My nice little money pit

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DillonM

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Joined
Apr 26, 2021
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Location
Ohio
I don't expect anyone to read this but if your don't know about houses and want to buy a home you should. Or TLDR: DON'T TRUST JUST ONE INSPECTOR!!! AND DON"T START MORE THAN ONE PROJECT LMAO!!

Anyway, this is just my little rant/vent.

Bought it in 2018. House built in 1942, nice quiet street in Cleveland suburb. Cape cod 1 1/2 story with half finished basement and fully finished attic master bedroom. For starters when we found it on Zillow and before we closed on it we were told it was a brick house, but a ijust recenlty found out its actually half brick half wood. Okay i can live with that.

Took a while to find insurance to cover knob and tube wiring. Finally went with AGI underwritten by Progressive. 2 months after moving in we get a random letter in the mail saying progressive is dropping us because we "failed to adress the issue with your roof." Called them up and they said they sent someone out to take pictures and they noticed we had 3-4 layers on our roof and they wouldn't cover the cost of the tear down unless we addressed the issue. So we got a couple roofers out and had a loan the next day. We let progressive drop us and went with Farmers, much better price too.

So 2 months after moving in we have a new roof. About a year after moving in my partner decided he wanted a new fridge but a new fridge just wouldn't work in our tiny kitchen. Our oven was in a spot with a little nook with a slant in the ceiling, going up to an OPEN HOLE someone decided to knock into the chimney flue that my hot water heater is exhausting to from below. So i ripped apart half the kitchen, moved the gas line, with the stove to where the old fridge was, sealed the hole in the flue, and got a new bigger fridge. We have gypsum rocklath with the metal chicken wire, about 3/4"-1." when i removed the nook i noticed the ceiling starting to bow down so i had to remove the ceiling. WHen i got to the multi-layered ppaint cabingets, i had i suspicion. Went out and bought a lead test kit and lo-and-behold, we have led in all of our cabinets and food pantry.

While i'm doing the kitchen, i'm working full time, mind you, my partner decided that we had to have a room mate so we need to add a bedroom in the basement. ooookay hun. xD

i noticed the front door not shutting all the way in the bottom left corner. Went outside and noticed the front brick steps are collapsing causing the door to lean. I went into the basement and noticed white mold on the wood baseboards of the half finished basement. Also bubbling around the glass block windows. I literally pulled down the drywall with one hand. It was nailed to 1x3 furring strips with no insulation or vapor barrier. 1 nail held it into the ceiling above, the rest was wood glued to the cinder block wall. For the windows, they replaced the windows recently at one point, but they didn't fix the old crumbling mortar. they just slapped the drywall right on the slant to cover it up. They didn't tape or use any kind of corner beads whatsoever just that fiberous paintable wallpaper. The old mortar was black and crumbling, along with efflorescence. We called in some waterproofers and went with a pretty highly rated companny. They evaluated and recomended interior french drain, weep holes sump pump and i forget what kind of air cleaner. They came in and dug all four corners in 8 hours. Second day they laid the pipe and cement, sump and a drain out to my gutter drain, (still not sure if thats right lol)
They left their supplies in my driveway; 3- 12'x12' tarps, 200 feet waffle/dimple board and 30 ft corrugated pipe. I called them two weeks later and he says, "Our team is in quarentine, we were exposed to covid."

I call them back 2 more weeks, "the air cleaner is on back order it might take a few more weeks. "
I say, "okay, are you gonna pick up your stuff off my driveway anytime soon?"
"What stuff?" he asks.
"The tarps, pipes and waffle boards you left." i say.
"Oh ****, my guys said you wanted that stuff..." he says with all seriousness.
Whaaat the hell am i gonna do with 200 feet of dimple board???

Call back a few more weeks, "We're still waiting on it your first on the list."
I forgot asking about his crap. After i got off the phone i threw it all on my curb.


The wiring in the basement is all custom. I have 12-2 wires, connected in series to 14-2, soldered in some places with no wire nuts, no tape, no box. Some spots have 12-2, to 14-2, to knob and tube, on 20A circuits!

Lots of black scorch lines in the wood and melted wires after i cut the power and removed all that mess. The attic is the same way but they actually used tape! The ceiling in the attic is nailed drywall with wood planks covering the seams and a wood-like STYROFOAM beam going across the length of the house/ceiling, you can see the panels bowing out and ready to fall. I'm missing things i known but this is all the projects I'm working on at once.
 
What a nightmare. Good thing you sound pretty handy! Hope your partner appreciates it.

What part of Cleveland are you in? Near West Side (just a guess)? I know some parts seem like they're on the up and up, others not...hopefully you're in a part where this can be an investment and not an actual money pit.
 
Yeah West side, Old Brooklyn to be exact.

I should also mention for the first time home buyers: My real estate agent was a former customer at the car dealership she worked at.

Between the both of us my partner and i make a total of roughly $50,000-$60,000. My credit score was 570, my partner didnt have established credit.

So my agent got us what he called an unconventional FHA where they just took all our past bills and based our credit off that, his grandma also co-signed. Its structured like an Fha with the escrow and property taxes included. We got turned down from a few houses because they didn't pass our inspectors inspection. Somehow this did (he didnt remove a single drop ceiling panel where all the wiring mess was hidden just to name one)

Also one last thing i forgot mention lol! And another thing inspection failed to notice. The house used to have a coal or wood burner in the basement. New custom hvac, round ducts,coming out of the top of the plenum, snaking around the basement and installed to old asbestos wrapped rectangle ducts. The asbestos was not only outside but inside the ducts, blowing around every time the air kicked in.

Once we discovered this we hired a contractor to come out and remove it. He proceeded to remove all the ducts in question and left like that...he didnt mention to me that he wouldn't be replacing the ducts. This happened to be 1 day before the coldest night of the year about -10 F.

I had to go out in the mornimg, buy a bunch of space heaters and hvac parts and took me 5 days to rig it up. Had to cut off 3 vents because the a few of them were split and barely blowing between several rooms

Okay i think thats it...til i uncover the next project xD
 
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