|
My husband and I just got out of our contract today for a lovely, though poorly-kept 102 year old house. It had too many issues and the sellers weren't willing to work with us enough on them, but I hear you folks like seeing shabby workmanship, so at least there's that! Some highlights: - Original hardwood floors so badly in need of refinishing you could see crumbs and other detritus in the cracks between the boards. - A "half bathroom" that was actually just a non-functional plumbed room in the basement. There was a tub and a toilet, but neither was hooked up and the toilet was actually inside the tub. Inspector noted the pipes had not been used in a looooooong time. (Seller did not understand our objection to this being called a half bath in the listing.) - Ground outside sloped toward the foundation. - Termite activity in the basement, probably because of soil in contact with the porch wood, and this:  The outdoor entrance to the basement, which has been caulked shut and allowed to become built up around with soil. - We knew the old windows would need to be replaced, but were surprised that many of them were painted shut. - No smoke detectors. Not a single one. House was definitely wired for them and some were found laying around (sans batteries), but none actually connected. - Knob and tube wiring. The inspector called it antiquated. Not just old or outdated -- antiquated. - A dead loving bird in the blower area of the furnace. And that's just the stuff that's kind of amusing. Man am I glad to get out of that contract.
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2015 23:27
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 14, 2024 16:41 |
|
|
I realize this is well after the fact, and that people in this thread have noted time and again there's lots of ways to get suckered into sub-par house deals, but how did you end up in that contract? I woulda figured the basement hatch and the windows would have been noticeable red flags, at least.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2015 23:35
|
|
|
Shady Amish Terror posted:I realize this is well after the fact, and that people in this thread have noted time and again there's lots of ways to get suckered into sub-par house deals, but how did you end up in that contract? I woulda figured the basement hatch and the windows would have been noticeable red flags, at least. Depending on price there is nothing wrong with a house like that. Even one with those obvious deficiencies. In the overwhelming amount of real estate transactions a professional inspection doesn't happen until you're under contract. Part of that contract is letting the buyers get out of the transaction if the inspection reveals it's not in the condition claimed by the sellers.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2015 23:44
|
|
|
Ah, fair enough.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2015 00:17
|
|
|
Serella posted:and the toilet was actually inside the tub. Inspector noted the pipes had not been used in a looooooong time. (Seller did not understand our objection to this being called a half bath in the listing.) Ok, I gotta ask. WHAT THE gently caress??? So like, you step into the tub and sit down? 
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2015 00:34
|
|
|
kastein posted:So like, you step into the tub and sit down? It's brilliant, and you're just jealous you didn't think of it first.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2015 00:37
|
|
|
Shady Amish Terror posted:I realize this is well after the fact, and that people in this thread have noted time and again there's lots of ways to get suckered into sub-par house deals, but how did you end up in that contract? I woulda figured the basement hatch and the windows would have been noticeable red flags, at least. You really can't notice everything in your walkthrough of a house. I can't imagining opening the windows in someone's house during a viewing in winter. But that's what the inspection is for, since it's expected that they will be going in and being a little more invasive to get it all checked out. Plus, realistically unless you have an expert eye and knowledge of what things are supposed to look it, you're not going to know what proper piping looks like and such. For the age of the house, we definitely expected issues, but some of this stuff was really just the fact that this guy has been renting the place for some years and not giving a gently caress about updating or even properly maintaining. kastein posted:Ok, I gotta ask. WHAT THE gently caress??? I mean, it was just plopped in there like trash. Also there was a bunch of trash in the tub with it. Bad Munki posted:It's brilliant, and you're just jealous you didn't think of it first. Poopin' in style. 
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2015 01:51
|
|
|
Bad Munki posted:It's brilliant, and you're just jealous you didn't think of it first. I mean, showershitting? BRILLIANT
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2015 01:53
|
|
|
I just have one question, and this is really important: was there a cup holder in the shower as well?
