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PuTTY riot posted:Yeah. if you don't do it first thing you never will. That's not true. I effectively removed that sort of ceiling in my parents' house when I painted my room as a teenager. Use a thick enough coat of latex and that stuff takes itself right off. PuTTY riot posted:it's an incredibly messy process too. This part, though, is VERY true. Antifreeze Head fucked around with this message at 17:50 on Sep 4, 2014 |
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Sep 4, 2014 17:47
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Depending who you are/what you look like, you might find it easier to view homes with the assistance of a Realtor since they get access to keys way easier than you would. Without that, you're left with seeing only open houses, banging on doors to see if the seller might let you in to look or waiting around for the selling agents. Not impossible, but I could see that dragging things out.
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Sep 9, 2014 14:22
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Jastiger posted:On top of that we have to sell our electric dryer and get a gas. Another expense. Yes. I get that gas dryers costs less to operate in the long run, but have to? Worst case scenario is like 50 bucks in materials from Home Depot and a couple hours of work to wire up the dryer you already own.
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Sep 16, 2014 06:01
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Jastiger posted:Both of these things are true. The breaker box is totally maxed out and it'd require another box. The wiring isn't TERRIBLY far away, but...at this point the costs may be just breaking even. Presumably you'd get at least half way home by swapping out the breaker dedicated (I hope) to the existing gas dryer hookup. If there really isn't any more space, you'd have to start looking for another one to reclaim, but maybe tracing all of your wiring doesn't sound quite as appealing as it does to me.
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Sep 16, 2014 13:53
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Jastiger posted:We're looking at having someone come estimate how much it would cost. I've done a little research and its possible to add a dual breaker to one and have it dedicated to the dryer. It'd be a few hundred likely, and that may be the way to go. Otherwise its new panel and everything which is closer to a grand from what I'm reading. Just don't buy a new dryer until you are in the place and can post pics of the area where you want the dryer and of the panel. You can probably get this done without bringing anyone in for a cost of, like I say, 50 bucks and a couple hours of your time. Depending on when your house was built, it may even already have the electric hookup there as sometimes both are installed because the builder just finds it easier that way.
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Sep 16, 2014 15:57
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Most washers are a regular 120v 3 prong plug and dryers want 240v with a 4 prong plug. I am interested in the results of someone trying to make the dryer work off the washer's power supply, but wouldn't recommend you try it. Running the wire probably isn't that big of a problem - someone ran it once, you just have to run the new line in that same spot. Since it is in the basement, you probably have reasonable access to the line for most of its run. That said, you almost certainly cannot use the existing line, the wires in it will be too thin. You may want to run it all by the stickied electrical thread in DIY, they will have more to say once you get pics.
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Sep 16, 2014 16:33
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PDP-1 posted:I'll move in with a sledgehammer in tow and try to de-uglify it over the next few years. I'm less than half way though the house and have barely touched the yard, but shipped out 11,000 pounds of garbage in my first month. Have fun!
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Sep 23, 2014 13:20
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QuarkJets posted:Most people at age 26 do not own a home. Most people at age 26 aren't even close to buying a home. According to the Census, the percentage of people aged 25-29 owning a home has never exceeded 41% (in 2006), and has been steadily declining since then. Further to this, the median age in the U.S. for people to buy their first house has hovered from 30-32 for the past few decades. The National Realty Association had this to say about their 2013 edition of an annual survey: "The median age of first-time buyers was 31, unchanged from 2012, and the median income was $67,400. The typical first-time buyer purchased a 1,670 square-foot home costing $170,000..." The 2014 version should be out in a little more than a month, it will probably have a similar finding. That said, Dilbert's estimate for the cost of a first house seems ambitiously low for a lot of markets. Perhaps he is in a market with cheap housing so there are more younger than the median people buying. Or maybe he's going to park his Bimmer in front of a crack den.
