You gotta be kidding

We took possession of a house late Friday morning. I started tearing out the flooring that afternoon.

The pad under the carpet must have been a quality item. 4 foot wide pieces 12 foot long must have weighed over 70 pounds.

With the carpet gone I could see that at some time the owner of the house had put stick down tile on the floors of the entire house. 

I removed all of the interior doors and we are ready for new ones as soon as the walls are all painted and new floors are in.

There was a broken storm door on the back of the garage. The front door needs to be replaced. When there is duct tape on the door to try to hold out the cold air, you know the door is past its useful days. I took the good storm door from the front and installed it on the garage. This morning I thought , "boy I did not get much done on that house this week". Then I realized I had only worked on it Friday afternoon and 5 hours on Saturday. We close on another house on the 28th and it is first on our list to get ready to rent. This house needs new shingles and that is the priority for next week.

I thought the electric was turned off at the house. As you can see above it needs a new breaker box to replace this mess. Rich stopped by earlier last week to look at what it needed before we had the keys and he told me the current was on in the house. On Friday I was able to get most of the outlets working and 2 light fixtures. At least it allows us to use power tools until Rich gets the new box in. I am sort of amazed the house has not burned in an electrical fire from the workmanship I am seeing.

 

This is the wiring that runs to the air conditioner. I am not sure why they made those lovely connections right there, sort of in the fuse box, when the wires from the AC look long enough to reach the fuse screws without the splices. Maybe they were looking to make a sale of the house to the insurance company.

I also started finding when they wired lights in the basement the wiring was extension cord wire. I do not know if that is cheaper than Romax but I do know it is a fire hazard and not code.

That is not an acceptable short cut under and circumstances.

Then there are connections like this. Just a bunch of wires spliced in the open with out wire nuts or even electrical tape. Live wires sticking out from the joists. That could be a shocking experience if you were to reach up there in the dark.

And then the dryer cord. First of all that wire is not rated for a dryer, second you can't just have 6 foot of loose wire with a box on the end.

I saw an extension cord running across the garage ceiling and I wondered what they had it there for. 

Well it went to this fancy cord. Love that spliced wire running through the wall that could be plugged into the extension cord. But being inquisitive I wondered where does that light weight cord run to.

Well lookee there. There was once an outside light between the garage doors. You just had to plug it in to make the light come on. So much easier than mounting a switch in a box, I guess.

I walked past the furnace and thought I would see how bad the filter looked. Uh Oh, no filter. I opened the doors on the furnace and found that the missing filter was the least of our problems. The furnace fan was missing also. We had $3000 in the budget for Furnace and AC repair. This will have to be the only repair we need to make that line item stay in budget

There is an egress window to a bedroom in the basement. A grate is over the top of the window well. I saw there was a chain and a padlock on one side of the grate. OK, not real smart, but I suppose you could tip the grate over and still get out if there was a fire.

Um, no. A chain and pad lock on the other side also. This kinda defeats the purpose of an egress window. If you padlock a grate over the window well it is no longer an egress.

When we did the walk through to estimate costs I did not climb on the roof. I knew the north side needed shingles as it was leaking and there were ripped up tarps on the roof. I did climb in the attic and could see the sheeting was still in excellent shape. When I climbed on the roof to measure the north side for shingles, low and behold what did I see? Some moron had nailed tarps on the south side over the new shingles. The tarps had blown off so it could not be seen from the ground there were slats nailed through the new shingles. Now we have to reshingle the south side as well because the new shingles will have nail holes when we pull off the slats.

A storm came through while the house was for sale and broke out the front picture window. It was a good idea to cover the broken window with plywood on the outside. But why, oh why did they screw a 4x8 sheet of OSB board to the window trim in the inside of the house as well. I am still wondering why the 2 short pieces of deck board were screwed above the OSB Board.

Look inside board gone and window is still sealed shut.

You know they do sell shorter screws. You don't have to run them clear through with a sharp point sticking out. That is especially true on a hand rail.

I was not planning on replacing all the windows until I got a close look at them. The outside wood was clad in aluminum. Yea, I know every one thinks that is a great idea. Never have to paint again right? It may be a good idea if you keep the moisture from getting behind the metal. Yea, this crew didn't.

I started pulling all the metal off and I will need to cut out a couple of the sills and replace them. 

Usually aluminum pulls off around the windows quickly and with ease. Oh not here. They had covered the windows with plastic at some time to keep the windows from leaking air. They used a nail gun to nail the slats holding the plastic. They nailed it every half inch. The nails are close enough you can not get a pry bar or the claws of a hammer between them. It is going to take a long time to clean up around 11 windows. I have 3 done and 8 to go. Each one seems to get harder with more nails in the slats and through the aluminum. I must be working backwards of the direction they put the plastic up. More nails in every window as I go along.

There have bee a lot of "you have to be kidding me" moments the last 2 days as I went through this house. Some of them I knew before we purchased it, some are disappointing finds (after reworking the budget we are pretty close to where we started on costs which is a very good thing). I keep thinking "whatever possessed them to do that?"
Floor your entire house with stick down tile.
The electrical work, Come on, who wants to live everyday in a house that is a fire waiting to happen?
You took the fan out of the furnace? What was that about?
Locked a grate over an egress window? How could you ever live with yourself if someone was trapped in the basement and died in a fire?
Nailed a tarp over a new roof? Why? Just why?
Sharp screw ends on your hand rails? That is one way to punish guests.
And then the windows, oh so many bad ideas.

We are going to have to undo a lot of the previous owners work. The unsafe needs to be made safe. The repairs and fixes that were made which are causing the house to rot need to be repaired correctly. This was definitely a case of  owner done repairs where a contractor would have been a good idea. Someone who knew what they were doing. They may have saved money by doing the repairs themselves but lost a lot of money in the long run. The house sold for $45,000 less than the value should have been. Twice there was an accepted offer that fell through when an inspector walked through the house.

Shortcuts in life seldom work out well. Living for the pleasure of today costs in the long run. Do the right thing the first time. That is a lesson in life I need to keep learning, because it is too easy to take the easy road. That is a recipe for disaster later.