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Chairs? In this economy?? E: worst loving snipe
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Apr 9, 2024 00:48
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hobbez posted:I argue if you guys are sitting in your austere amish wooden school chairs sitting perfectly upright with no back wards lean resulting in a natural upwards eye inclination you are chillaxing completely wrong A lot of modern couches have little to no recline. But when it comes to goons I guess this is probably the furniture of choice: 
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Apr 9, 2024 02:45
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I just mount my TV on the ceiling and lie on the floor. EDIT: but I do make sure to point a space heater at it on full blast every so often, to simulate normal environmental conditions.
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Apr 9, 2024 02:58
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Ditocoaf posted:I just mount my TV on the ceiling and lie on the floor.
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Apr 9, 2024 03:27
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I guess if you had a sloped ceiling a TV mounted there with some really steep reclining chairs could be pretty cool planetariums already figured this poo poo out
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Apr 9, 2024 06:07
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Ditocoaf posted:I just mount my TV on the ceiling and lie on the floor. can’t do that in the bedroom, I already have a mirror there
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Apr 9, 2024 21:55
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SpartanIvy posted:Vintage cooking appliances kick rear end. Don't ever get rid of them. There's a house in my zip code that just listed and I wish there was a way to ask for the appliances if the buyer is getting rid of them. I have no idea how to value them though.  Hell, I'd take the countertop too.
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Apr 9, 2024 23:49
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QuarkJets posted:The only thing I'd prioritize renovating here is removing the popcorn ceilings and replacing the carpet, that house is beatiful Hadlock posted:Congrats Arsenic Lupin posted:That has superb bones. Nice find. Welp, we may have found the serpent in this garden, the crack in the bones.   Home inspection found water intrusion on one side of the crawlspace and the above-photographed instability and cracks at the opposite corner. We had an estimate done yesterday to repair the foundation issues and the writeup is roughly 15k total to put in piers, attempt to lift and fix the cracks, and put in thirty feet of interior french drain and sump pump at the water intrusion points. They're also apparently recommending a full perimeter french drain system (I don't have an estimate for that yet). Any thoughts or advice suggested? We're still in our due diligence period, so could walk. I'm just nervous about dumping a bunch of money renovating a house if it's going to, you know, sink into the swamp on me. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 12:26 on Apr 10, 2024 |
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Apr 10, 2024 12:21
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:
Are you getting a good enough deal to make those kinds of expenses swingable? It's the sort of thing where you should either already be getting a great price, or use this to negotiate a better one. None of that seems like a deal breaker to be frank, unless it's a rapidly evolving problem. Like, has this crack appeared a week ago and it's progressing daily, or is this something the PO lived with for the last decade and a half? I'm an idiot, and working on basically no info, so my advice is worthless, but from where I'm sitting this feels like the kind of thing that's an expensive fix but once it's done you should be OK minus something like repairs to the french drain a few decades down the road.
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Apr 10, 2024 12:48
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Yeah, those don't strike me as "Run' type issues but the question now is you build it into the price/negotiation and decide if it's worth it.
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Apr 10, 2024 14:13
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"Roughly $15K total" is going to turn out to be $25K minimum. I wouldn't necessarily just walk, but I'd demand at least a $15K discount and if the seller won't meet it, then walk. Or not. Depends how much you're actually willing to spend. But you should extensively do your homework before you reopen negotiations, and know exactly where your Walk Line is drawn.
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Apr 10, 2024 14:18
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Yeah every property is good at the right price. Id consider how much of a construction zone you're willing to live in, and for how long, on top of the price adjustment to compensate for the problem.