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Sep 29, 2014 15:26
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always be closing posted:I'm a homeowner! Closed at 11:30 today, went to the house, and peeled every piece of wallpaper off, felt amazing. Hoping to have all the painting done within the next month, get the floors refinished then move in! The house I bought had towels on the wall. 
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Oct 1, 2014 13:50
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Wozbo posted:Dear housing thread: I need me some advice. I enjoy the Radiolab, This American Life and 99% Invisible podcasts. I'm sure they will help pass some of that time on your (hopefully soon to be) much longer drive to work. And enjoy your early retirement.
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Oct 11, 2014 15:08
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If you don't like paying a heap of money for a buyer's agent to do little more than unlock a single door, have them unlock many doors. I maximized whatever commission I was paying by looking at a bunch of homes over a period of about nine months. I'd say I was easily in 75 homes during that time. I had no intention on writing an offer on a vast majority of them, often I just wanted to have a better look at some interesting structural thing. If I did find something acceptable, I'd have the agent write up a low offer and run around doing whatever to try to make that work. If the offer was rejected, I didn't care. Eventually one would be (and was) accepted. So if you want to see things change to an hourly system, incentivize your agents to lobby their organization for it because it sure won't change if left to the status quo.
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Oct 16, 2014 15:10
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Bloody Queef posted:But I value my time. Your scheme wasted a shitload of yours. It's not about the time the buyer's agent spends on you it's the value they add. Which in your case was still basically zero. I didn't waste time, there was still something in the house I was looking at I wanted to see, I just didn't want to buy it. But if I said "I want to check out that brick work because it is something I'd like to port into my house, come waste your time with me" or "I want a closer look at the outright mess this person made of a renovation" nobody would do it.
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Oct 16, 2014 15:41
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Inverse Icarus posted:gently caress wood paneling. Don't cheap out on those things. I have one that was bent almost straight from something that I didn't consider terribly heavy use.
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Oct 17, 2014 18:51
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Guacala posted:Doesn't a lead based paint disclosure form need to be filled out on all homes built prior to 1978? I think I remember seeing if you had documents that showcased LBP in the home, you also had to furnish them. I may be wrong. I misread that as the sellers had to furnish the home if it had lead based paint. That struck me as a strange concession, "honey, little Molly isn't acting quite right after eating all those paint chips, but this dining set is just exquisite."
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Oct 23, 2014 18:26
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Some of you are treating lead paint, asbestos and now apparently knob and tube like they'll kill you dead if you look at them wrong. You already have both asbestos and lead in your body and you and many people you know have been inside buildings with knob and tube and have lived to tell the tale. You won't get mesothelioma from removing the asbestos wrap around your pipes and you won't suffer from seizures if you sand down your windowsill. Make a dedicated point not to eat the dust created, clean up afterward and there is no danger at all. Knob and tube can be disabled by anyone with the skills necessary to turn off a light switch and operate a screwdriver. Running replacements is finicky if you want to go through the walls, but if you have managed to hold down a job that pays well enough for you to save up and buy a house, I promise you that you have all the mental power necessary to replace the wiring. poo poo, even if you're really stupid and equally ham-fisted, you could just run surface conduit everywhere.
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Oct 23, 2014 19:44
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Alas Boobylon posted:REALTOR While the other bits are educated guesses, this is truly stupid. There isn't anywhere that ins't an inflation hell-hole that sees the same house increase to 236% of its value in 10 months. Or if you do happen to be in one of those special places, leave. If it passes whatever tests to have in store for it, your approach for the initial offer doesn't change from what you planned on doing in the first place. That's what comparable homes are worth, so that is what that one is worth.
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Oct 28, 2014 14:28
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Jastiger posted:But check for wall paper. There was not one, not two, not three, but FOUR LAYERS of wallpaper along one entire wall. The previous owners must have seen the first two, gave up on taking it down and put up their own over it. Took us 4 hours to get all of it down. gently caress. That. My previous owner likes the look of textured plaster, so he covered two floor's worth of walls in drywall mud that he made customs swooshes in. He then painted it pink and nailed towels over top of all that. And that's just the walls, on the ceilings he nailed silk flowers and beer mats.  So, you know, four layers of wall paper isn't that bad.
