All Forum Posts by: Kevin C.

Yes sir, you certainly have a similar situation.   From the pictures it looks like your house is a bit further from the creek than ours was, allowing you more time to hopefully find a cost effective option to address the issue.   The biggest concern we had was where the creek made a bend near the corner of our house, the rock of the creek wall was being severely undercut by erosion (a point that was only about 12' from the corner of our house).      I've forwarded you all the contacts we used for our project.  Best of luck with this and please post back what you end up doing.

@Davin DiFulco - Will look up the contact info for the companies I used and forward to you.   For reference, can you post some pictures of the erosion issue you're dealing with?

Not sure of the long term durability of click-lock flooring, nor have I seen higher quality click-lock engineered wood (it may be out there, but I've not seen it).   I've seen plenty click-lock engineered wood, but not of the quality we are looking for.

Regarding repairs on glue-down, I would think it would be similar to how you would replace damaged tile, cut the damaged section out and install the replacement piece(s) using the same method they were originally installed with, thinset for tile, or nail down / adhesive for wood.  Have replaced damaged tiles and it was never an issue as long as I had matching tile for the area to be repaired. 

With click-lock flooring, if a piece is damaged and needs replaced, you would have to remove all the flooring up to the damage section, working from the perimeter inward, yes?  Replacing a damaged perimeter piece would be easy enough, but the further from the perimeter you get the more work it would be to replace a piece.   

Not really a DIY question, but this seemed to be the most appropriate place to post the question.  This is for our personal residence.  House we bought has a lot of carpet which we want to replace with wood.   The wood will butt up to existing tile that is in kitchen / dining area.   

We're looking at quality engineered Oak mainly since solid wood would likely be an issue due to the height difference between the existing tile and a solid hardwood.

We considered some of the wood look tile, but prefer the warm look and feel of wood.

The engineered wood seems pricey as it's right up there, if not more expensive, than solid Oak.

As this will be a significant expense, we want to make sure we make the best decision.

Installation will be glue down, on ground floor, over concrete.  We have a contractor we trust that has done all our flooring in the past, for both investment properties and personal residences.   

Our concern is which flooring is best in this situation and are the costs we are seeing reasonable (quoted price for the flooring alone is $6.75 sqr ft  from local supplier).

One other thing to consider is we have a large dog.

Appreciate any comments or suggestions.

Kevin

We've discussed this and will explore VRBO/AirBNB at some point.

We don't have to do anything, we didn't buy this property with the intent to monetize it, we bought it for personal reasons.  It was after we owned it and had used it a number of times it occurred to me that maybe we should be doing something with it besides having it sit vacant the majority of the time.  

We will continue to use it, as it's located near where we both grew up, near our long time friends and near her family.  It's also located in a historic, touristy area, so there will always be potential.

Curious, how would you go about finding someone to manage a VRBO/AirBNB property when the property is not located in a well known tourist hotspot?   There are only a few vacation rentals in the immediate area.  Some, based on their calendars, appear to do quite well.

We do have an income stream from rentals, from rentals we own near where we live.

This second home is new territory for us, we don't know that area from a rental perspective like we do the area near where we live.   I was looking for a simple way to generate a little cash with the property and learn more about the rental potential in that area at the same time.

VRBO could very well be far more lucrative than renting a room anyway, but it's also something we know little about, so it'll definitely be more work to explore that option.   It is something we'd like to get into, so this is probably as good a place to start as any.

@Avi Garg

PM sent.

Sent you a PM with lender we used in STL for a vacation / second home we purchased there. 

We're there at random times, no set schedule, so there would be no way to rent a room to someone that was to be there when we were not except by going the VRBO route.

I'm OK going that route, and with that, there is no privacy or security issue since we would only VRBO the unit when we would not be there.

My thought was, renting a room would be far less work, and the bonus being we wouldn't have concerns of a vacant house for extended periods.

Going the route of just renting a room, the room we would rent is not a suite, it's an upstairs bedroom.   House has one bath, downstairs, so the bathroom would be shared as would the rest of the living space, kitchen, laundry area etc.

With the privacy and security concerns, I'm going to step away from the 'rent a room' option and works towards getting it set up as a VRBO.   For future reference, I'd still like to know how those that have or currently do rent a room, in either their primary residence or home they reside in occasionally, how did you address privacy and security concerns?

I see where the privacy issue would come into play, not something I really considered, but it sounds like that may be the bigger issue.  I get it, many times I'll be working from home while we're there and 'getting dressed for work' never crosses my mind.