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2015 02:06
|
|
|
Toilet tank's the cooler, brah, holds a dozen.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2015 06:59
|
|
|
Craziest thing in my house when I bought it was the sump pump located right in front of the fuse box. There was no grate or gravel over it so it was just a foot and a half deep hole in the slab right in front of the thing you run to when all the lights go off.
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2015 03:13
|
|
|
there wolf posted:Craziest thing in my house when I bought it was the sump pump located right in front of the fuse box. There was no grate or gravel over it so it was just a foot and a half deep hole in the slab right in front of the thing you run to when all the lights go off. Reminds me of a house I looked at. Wife, Realtor, and I split up when we get to the basement. Realtor: I found the sump pump. Wife: Oh, I found one too. Me: Huh? I found the sump pump. Three sump pumps, and to fit one in they had to change the direction of the stairs. Which now had no clearance for your head when walking downstairs. That house was a hard pass.
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2015 14:14
|
|
|
WeaselWeaz posted:Reminds me of a house I looked at. Wife, Realtor, and I split up when we get to the basement. This place actually had a second sump pump as well, but it was located outside of all places. House is a typical post-war bungalow built into a hill so the basement had an exterior door that was set about 2 feet below the grade of the rest of the yard; it had stairs to it and a small slab with a drain. If the you kept the drain clear then it was more than enough to handle the water coming off the roof at that point and down those stairs. It was not enough to handle the rest of the water coming down the hill heading for the city storm drain in the back yard. Water would build up on those steps and leak in through the door, and someone's solution was to put in a sump pump next to the steps to takeover when the drain got overloaded. I just bricked up the door.
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2015 18:02
|
|
|
Okay, so, story time. I might have pictures and more detail later on, but I'm not in the same city as this beauty right now, so eh. In 2000, my father bought a house in South Minneapolis--best estimates place it as one of the old railway houses built back when the city was a major freight hub. Almost certainly pre-dates the Second World War, I don't remember if I ever knew a more specific date.  My father is... well, cheap. Not cheap enough to skimp on materials or effort, but cheap enough that when the house needs effectively a full renovation, he's going to do it all himself rather than hiring anyone. So it's now TYOOL 2015, and the house is still only half done. I lived in it for three years, and he did for fourteen--it's livable, but, well... -That porch in the front is a deathtrap. The whole thing is sagging towards the front supports, which look quite less than solid. Of course, short of tearing the whole thing off the front of the house there's no real way to fix it--and that's a project that doesn't need to start at the moment. -The roof. Minneapolis is in Minnesota, and the roof is flat. Bad snow math. About five years back it just completely gave out over the upstairs kitchen. The entire roof had to be redone, which involved taking up about fifty years worth of shingles and tar. -The insulation was atrocious. In February 2013 I was at home during a cold snap, being unemployed, and thought I heard rain. The upstairs bathroom pipes had burst and it was now raining from the ceiling fixture in the downstairs kitchen. Cue my dad frantically coming home from work while I'm downstairs in the lightless basement with my bike light, hunting for the water mains. -Speaking of that basement. Someone at some point hosed up--it has no drainage. None. As near as we can tell, someone at some point added an extra two to three inches of cement floor over everything save the furnace and water heater, which now sit in a recessed pit. That included over the floor drains. We have no idea where they are, and we'd have to tear up literally the whole basement to find them. That made that aforementioned pipe break extra fun as my dad had to spend the whole day with a wet-dry vac to clear out the basement. -The windows aren't great, and the one in the back room busted badly. In the process of replacing it, there was a period of about a year where a room roughly the size of a walk-in closet had no exterior ventilation or natural light, with the window hole sealed up with solid insulation. I was living in that room--and that summer was hell. -Whoever joisted the thing was an idiot or a drunk. The main supports for the house were out of line with the main wall. My dad's been in the process of re-constructing those supports for years. -Typical old-house problems; the floors sag and dip, the doors aren't perfectly flush, the downstairs bathroom door swings outward on its own thanks to imperceptible wall lean. -Why did someone wire the lightswitch for the downstairs bathroom to be OUTSIDE the bathroom? When I'm home next, I'll provide better details from my dad, maybe some pictures. I've told him about this thread and he loves construction horror stories, so I think he'd love to share.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2015 05:07
|
|
|
FYI, Hennepin County property maps can give you a (probably) correct build date. http://gis.hennepin.us/Property/Map/Default.aspx The city also has records, you just have to go to Structure Information on the left menu. http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/propertyinfo/