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Nov 1, 2014 17:21
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MickeyFinn posted:That is the most Oh... there was lot of feces too, you just can't see it. The guy had a real mouse problem... which wasn't helped any by the next door neighbour's wife being a hoarder. They've all been eliminated though. If it wasn't apparent, the guy that owned it before was mentally unwell so the sale was handled through the public trustee. They pretty much only sell as-is-where-is, but the upside is that I got a good deal on it as I paid below it's tax-assessed value. Based on what other stuff in the neighbourhood is selling for, every dollar I sink in is worth about two for resale, though that is really only true because I do my own work. MORE PICTURES! What I assume to be the kitchen:  At least I'm putting the kitchen there. I've eliminated that wall where the mirror is and have installed a door at the very back. The new door exits to the back yard, which used to look like this:  That's looking towards the house, though it may as well be taken in the middle of some forest. The lot is 155 feet long, so there are a lot of trees. I've spent much of the past couple of weeks clearing that all out. I think I cut down at least 25 trees. I left two apple trees and four apricot trees, because the jam made from the harvest of both of those was delicious. There was also this in the back yard:  In case you can't tell, that is art. It involves the skull of a horse. Apparently the artist that does that is quite famous in my city. I can only tell you that his works are a bit more scarce now because I dismantled whatever the hell is going on here. I will keep the skull though, because it is awesome. Here's what the yard looks like after most of my work:  I've since filled that with gravel for a park pad (with plans to build a garage later) and have Tyvexed around the door on the back of the house (the one to the right with the 9 lite window). The patio doors, as you can see, appear to open to nothing. There was a deck there, but it was wildly unsafe so I ripped it down. This is a view from those doors before the deck was ripped out:  As you might be able to see, the deck was made of OSB. That is not a good thing to make a deck out of. Sadly not shown is the foundation of that deck which was pretty much rotten wood and old carpet. Also of note is that where that window is there was once a door. I changed the window out. Also, I removed all of that "art". It was stuck to the wall with drywall mud. Back inside now for the bathroom:  The toilet worked but it was a very early priority to replace it. You can see more towels here, my grandma is washing them and giving them to my mom who is sewing them into blankets for the local dog rescue. And behind the towels here are a version of barn board, which didn't come from a barn but instead the guy's old fence. He just nailed them up to the wall then covered them in towels. Here's the loft:  I think this looks pretty much the same as it did when I got the place. I haven't been up there in basically the two months that I've owned the place. No, you cannot have the EARTH EARTH poster. Here is something I have worked on. Note both the knob and tube wiring and the asbestos wrap around the heating duct:  About 10 years ago some of the wiring in this place was updated, that is why there is Romex running up to the box. Now it is also Romex running from that box. The furnace was also upgraded about 10 years ago, though the guy that installed the new high-efficiency unit got lazy and didn't bother hooking up the ductwork that you can see in this photo. It runs to the master bedroom. Considering the place has sawdust insulation that largely has settled or entirely disappeared, the previous owner must have been freezing. I live in Winnipeg, so that combination of 20 dollars and an hour to connect that ductwork is probably the best I will ever spend to make my life better. So far I have shipped out just over 15-thousand pounds of trash (plaster is heavy) and spent maybe 12-thousand dollars. Windows are a healthy portion of that, same with a fridge and a new tub. Insulation is also a big portion of that as it basically has to go everywhere.
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Nov 2, 2014 01:06
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thing I have ever seen that didn't involve feces of some kind. Maybe someone can do better with their home purchase?