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Apr 10, 2024 14:22
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Jenkl posted:Yeah every property is good at the right price. Unless the price can be negative (as in the seller give you money) this is not true. I had to deal with a family property - my grandmother's place - that had no vehicular access, no street access other than through an easement which never got used for anything other than a water line because it's a neighbors driveway that the refuse to keep clear, a delapidated chicken coop, a dilapidated and falling down house, and then another dilpaidated and falling down house, on sode of which was almost liveable but too far gone. Both have asbestos siding and there is leaed pain everywhere. So, let's say someone gave to to you for free, as was the case (inherited - they wanted me to take it because I'm good with this kind of stuff). Well, to begin with you have to remove the structures. Which means improving the easement from the driveway to the property, a thing that hasn't been used in uears and is partially part of the neighbors back yard where they've built things like gardens and swing sets. Water line freezes in the winter because it wasn't put below the frost line, all lots are required to have public sewer which somehow this one got away without due to the easement issues but there's no getting around that if you're doing this kind of thing. So road work, tearing up the neightbor paved driveway, installing a water and sewer line, remediating the driveway and the back yard somewhat.....but not to what is was before because we're going to use this easement as a driveway now and what have we got? $25k in the hole, water and septic, and a pissed off neighbor. Probably should have buried a gas and power line while we were at it. Now we have access to demo and remove these structures. But asbestos, so it's high labor to separate and high disposal cost. Another $25k in the money furnace. So no we have a pissed off neighbor who gonna block our shared driveway all the time, an empty lot, and a fifty thousand dollar smoking crater in our checkbook. What's the property now worth? Oh right....$12k on a good day because it's on the outskirts of a broken down NE PA coal mining town. And if someone wanted the very nice view from that property there are multiple others to choose from on the same road within a mile on either side that have street access and require no work for the same cost per acre. You can't even take a property like that and do nothing/sit on it because the property transfer will trigger all kinds of things from the town/city (most likely) and you'll now be on the hook for the attractive nuisances. You will not get insured and you will hold all the liability. So unless you're poor (read: jugement proof) you literally can't afford this level of risk. Motronic fucked around with this message at 15:06 on Apr 10, 2024 |
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Apr 10, 2024 14:37
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 tell me that place is in Pennsyltucky without telling me that place is in Pennsyltucky.e: oh I see it's in northeast PA which is technically not Pennsyltucky Proper which is like everything west of Harrisburg. e2: couldn't you have simply refused to inherit it and let it become the municipality's/county's problem? Eric the Mauve fucked around with this message at 15:05 on Apr 10, 2024 |
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Apr 10, 2024 15:03
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Eric the Mauve posted:"Roughly $15K total" is going to turn out to be $25K minimum. I wouldn't necessarily just walk, but I'd demand at least a $15K discount and if the seller won't meet it, then walk. Thanks. Why do you say the 15k will turn into 20?
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Apr 10, 2024 15:04
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Thanks. Why do you say the 15k will turn into 20? the next home improvement project that comes in at budget will be the first
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Apr 10, 2024 15:07
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Thanks. Why do you say the 15k will turn into 20? Fifteen thousand dollars? Who said this was only going to cost twenty thousand dollars? I'm really giving you a deal by charging twenty five thousand but you're gonna have to do the cleanup. <submits invoice for $30k>
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Apr 10, 2024 15:07
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Any work on a slab foundation runs the risk of costing more than anticipated.
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Apr 10, 2024 15:17
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Eric the Mauve posted:Or not. Depends how much you're actually willing to spend. But you should extensively do your homework before you reopen negotiations, and know exactly where your Walk Line is drawn. This is great advice Jenkl posted:Yeah every property is good at the right price. FWIW, I did piers and crack fixing and it's pretty quick and unobtrusive. Putting in a whole french drain can be a little more work but as far as "interfere with your life" this stuff is reasonably easy to work around.
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Apr 10, 2024 15:20
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Thanks. Why do you say the 15k will turn into 20? Get multiple quotes, ask them to itemize the expenses. There might be some overrun if something weird gets discovered, but that will at least give you a solid idea. It's easy to get doomer about how this is going to happen: Motronic posted:Fifteen thousand dollars? Who said this was only going to cost twenty thousand dollars? I'm really giving you a deal by charging twenty five thousand but you're gonna have to do the cleanup. but that's not the norm. Cost overruns? Unexpectedly finding another problem that needs to be addressed? Yeah.
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Apr 10, 2024 15:21
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It is absolutely the norm for the end cost of any major repair/upgrade project to be way more than the estimate. You might be running hot at the card game of life friend. Good advice though, definitely get multiple itemized quotes.
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Apr 10, 2024 15:38
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Eric the Mauve posted:It is absolutely the norm for the end cost of any major repair/upgrade project to be way more than the estimate. You might be running hot at the card game of life friend. Good advice though, definitely get multiple itemized quotes. Over? Yes. Double based on nothing more than "lol that wasn't my quote" isn't the norm.
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Apr 10, 2024 15:49
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I think that was a little tongue-in-cheek on Mo's part, but anyway, contractors being shysters is certainly not unheard of but the bigger factor is just that it always turns out more work is necessary than originally thought once you start ripping poo poo up. If the estimate is $15K absolutely be prepared to spend $25K. At least.
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Apr 10, 2024 16:02
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Eric the Mauve posted:I think that was a little tongue-in-cheek on Mo's part, but anyway, contractors being shysters is certainly not unheard of but the bigger factor is just that it always turns out more work is necessary than originally thought once you start ripping poo poo up. If the estimate is $15K absolutely be prepared to spend $25K. At least. It was. But perhaps not out of the question for slab foundation repair. There are a lot of jobs where you can't know the full scope of what needs doing until you get into it. That is one of them.
