I think the front of the house used to be a porch, but at some point (possibly in the 40s, when the second story was added) a front addition and rear addition were added. It was a tiny house originally! We had an architect come look at it today and he didn't think foundation issues would be a problem (he's done several second story additions in the neighborhood) but he says we would have a structural engineer look at it. He also thought our budget was very tight, but that maybe we could afford to have it framed and roofed, and then do a lot of the finishing ourselves (which was our plan). We won't be able to get a certificate of occupancy until a lot of things are basically done but I think we're ok with that. Regarding whether it's worth it -- if we can finish everything off for less than $175K over the next two years, I'm pretty sure it's worth it. The houses one block up from us are in the 800K-$1M range; our block is mostly in the 700K range even for some of the scruffier looking houses so we could spend our whole budget and still only have as much investment in the house as the others are currently worth. This isn't considered a weekend home area; it's very much a full-time family residence area, we are just in a unique position of having an employer-subsidized rental in the city, so it can be a weekend place for us until when/if we decide to move up there more full-time. I should find out about the increase in property taxes though. This thread is really helpful -- thank you all for your feedback!

Ktlri, Thanks for the follow-up as although the build is done, I haven't fully furnished the residence yet and had my professional shots done for our records and the community here. I'll admit - I had to go back over the thread and re-read to give the proper feedback but for the main range I ended up with a Zephyr 48" Monsoon II and a curvaball that I didn't even find out about until after this thread had already run it's course...I went with the Capital Connoisseurian 48" Dual-Fuel w/ 8 (Open) Burner configuration and I must say I absolutely LOVE IT. The fit and finish is as good as if not better than all of the BlueStars I saw in person (I visited about 6 different ones in 3 different stores during the process) and I've been estatic about the oven capacity and having an electric oven instead of gas for our baking purposes, etc. The electric rotisserie, electronic food probe and the kicker was the Wok insert (all of which I've used and very happy with the performance). It does take a while to get used to having this many powerful burners (all 25K minus the simmer burner) but it is a huge time saver for me as my wife and I both "prep" our food for the week on Sunday nights and with 2 cooks in the kitchen we can do multiple large quantities of food at once. Here's a couple cell phone pics and thanks for asking. One of these days once we finish with the interior designers and the furniture finally arrives (We're talking 12-16 week delivery times for most pieces - what the heck?!?) we'll get some legit shots done for everyone. Thanks! PS - Sorry for the dim light on the 2nd pic as the Monsoon II isn't installed/turned on - we're still waiting to pass the final building permit tomorrow before installing the Zephyr as we already have 2 makeup airs installed to run the furnaces and the code was going to require an addition 2 (4 total) so we are working our way around that idiotic code.

Yes, I would love to see your finished pictures, as we are having the same issue now with our new home we are building and trying to decide if we go black windows inside and outside, or stain them inside.

If you use a solid color stain, you could put a sealer just over the nail heads or screws, whichever it is, so it wouldnt bleed through. A different type of nail or screw should have been used, so it wouldnt rust, and look like that. It will look very nice, once you stain it.