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Jastiger posted:I'm confused and maybe its because I"m a prude or whatever, but why in the world would you buy that? Why would you want to put that much effort into a house that is falling apart in a neighborhood of houses falling apart? What motivated you to get that instead of a modern home that needs fixing up? The bit about the hoarder wife next door may have unfairly coloured your view of the neighbourhood. While its high point was clearly from when it was built in the 1910s until probably sometime around the second world war, it hit a low and is now coming back. Like pretty much everywhere that isn't filled with honest to goodness mansions, neighbourhoods have ups and downs and this house is in a place moving out of a down. The neighbour with the hoarder wife divorced her and she moved out a few years ago, so now he's fixing up his place, across the back lane is a couple that is fixing up their place, two door down was redone within the past five or maybe 10 years, there is really quite a lot of work being done on a lot of homes in the area. And the house itself really isn't falling apart, everything that is weird about it is on top of something quite solid. The last guy, despite some design decisions that nobody else would agree with, did make some important upgrades. All the old galvanized plumbing was decommissioned ages ago so there's new copper, the foundation was shored up with a new interior wall, the old furnace was upgraded to high-efficiency and the fuse box was replaced with a 100 amp breaker box. That work was all done well, because he didn't do it. I know that because his ex-wife came by to steal some of the apples from my trees one day and we chatted for a while. She stayed involved in his life quite a bit after their separation and looked after some things like that for him. So really, it was actually farther ahead than some of the other homes of its vintage. And compared to them, there really isn't that much extra work that needed to be done here versus any other house that age that needed some modernization. I mean, if you're going to the extent of ripping down plaster and lath, it isn't that much worse when it is covered in another half inch of drywall mud and some towels. Plus, with it looking like the crazy bus pulling into town and never ever leaving, it allowed me to get the place for tens of thousands of dollars less than it would of had there not been towels on the wall and flowers on the ceiling.
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Nov 2, 2014 18:56
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Jastiger posted:I dunno. I'm spoiled maybe, but I like rooms more "open". I don't like the rooms tiny. I'm no fan of tiny rooms either, but it is no great trick to make rooms bigger. Load bearing walls limit that somewhat, but big rear end lintels can make things appear quite open. You might lose a room, but those around it get larger. Bloody Queef posted:What's up with the aversion to older homes? Once the plumbing, electric and HVAC are updated (as the previous poster's was) The no longer have the downsides you listed. Particular to some regions, the thickness of the walls is also a concern because it impacts the R value of the insulation that you can cram into the walls. Older homes where I am have four inch walls (R12 with regular fibreglass) while newer ones have six inch walls (R20). The old insulation also prevented electrical from running through the walls as K&T gives off a lot of heat and can't be inside an insulated wall. That means rooms often have too few outlets for modern living. My work-around on that is to run new electrical lines through a three inch wall I built on the inside of the existing exterior walls. That's a win-win as my 24 foot long living/dining room now has 10 outlets instead of three and R22-ish instead of R10. Same applies to windows. Generally people here won't remove fancy leaded glass, but triple pane vinyl gets popped in ASAP to replace old wooden double (sometimes single) pane. It's also handy to do as building codes of old don't have the same standards for framing in a windows and doors, so while they're pretty stable, reframing them is a good idea just to keep the load off the window frame.
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Nov 3, 2014 05:17
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Where do you live that Dollar Tree is open at 3 AM?
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Nov 4, 2014 15:15
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Sometimes those things happen and a speculator buys the property and just lets the house rot so it's destruction will be ordered anyway. In that way it is easily circumvented and I don't know why she (or anyone) would do something like that because it basically means the house will be a blight on the neighbourhood for the next 30 years.
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Nov 15, 2014 23:56
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slap me silly posted:Here: http://www.mtgprofessor.com/CalculatorArticles/Refinance%20Calculators.html The Bitcoin thread made me believe this was a financial advice website that had its origins as a place to learn how to build a totally sweet Magic deck.