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Apr 10, 2024 16:09
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Yeah, the problem is that whatever is causing the cracking and settling issue at that corner is hidden by the slab foundation. Experienced local foundation repair contractors can make an educated guess at what the root cause is based on their knowledge of the local geography and typical construction techniques used in the area, but there is still a lot of opportunity for unexpected surprises. Estimates are much more accurate with pier and beam or other type of foundations where you can actually get underneath it to better see what's going on. Shifty Pony fucked around with this message at 16:38 on Apr 10, 2024 |
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Apr 10, 2024 16:32
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I get that it was tongue in cheek, I just push back on it a bit because this thread, of all the homeowner adjacent threads on the forums, is rather prone to doom posting. edit: Which is all to say it's a problem, and you need multiple quotes to figure out what the basic scope of repairs is and how much you should discount the house price, but it's not also inevitably a run screaming from the deal kind of a problem. A lot is going to depend on the specifics of the situation. Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 16:53 on Apr 10, 2024 |
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Apr 10, 2024 16:50
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Any thoughts or advice suggested? We're still in our due diligence period, so could walk. I'm just nervous about dumping a bunch of money renovating a house if it's going to, you know, sink into the swamp on me. Get more quotes or preferably try and speak with an engineer and not just a sales guy from a foundation repair company. A bunch of morons on SA aren't going to be able to give you info helpful to your situation sight unseen, unfortunately. Get 3 quotes and pick the brains of the people giving you the quotes to get more info (how urgently you need to fix this, how long they think it has been in that state, etc). My completely anecdotal $.02 is that I had a similar issue with the house I bought, goons told me to run, sellers ended up 100% funding the foundation repairs and interior perimeter drain install. Work was done shortly after I closed. Four years later and there has never been a single drop of water in my sump pit because the water intrusion was all caused by a disconnected downspout.
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Apr 10, 2024 16:58
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There are no amount of quotes that can guarantee an accurate price for this repair. Price discovery requires literal excavation in this case. This is fine if you have a deal and risk tolerance compatible with this unknown.
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Apr 10, 2024 16:58
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Cyrano4747 posted:None of that seems like a deal breaker to be frank, unless it's a rapidly evolving problem. Like, has this crack appeared a week ago and it's progressing daily, or is this something the PO lived with for the last decade and a half? It could be this Motronic posted:There are no amount of quotes that can guarantee an accurate price for this repair. Price discovery requires literal excavation in this case. It could also be this. Your house might be sitting on the edge of a sinkhole and it's days away from caving in taking you and everything you own with it    I don't know poo poo about foundations in that part of the world but I'd be inclined to think it's probably pretty stable and you can save up to fix the issue in a couple of years, but I really have no idea good luck
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Apr 10, 2024 17:14
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Cyrano4747 posted:I get that it was tongue in cheek, I just push back on it a bit because this thread, of all the homeowner adjacent threads on the forums, is rather prone to doom posting. This is because, in my extremely humble opinion, home purchasing is one of the human endeavors where Experience and Cynicism are most nearly synonymous.
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Apr 10, 2024 17:19
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Thanks all. I spoke with the guy who wrote up the estimate. Most of the house is on pier and beam in a crawlspace but the garage is a slab. He was out at the house about five years ago for a sagging floor and that was repaired but not by his company; his system doesn't have any notes in his prior visit about these problems so they may be relatively new. There has been some new construction uphill from the house that might have altered water patterns though that's my own speculation. My plan seems to be, yeah, ask the seller to cover these repairs, see what they say (ask for cost, or ask for the repairs performed?). I suppose also ask for due diligence to be extended so we can get additional estimates, or ask seller to get estimates if they want. We do have a certain amount of repair tolerance here but yknow five grand here, ten there, pretty soon you're talking real money. Hadlock posted:. Insh'allah Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 18:18 on Apr 10, 2024 |
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Apr 10, 2024 17:59
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Another thing that can drive an estimate up is your contractor gets part way through the work and then says "you know, there's this other thing? Not directly in the path of us doing this repair, but you may want to fix or upgrade it eventually, and it'll be 20% less costly to do it now, while we have this poo poo open, then to come back later and open things up to do it later. So do you want to do it now? And because you are good with money you say yes. So you spend more, not specifically on fixing this one issue, but to kill several birds with one stone. And that's how my mother in law's ruined kitchen from a water leak in her condo expanded to a $68k renovation of her whole condo including floors throughout, new bathroom, skim coat all interior walls to get a smooth rather than textured surface, new ceiling lights throughout, frame in the patio slider, fix the hosed up entryway closet, install a new thermostat and new doorbell, replace the master bedroom closet doors and install shelving in the weird nook in there, seal a leaky window, and help her move her stuff. The original cost was gonna be about $28k for the kitchen, but you know, do you want a weird transition from the new kitchen floor to your old lovely carpet? No? Should we continue the new flooring into the bathroom? If yes, we'll need to take the toilet out anyway, and ideally this lovely cabinet too, and do you want us to seal against the old cast iron tub that has chips in the porcelain and leaks onto the floor, that leak is gonna ruin your new flooring eventually, surely the new tub needs new tile above it to look nice, you know the resale value for an updated condo is better with smooth walls and we're opening the ceiling to do your lighting anyway so why not spend an extra $6k to have the walls done, this transition where the walls meet the patio slider is always going to crack because of the aluminum frame, it just goes on and on if you let it I think she increased the value of her condo by nearly that $68k but that was a lot of money for her that she hadn't planned to spend at all A $15k foundation repair at the corner of the garage probably won't turn into a new kitchen, but like, it could expand in a similar manner having to do with aspects of the garage, maybe a nearby sewer line, maybe the brickwork, etc?