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2015 05:31
|
|
|
Whoo, I dramatically underestimated. 1900.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2015 06:24
|
|
|
Redeye Flight posted:-Speaking of that basement. Someone at some point hosed up--it has no drainage. None. As near as we can tell, someone at some point added an extra two to three inches of cement floor over everything save the furnace and water heater, which now sit in a recessed pit. That included over the floor drains. We have no idea where they are, and we'd have to tear up literally the whole basement to find them. That made that aforementioned pipe break extra fun as my dad had to spend the whole day with a wet-dry vac to clear out the basement. Make friends with an archaeologist, borrow
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2015 14:41
|
|
|
The bit about the bathroom and the basement entrance is reason enough to pass but all this:Serella posted:- Original hardwood floors so badly in need of refinishing you could see crumbs and other detritus in the cracks between the boards. This is all pretty routine. You get a couple yards of soil and slope the ground away from the house, thrown the bird in the trash and plug in new smoke detectors. Anyone who has spent any time at all near a sizeable quantity of old windows can tell you there are lots of them painted shut. If you are ripping them out anyway, who really cares? Knob and Tube isn't great or anything, but antiquated is vastly overstating the fact. The house likely had asbestos in some capacity too, every house that old does unless someone spent a lot of time and probably a lot of money removing it already.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2015 16:24
|
|
|
Redeye Flight posted:Whoo, I dramatically underestimated. 1900. If it says 1900, it may actually be older. How far south is it?
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2015 16:44
|
|
|
I saw Minneapolis and was going to post that info, but Fishmanpet beat me to it. House is hella old.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2015 19:06
|
|
|
Redeye Flight posted:Okay, so, story time. I might have pictures and more detail later on, but I'm not in the same city as this beauty right now, so eh. That is a tear-down property, sorry. Having been there and done (still doing) that, either sell it or flatten and rebuild. The roof being that bad for that long means there is serious significant structural rot and you really do not want to get involved in that level of repairs. Ask me how I know.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2015 20:05
|
|
|
Redeye Flight posted:-Why did someone wire the lightswitch for the downstairs bathroom to be OUTSIDE the bathroom?
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2015 20:31
|
|
|
Collateral Damage posted:This isn't uncommon in old houses, mine (built 1904) has the lightswitch outside the bathroom too. I don't have any good explanation for it, but there's probably a I'd always heard that it was before the days of GFCI protection, as a safety precaution. No outlets in the bath and the light switch is outside.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2015 20:59
|
|
|
And it's so you can flip off the lights while someone is pooping
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2015 21:42
|
|
|
Yeah, my 1951 apartment building is the first bathroom I've ever had with the light switch inside. Every single bathroom previously had the light switch just outside the door. Can you imagine having electricity in a room with water? Way too dangerous! But I've only ever lived or stayed in places built at most in the 30's. You'd do your blow drying and such in your bedroom. My GFCI plug in the bathroom has a little "test" button and it makes a cool sound when I press it. It says "test monthly" so I sure do! It's such a novelty to me.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2015 22:24
|
|
|
I like it when the lightswitch is outside the bathroom, Don't have to play a game if someone's poopin', just look to see the light on or off and that answers everything. Then you get that visitor that doesn't get it.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2015 22:30
|
|
|
Forer posted:I like it when the lightswitch is outside the bathroom, Don't have to play a game if someone's poopin', just look to see the light on or off and that answers everything. I just lock my door when I'm inside.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2015 22:55
|
|
|
FISHMANPET posted:If it says 1900, it may actually be older. How far south is it? Right on the border between Kingfield and Lyndale. kastein posted:That is a tear-down property, sorry. I'll admit, I just threw out "fifty" as a big number. I'm not sure if it was actually that long, all I really remember is the roof collapse and then many months of time spent on the repair, which definitely included retarring the entire roof. I'd HOPE that if there was that kind of structural rot my dad would have picked up on it. Again, this isn't my project, my dad owns this house. I'd have to ask him for more details. Forer posted:I like it when the lightswitch is outside the bathroom, Don't have to play a game if someone's poopin', just look to see the light on or off and that answers everything. The problem is that the bathroom door has to be closed all the time, since as I mentioned the wall/doorframe has an imperceptible slant that means it's always swinging out and blocking access to the kitchen sink. So if it's open at all, it's going to open itself all the way. Redeye Flight fucked around with this message at 00:20 on Feb 25, 2015 |
|
#
?