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Dec 12, 2014 22:11
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Because the assessed value is almost certainly lower than the actual selling price of a house, it can be handy to know if you are getting a deal. You can also sort of use it as a predictive indicator of what a house in a certain area will be worth. And if you get something below assessed value, you've done well. At least you've done well if you are looking for a fixer-upper as there will almost certainly be something very wrong with the house if it can be bought for less than assessed. Though you should be careful on that too, as occasionally agents of marginal homes will price them in the neighbourhood of their assessed price to start a bidding war.
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Dec 16, 2014 15:55
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baquerd posted:Where the heck did you find a rate that low? Canada maybe. We're hovering from 3.19% to 3.29% at our major banks and they will occasionally try to get you in the door with slightly lower rates. I got 2.99% back in August.
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Dec 23, 2014 15:49
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EC posted:Can y'all offer any advice? If you are religious, you might want to pray for a fire, but based on what you have said, it doesn't sound like you have all that much more to spend to get back to liveable. If the new joists, subfloor and sprayfoam is all in place, that's like 95% of the work done on the floor. Putting that laminate back might cost you the new foam underlay and some time, but presumably all the flooring is cut and just stacked up waiting to be put back? That would be a tremendous boost to the house if you wanted to sell it, and I really can't understand why you haven't done that already. The roof is certainly a bigger task, but the raw materials and a weekend of your time would cost you nowhere near the 15-thousnd quoted for the cheaper of the fixes. You can probably tarp it for the time being to keep it from getting any worse. Make a thread in the DIY/Hobbies subforum and people will have plenty to say if you need advice on what to do from there. There are a lot of things that can cause a tub to leak, would need more details on that to know if it is a mountain or a molehill. Don't count the hot water tank. They have a life span and yours was going to go eventually.
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Jan 28, 2015 18:57
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EC posted:The original flooring was trash. It was originally glued down and wasn't able to be saved at all. So that's brand new laminate we'd have to buy and install (around 1200 sq ft). We've very seriously considered buying the slightly more expensive snap-in kind and doing the install ourselves, but we're at the point where we don't think we'll be able to recoup any expenditure on the house, mainly because of there not being a kitchen and the roof being so bad. That's a crappy break, but laminate is super easy to install. You start to get decent looking laminates at ~$1.80 per square foot, so you'd be looking around $2600 with some surplus built in to get that done. That's if you want to stay. If you just want to have something there so the place doesn't look quite as much like a construction zone to help it sell*, you can probably get closer to a dollar per square foot. Watch for Home Depot and the like to have a "special flooring event." The regular stock won't be on a great sale, but it usually means they're bringing in an end of run of something and you can get a great deal on stuff. I got stuff that would have been about $2.60 per square foot for $1.29. Sometimes they'll have a real bargain brand come in at about $0.80/sq ft. The only real catch is there won't ever be any more of it, so buy extra for repairs if you are planning to stick around. EC posted:What kind of lawyer would I talk to? I'm not even sure what to look up in the phone book for stuff like this. Just call a non-criminal lawyer at a big firm. If it is in their wheelhouse, they'll help you. If not, they will refer you to someone at their firm. * depending who you plan on selling to. If you just want to sell it off to someone who will finish fixing it, there is no point in this. You know this already, but you will lose so much money doing this. Consider what your monthly rent+debt service payments will be against the $700-ish you are paying in mortgage+property taxes. As much as you hate it, you may be better sticking it out. You will have to DIY some of this though, your past failures don't matter much. Just be willing to take your time, RTFM and ask questions/listen to the subsequent advice. EDIT: as for the lawn, if you can have horses, you can have a goat. Get one in the spring, let it eat the grass then eat it in the fall. Or just let some of those two acres go to fallow. Antifreeze Head fucked around with this message at 20:11 on Jan 28, 2015 |
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Jan 28, 2015 20:08
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EC posted:This is all good advice. The thing is, if we're going to stay at the place, I don't want to put the cheapest flooring I can find in. I'd rather wait and spend a little bit more for something that will hold up and look good. So if I'm staying, I'll just wait till I can afford good flooring. If we leave, it doesn't really make sense to do anything, since whoever will buy will either (a) buy the cheapest thing so they can flip it or (b) but whatever they specifically like. Keep in mind that it isn't just flooring. We also need to repaint, redo the bottom molding, etc. Each room will be quite a bit of work. Oh, I am quite familiar with the work required to get a home into liveable shape. Have a look at mine. You are probably doing better than me since I have a toaster oven, rice cooker and a camp stove as my "kitchen". They sit on assorted end tables in a spare bedroom. I like to think I'm living like a pioneer or something... in a real lovely place ahead of something much better.
