room off the checklist nearly.

In 2019, I was having issues with my knee. We found out I have PVNS in my right knee. Within a couple months of that discovery, I had a stroke while working at a customer’s house. The day I got home from the hospital, I had another stroke. This one was more serious, and they had to life-flight me.
When I finally got out, I could barely stand or walk. And my mind wouldn’t stop fixating on one thing: If I die, how will they afford to live?
I wanted them to be in a safe home and not have to worry about rent. So I posted in several nearby Facebook groups, asking if anyone had a cheap fixer-upper for rent-to-own. One day, my phone buzzed, and I looked to see I had a response in one of the groups. This lady had a house for $8,000. I couldn’t believe it.
Fast-forward to 2020. We bought the house, and I had started a Facebook page covering our journey. I named the page Making a Home because that’s what I was trying to do. The page follows the ups and downs of our lives and the rebuilding of this land and old home from 1920.
Over the years, we’ve gotten stuck and run out of money. The amazing people of this group came to our rescue. Buying from our Amazon list, giving to a GoFundMe, even voting for us in a radio contest and helping us win $1,500 for remodeling.

But it wasn’t just materials and money.
They’ve been there to talk us through the bad times and to cheer us on when things are good. It went from strangers that I just met to becoming extended family that I know by name now.

This house was bought by me out of love, and the followers on our page have helped us build it out of love.
This all goes a long way when you’re Making a Home.

The house just kept throwing new surprises at us. While cleaning the basement and pulling back some boards I started seeing sunlight. Another undisclosed surprise!! A huge hole in the corner of the foundation.
The more I got to digging I also found we had 2 small cisterns beside the house. Upon looking in them you could see they were falling apart. Bricks falling in and just nasty. These were on the other side of the wall just a bit down from the hole. They had an old wood table inside with a pump setting on it. Then another surprise that almost made me pee myself.
Lol they had an outlet hooked up, no box, no tape. Just exposed wires and connections that I nearly grabbed ahold of.
So now I had a huge hole to deal with. I dug out the dirt and cleared the hole out. I put a sheet of wood up and ran threaded rod through the sheet and completely through the wall. Then I sealed around the board with silicone. Next we mixed up and poured cement in the cavity. We hand mixed 1200 lbs of high strength cement and fill the corner cavity. This corner will probably still be here after we are gone! lol
Right after buying the house I started a Facebook page called Making a Home that has covered the last 6 years of our lives and our journey.

I’ve had a lot of people ask why I would buy a house like this for $8,000.
The answer really starts with my family.
I had already had two strokes, and I started worrying about what would happen to my family if I died. I didn’t want them to be stuck paying rent and struggling to keep a home without me.
So I started posting in Facebook groups looking for an inexpensive house.
A woman responded and told me about this one. $8,000.
When I first saw it, I honestly didn’t think it was that horrible.
Then I started digging into it.
There had been more than two feet of standing water in the basement. There were burnt electrical outlets in almost every room. There were no proper drains to the septic system. The floors sloped in several rooms.
And then I found termites.
I ended up ripping out all the infected wood and burning it.
At that point, I knew exactly what I’d gotten myself into.
But I also knew why I was doing it.
After my strokes, my balance was terrible and things were very hard physically. I also had a PVNS tumor in my right knee, COPD, neuropathy in my hands and feet, degenerative disc disease, AFIB and a pacemaker.
But I kept working on the house.
I’ve been working on it for six years now.
In a strange way, this house became my physical therapy.
Instead of sitting around concentrating on everything that was wrong with my health, I had something to work on. Something that kept me moving. Something that needed me.
Every room I repaired was another little victory.
I wasn’t just fixing a house.
I was trying to build a safe home for my family in case I wasn’t going to be here someday.
That’s why I bought the $8,000 house.

The basement was holding about 2 feet of water, and we knew we had to figure out why.
So we waded in.
The floor drain was clogged, so I ran a snake down it and finally broke it loose. Once the drain opened up, the water started going down.
What was left behind was a mess.
There was 2–3 inches of thick muck covering the basement floor, along with years of garbage and debris that had been buried underneath the water.
And then we found an animal skeleton.
To make matters worse, the old fuel oil tank was leaking.
We started bucketing the muck out, removed the trash and debris, and scrubbed the floors. We also drained the oil tank and plugged the leak.
It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t fun. But little by little, the basement started looking like a basement again.
This house has given us plenty of surprises since we bought it.
We’re still making a home.

When we started on the bathroom, we found out just how much work this $8,000 house was going to need.

The floor was completely rotted, and the floor joists needed to be replaced. So I started there and rebuilt the room from the floor up.

New joists.
New studs in the walls.
New flooring.
New plumbing, which meant cutting out the old cast-iron pipes.
New tub and fixtures.

And then came one of my favorite parts — the ceiling. We used Carsiding to create a beautiful ceiling that completely changed the room.
But working on an old house always comes with surprises.

While working on the ceiling, we found an old oyster can dating back to the 1890s.
We ended up selling it to a collector for $300.
Not bad for something that had been hidden above our heads for more than a century. 😂
But there’s something else you can’t see in these pictures.

This was soon after my two strokes.
I couldn’t work the way I used to. I had to sit most of the time just to be able to do the work. Looking up or lying down would make me instantly sick, so even working on a ceiling presented a challenge.

But I kept going.
A little at a time.

I couldn’t always work fast. Sometimes I couldn’t work very long at all.

But every part I finished brought me one step closer to turning this old $8,000 house into a home.

You don’t always have to move fast.
Sometimes you just have to keep moving.

Six years ago, I bought an $8,000 house that most people probably would have walked away from.
Before the house and before my strokes, I ran my own handyman business. Fixing things and building things was what I did for a living, so when I looked at this house, my first thought was pretty simple: I can fix that.
I just didn’t know how much my life was about to change.
I had two strokes, and suddenly the things I used to do for work weren’t so easy anymore. This house became something different. It wasn’t a job anymore. It became something I could work on at my own pace, when my body allowed it.
Six years later, I’m still working on it.
We’ve redone the kitchen, bathroom, floors, windows, siding, porch and plenty of other things. Some projects took much longer than they ever would have when I was working full time. Some things I’ve had to redo. There are still plenty of unfinished areas.
But that’s okay.
I’m not trying to make this house perfect. I’m trying to make it a home.
And when I look at the old pictures compared to where we are now, I can see how far we’ve come.
I started documenting the journey because this house ended up becoming about a lot more than fixing walls. It became part of rebuilding my life after my strokes.
So here’s a look at where we started and where we are today.