Feb 25, 2015 00:17
|
|
|
Riddle me this: the house I grew up in was built in the 60s. Both bathrooms had electric outlets. So why did the hallway bathroom have the light switch inside, and the master bathroom have it outside? Is it for building trust exercises, like "man, I hope my spouse doesn't turn the light off while I'm pooping"?  Still, not as weird as my current place. I swear whoever did the wiring had a light switch fetish, because there's about four per room, on average. All of them are connected to different things. Some of those things, I still have not discovered, in the two years I've lived here. Thankfully it's about to be not my problem, since the landlord is kicking us out so she can bilk some poor soul out of a lot more money for this place. I feel bad for whoever lives here next, because it's not a bad place, but the landlord is really cheap and lovely about upkeep.
|
|
#
?
Feb 25, 2015 02:28
|
|
|
Oops
Anne Whateley fucked around with this message at 04:01 on Jan 16, 2017 |
|
#
?
Feb 25, 2015 02:52
|
|
i like nice words
|
Redeye Flight posted:I'll admit, I just threw out "fifty" as a big number. I'm not sure if it was actually that long, all I really remember is the roof collapse and then many months of time spent on the repair, which definitely included retarring the entire roof. I'd HOPE that if there was that kind of structural rot my dad would have picked up on it. The old age of the roof is a concern, but the big issue is that by the time the roof collapses by itself, there is an incredible amount of rot involved, and that water doesn't just magically stay in the roof structure, it goes downhill and also rots out anything else it ends up festering in. Any horizontal structure, basically. In my case the roof was in about the same shape but hadn't even collapsed yet. I have still ended up replacing about a dozen studs in weight bearing walls, a cornerpost, some sections of top plate, had to splice new wood into the bottom half of half a dozen rafters, and I've replaced 35 feet of sill beam under weight bearing walls with 24 feet still left to go. Water is the mortal enemy of a house. I would put money on everything structural within a foot of the ground being rotted to dust and/or infested with insects. I've discovered and destroyed 2 active carpenter ant infestations and one monstrous sugar ant nest so far. One of my cornerposts tore out of the house and broke off halfway up (it was formerly a 4x6 beam) when I tried to remove a porch railing from it with one arm. It took several square feet of siding with it.
|
|
#
?
Feb 25, 2015 03:35
|
|
|
Travesty of the week: We've been seeing a lot of weather-related issues in the Philadelphia area recently. Nothing like New England, but enough to keep us hopping. Homeowner reported that the floor in the family room was soft; that the hardwood was starting to discolor, and that the fireplace apron brickwork appeared to be settling and cracking. Then, a shelf unit was found tilting over. Removing the shelf unit revealed a really soft spot in the floor:  Thus was revealed the unvented, unaccessible crawlspace, built out of cinderblock and with (hopefully) some sort of concrete slab. No way to know, as there was over a foot of groundwater in there.  Judging by the water marks, this crawl has been filled up to the floorboards many times over the years, and as recently as this past week:   There's rotted floor timbers, submerged (live!) Romex, and the first rotted fiberglass insulation I've ever seen. Plus, pipes going god knows where. Not sure what that big galv pipe is for, though I suspect it drains the kitchen. The owners have been in the place less than two years. And they had an inspection done. And why yes, the inspector was recommended by the realtor. What a shock he missed this feature.
|
|
#
?