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Jan 29, 2015 15:53
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LemonDrizzle posted:I cannot for the life of me understand why anyone would reject a house on the grounds of its interior decor given that it's not especially hard, expensive, or time-consuming to redo. Worry about the things you can't easily change/fix like size, layout, structural integrity, and location. I'll give a pass to the people who don't want to deal with textured plaster walls like this:  Committing to getting rid of that requires a lot of sanding (terrible idea), removing all the plaster and lath (best option) or maybe if you are lucky you can just drywall over top if it is smooth enough (can be complicated for switches and outlets).
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Feb 4, 2015 20:40
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Sound_man posted:I got my home inspection done today, everything looks ok. The hot and cold water are switched in the master tub but that it not too big of a deal. Wash whatever you can with TSP according to whatever instructions it has on the box. Use Kilz primer when repainting surfaces. Get a proper carpet cleaning if there are any and get the ducts cleaned just like you would if you were moving into a home not previously occupied by a smoker. As a related side note, I always find it totally stupid when real estate listings try to claim a home built in the 1920s never had any smokers in it.
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Apr 1, 2015 18:47
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Hashtag Banterzone posted:Depending on the age of your house, you might want to test the popcorn for asbestos before you start. Scrape, shovel and shut up. There is not enough asbestos in a popcorn ceiling of a residential home to cause anyone any long lasting harm.
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Apr 2, 2015 18:10
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adorai posted:While i agree with your sentiment, you probably don't want to actually advise anyone of this. Everything has a risk and the risk of mesothelioma is extremely low by a one time removal of a 2% asbestos popcorn ceiling. I can't be 100% certain that someone won't get that one necessary fibre to get mesothelioma anymore than I can be 100% certain the person won't get into a fatal car crash on the way to Home Depot to buy the $40 mask that drops the risk from almost zero to even closer to zero. Knowledge of that risk won't tell me to stop someone from driving to Home Depot anymore than it will stop my from telling someone to just scrape the finish off the ceiling and move on with their life.
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Apr 4, 2015 17:53
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Jealous Cow posted:The gutters on my house are in in poor condition. They were installed with spikes only and were probably never cleaned by the prior owner, so they are pulling away, bowing down, and the spikes are coming out. At that price, you are almost to the point of being able to DIY brand new gutters for your whole house.
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Apr 8, 2015 19:56
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I feel it is important to note that anyone who is not a fan of what their HOA is doing is free to run to replace those members who do not represent their views. Often, the document that governs the board of an HOA will have within it the ways and means to have a election meeting outside of the regular annual general meeting cycle that will let you depose of those without waiting for the election to cycle back around again. Naturally this will require more than just you, but presumably anyone who has such an ax to grind and could rally support from other neighbours. If you don't, then your opinion on those matters must be in the minority, so too bad for you. Naturally it will also require a lot of time, but presumably anyone who moved into a HOA community should recognize that the legislative fight against tin pot dictators is part of the maintenance requirement for such a property. The HOA constitution and Robert's Rules of Order are probably good adds to a summer reading list for someone who actually finds themselves in a position where permission is needed to have the parents and the in-laws over for a BBQ.