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Apr 10, 2024 18:52
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While we've got your garage down to the studs here, let's just go ahead and put in that 240v 50A drop for electric car charging While we're doing that let's put in the rooftop solar grid tie While we're doing that let's put in solar How can you put in solar and no battery? If you're getting an electric car get two batteries Now you need more solar to charge the second battery While you're up there do a new roof
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Apr 10, 2024 18:56
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Oh wait this is only 100 amps we need to drop a new service entrance and panel up in here.
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Apr 10, 2024 18:57
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Ngl your mother in laws place sounds pretty sweet now
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Apr 10, 2024 18:58
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it's 525 square feet it is actually a pretty nice condo for one person to live in, in Santa Rosa, but she has revealed herself to be an insane nitpicker and it'd driving me and my wife nuts she's like, furious about every tiny flaw, and thinks she got screwed by the contractor who has actually gone out of his way to make things OK in fairness they also put a small scratch into the new floor and haven't fixed that, and the shower door thing they installed on the tub just doesn't really fit perfectly (because the walls aren't plumb) but he also did the work on her closet and the new framing around the patio slider after being paid the $68k in full and without charging more, just because he wants his clients to be happy I think he's figured out at this point though that she's going to keep finding tiny details to be mad about forever and has stopped showing up lol we were there on sunday and where the skimcoat meets one window they didn't go back with a scraper to take away the excess and she was like "this is awful" and I poked at it with my finger and snapped off a bit of the excess and was like "this is fixed with two minutes with a stanley knife do you want me to do that now" and she was instantly mollified similarly, the diswasher is supposed to be hooked up to the cold water line but they attached it to the hot, so she hasn't used it at all, which is fine because she is not even really using her kitchen? She just uses the microwave and apparently does not know how to cook, and has one plate one bowl and one set of silverware, but anyway I doubt being attached to the hot is going to ruin the dishwasher but I'll switch it over next time I'm over there if we can find the main shutoff, but I'm like, why were you so picky about the stove and the hood and the fridge etc. if you don't even cook and apparently it's all about how the kitchen looks she has not had anyone over in years and has no friends, who even is looking at her kitchen? Us, her, the contractor, that's it. OK? Anyway that's her issue, not the contractor's or a general problem, but it does kinda speak to how things can go I guess. Some people just want what they want and can't explain why, and this can cost gobs of money e. god she doesn't even want things out on the counter, like she put her new toaster oven into a cabinet and puts her roll of paper towels under the sink, because the kitchen needs to look empty apparently? This is the Correct Look. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 19:06 on Apr 10, 2024 |
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Apr 10, 2024 18:59
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Hadlock posted:While we've got your garage down to the studs here, let's just go ahead and put in that 240v 50A drop for electric car charging If you give a contractor a cookie, he's going to want a glass of milk from a new kitchen.
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Apr 10, 2024 19:14
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"We should remove this old utility sink" became "New Bathroom with a steam shower" so gradually I didn't even notice it.
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Apr 10, 2024 19:42
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wrong thread
phosdex fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Apr 11, 2024 |
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Apr 11, 2024 19:35
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Our escrow officer suddenly no longer works at the company on closing day and no one at their office knows what is going on. This entire industry has been a loving clown show from top to bottom.
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Apr 12, 2024 18:30
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