Feb 25, 2015 06:17
|
|
|
Nuke it from orbit. Or put it up for sale as having an in-floor swimming pool.
|
|
#
?
Feb 25, 2015 06:20
|
|
|
Aaaagh aaaaaaaaaargh!
|
|
#
?
Feb 25, 2015 06:24
|
|
|
PainterofCrap posted:Travesty of the week: On the one hand I've always wanted to pull up a floorboard and discover a whole secret compartment under my house like i'm in the loving Goonies or something. On the other hand I think the smell of that rot is so strong it's coming through my screen 
|
|
#
?
Feb 25, 2015 06:25
|
|
|
PainterofCrap posted:Travesty of the week: I hope you get paid decently to go into crap like that.
|
|
#
?
Feb 25, 2015 06:27
|
|
|
Wow. That smell reminds me of home   loving PREVIOUS OWNER
|
|
#
?
Feb 25, 2015 06:37
|
|
|
I've gotta agree with SynthOrange here, that is just flabbergasting. Oh my good GOD. It's hard to form the words to approach this. I mean...trying to imagine how to even fix this. Assuming the house isn't rotting/fit to be condemned for various safety issues. First you'd have to pump the water out. All of it. And hope it doesn't rain again. And then I guess you could assess the damage, which would require, what, installing drainage and repairing the foundation and replacing every last floor joist? I...do inspectors see this kind of poo poo regularly? I've only ever lived in trailer homes and propped-up prefabs, I have absolutely no basis for reference for this poo poo. It looks like that house is hosed.
|
|
#
?
Feb 25, 2015 06:47
|
|
|
Depending on how sound the rest of the structure is, you could actually jack the entire house up a few feet and replace its entire foundation if you had to. Houses can be lifted off of foundations and transported miles away to a new location. It's all do-able. The only issue is the cost. I am no expert but I'd be astounded if that house can be fully repaired and put into an up-to-code, long-term survivable condition for anything under a hundred K, when all is said and done. Also, it's possible if water stands in there 100% of the time that draining the water will cause structural wood that has been submerged for decades to immediately begin to mold up and rot away at an incredible rate. Archaeologists know that there are three conditions that preserve organic material over time: "dry and stays dry" (think mummies), "frozen and remains frozen" (think mammoths), and "wet and remains wet" (think sunken ships). Sooo, I would absolutely not drain that pond until an expert engineer has been consulted, and the wood supports for the building have been inspected carefully. Again, I'm not an expert, just a homeowner who has read some stuff, consult experts etc. I just know that until a house has physically fallen over, it's almost always possible to save it, if you're willing to spend enough money. It's just a question of whether the money is worth it.
|
|
#
?
Feb 25, 2015 07:03
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 14, 2024 16:41 |
|
|
It was a real joy. These folks may have really dodged a bullet; most of the house is built out of block/CMU and that entire crawlspace area, including all four walls - may be poured concrete. The joists were resting on masonry. There was no wall settlement at all. The floors were, in fact, remarkably solid. Which means that the entire floor structure can be torn out without disturbing the walls. I explained to the owner that once that was done, and excepting reworking whatever electric & plumbing is running down there where it puts the lotion on it's skin, that the first order of business would be installing a sump pump / french drain system. Either that, or one hell of a built-in hot tub. PainterofCrap fucked around with this message at 08:04 on Feb 25, 2015 |
|
#
?
Feb 25, 2015 07:59
|
|