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Jun 19, 2015 17:55
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Aggro posted:I posted about my garage floor earlier but provided lovely details. We finally have our keys, so I went to check it out and get a better description. It looks like that once upon a time, there was a thin layer of concrete over a dirt base. That was long ago, since it's now mostly dirt with patches of concrete. If you can read and use scissors, you can install laminate flooring. You will also have to do a bit of cutting with something more serious than scissors at some point, so you will need a mitre or table saw. You can rent a laminate flooring cutter, but if you own a house, you should have a mitre and/or table saw anyway. It is hard to get some sense of scale from your picture, the pavement there looks like it is considerably less than an inch thick. If that is the case, you are basically throwing good money away on patching it or whatever. But if you are basically parking on a dirt floor (I assume the walls have some sort of better foundation or the whole thing probably would have fallen over by now) you can take a half measure and dig out the strips where the wheels go, put down some gravel then lay concrete blocks. That's still going to be like $400 plus a couple weekends devoted to the project. You could pour the strips as you are right, concrete is easy enough to work with. The real trick with it is getting enough to get the job done. Those bags at Home Depot are deceptive in their low cost and high weight. It seems like it will only take a few or so to get the job done - what a deal! Then you do the math and you need like 60 of them. And while it is still cheaper, it suddenly is a whole assload of work to mix all of that, especially if you are trying to cut costs and plan to do it in a wheelbarrow.
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Jun 26, 2015 12:13
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Everyone is always better for owning more power tools. Seriously though, they are $100 and stuff will come up at a house that even a non-DIY person will find it pays for itself in saved labour costs after the first project, even a minor one like laminate flooring. Or at least make friends with/give birth to someone who would own such a thing for when those instances come up.
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Jun 26, 2015 13:46
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Spermy Smurf posted:Holy poo poo this is the dumbest thing I've heard in a while. Three wires, unless you live somewhere without the benefit grounded electrical outlets. And I realize that you are being sarcastic, but yeah, if you have bare studs (or a passion for surface conduit) and the time, you should wire your own house. Unless the potential homeowner is disabled or enfeebled, they absolutely can figure out wiring if they A) can operate a screwdriver; and B) take the time to read the directions. It is the "B" that so many people skip out and that is what creates the mess of problems that you see on a lot of home renovation shows. Granted there are a few somewhat specialized tools that lack the overall utility of a mitre saw that someone may not want to buy for a one off wiring job.
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Jun 26, 2015 15:47
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Citizen Tayne posted:Maybe. Either way I'll pay a flooring company and they'll do a better job than I will. You vastly overestimate the difficulty of laminate flooring. It is just slightly more complicated than Lego.
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Jun 26, 2015 16:38
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Leperflesh posted:If you don't change your own oil, car ownership isn't for you. Car analogies never made anything better. Obviously my view is different. From my perspective, a person has to, as a home owner, be willing to tackle a project because it isn't unthinkable to suggest that the cash won't always be there to hire someone. Unemployment can happen. That is obviously a tough time and nobody should be laying down new flooring when they don't have an income but that doesn't mean stuff can't break. The fence can fall down, a pipe might leak, the eaves can let go and dangle from the house. At some point, the homeowner will either have to take it upon him or herself to get the work done, or just not do it. If someone isn't prepared to do something as simple as laminate flooring in the best of times, it bodes very poorly for the chance of anything positive happening in the worst of times. And not even in just the worst of times, the entire flipping industry is supported by the ready availability of dilapidated homes that were previously inhabited by people on a fixed income in their 70's, 80's and 90's. I wouldn't ever suggest that someone like my 88 year old grandma should be redoing duct work, and I also wouldn't ever suggest that she own a home. So yes, for anyone who could suddenly find themselves without an income, or with an income that sees them just getting by, consider very strongly not owning a house if you aren't willing yourself to do what is necessary to fix it. Owning a house doesn't mean anything if you are going to be complacent as it rots out around you.
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Jun 26, 2015 20:34
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 04:50 |
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Make sure the nice young men you hire are professional enough to install a moisture barrier if you don't already have one.
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Jun 26, 2015 21:07
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