GOOD look at the new house

[Rob LaMoy]

Well, we got to take my mom and mom-in-law through the house last night. Have to be accompanied by our realtor whenever in the house as it is vacant and owned by the bank. We have had 3 days of steady rain so I knew this would be my chance to look for leaks. Didn't take long at all. The garage with it's concrete roof which is also a patio off the 2nd floor has tons of leaks. I'm not even sure where to begin. When the garage meets the house, the downstairs bathroom is on the other side of the wall and one particularly bad leak has all but ruined the bathroom. That's a solid $1k in repairs in just that bathroom. I am really at a loss for how to repair the garage roof due to it's uniqueness so my only idea is to turn it into a screened in patio with another roof over it. Almost all the doors need to be shimmed or shaved to open and close properly. After getting a grip on the REAL size of this home we realized that the 500 gallons of fuel drums in the basement will likely be filled twice a season so one of the fireplaces will be converted to a wood burning insert as I have 160 acres of wood for free and fuel oil is $1.65 a gallon. And my wife will NOT be allowed to touch the thermostat. She will have to stay near the fireplace if 68 is not warm enough for her. It needs shades and curtains, which should help with drafts, a few sinks and some new counters in the kitchen. Carpets are rough, but the beauty is that underneath all those funky rugs is sweet hardwood floors. So I'll just yank them up and refinish the floors until we can recarpet and buy my wife a pair of slippers for winter! LOL

Marke, the guest room will be fully furnished but the carpet won't match until next year. Not that you'll notice much after spending the evening in the bar! And Jill can stay with your boys and Michelle and our kids in her entertainment room upstairs until we stagger out of the Man Cave! LOL The Man Cave is accessible to women by invitation only! LOL

 

[Mikel Stephens]

Rob

I'll never again in my life buy an old home. Be prepared for no free weekends and ALOT of unexpected expenses.

If it were me....I'd run the other way as fast as I could and cut my losses now. (speaking form experience)

Sounds like you got a real beauty though and I wish you luck with it.

 

[Michael Snow]

Oh, don't listen to Mikel... new homes keep you busy every weekend too. There's that yard to mow, the wife that thinks the color the dining room USED to be was the right color and you need to repaint it until the size of the room drops 10 sq feet due to the thickness of paint on the walls. It truly never ends...

 

[TrepMan]

Rob - What's the status on the Bid process? Has the bank accepted your offer or are you still in the waiting phase??



Before you close on the house, assuming they accept your bid, pay a PROFESSIONAL Code Certified Home Inspector. While a HUD home will NOT give you any $$ or price break for repairs (like you would negotiating with standard seller) you do have the right to back out of the deal if you find problems you don't want to live with! Such as structural/foundation issues if the house has been leaking for a long time, you don't want to have to spend 10's of thousands of dollars a year from now!



Good luck.



Mike S. My wife will NOT allow us to buy a new home! She is a licenses professional engineer and did resididential/comercial inspections before she stayed home with the boys. The quality and issues she saw in $100k to $1 million homes is AMAZING! She always has us buy 5-10 yearold homes so any settling and structural issues usual have been evident.



Trep

 

[Jim Jackson]

See the real issue here is we all have ourselves convinced that we can win. The best we can hope for is an occasional tie.

I think the only way it can really work is if you live on a houseboat and just fish all day.....

 

[Rob LaMoy]

Trep, we've been accepted and are just waiting for a closing date. We found out that the couple that offered us a check to back out had in fact outbid us by $1k, but their realtor messed up the paper work and they ended up "showing" a bid of $46 less! Talk about close. It's a sign that we're supposed to be in this house.

Mikel, we like old homes. The don't build homes like this anymore. It's 200 years old and plumb and square. A friend of mine is a contractor and he is the one that went through the property for the bank and he said he couldn't believe how well this house is built. All the elegance and class that was built into it in the early 1800's is still there. I know what I'm getting into. That's why I don't have any hobbies or anything in the winter. I forego ice fishing to get all the "honeydo's" done so I can fish and hunt from April to December. Each night after the kids are gone to bed we work, on weekends I work, holidays or stormy weather when I can't get to work, I work. There will constantly be the sould of a circular saw or jig say or sander working in that house. Fixing it up is half the fun. You get to make it the way YOU want it.

 

[Scott Hammer TOXIC]

Rob,



I must have missed your earlier posts while on vaca. I also have a room that is under my garage (garage is at ground level) and it has a concrete ceiling (the garage floor). We call it the bunker, huge area (as big as a 2 car garage) that is 4 walls ceiling and floor concrete. In a storm that is where the family goes. You need to know where the leaks are coming from, is it cracks or seals around the edges? There is a material that you can put over the concrete "roof" to make it watertight if it is just an elevated patio/sundeck on top of the garage. My "concrete room" is just used for storage but it also has a moisture problem. You need to adress this ASAP. Besides just the water damage, there is mold and mildew which is a health issue especially for your kids. It is the new BIG problem with houses, people are getting REALLY sick if the wrong kind of spores get started. They are tearing down brand new houses because of it. Get some dehumidifiers as well as fixing the problem. The bank knows they can't sell a house in that condition. Either make them fix it or get a healthy discount to do it yourself. You said you are going to convert one of the fireplaces back over to woodburning? What are thy now? There are some pretty efficient inserts for gas and fuel oil burners that after you consider the time of cutting, splitting and hauling wood, might actually be more afforadable and they kick out massive heat. I don't have to tell you but if you want maximum heat, install a woodburning stove. I had a Vermont Castings woodstove in my lower level (inserted into a fireplace) when I lived in MA and after I got it going (3 logs), it would burn a normally split log at about 1 piece per hour and I could heat most of the house with it (4 bedroom ranch)!! It had a filter/flue system where once it was stoked, you could actually close the exaust flue and it would totally internally combust. I would wake up in the morning and the wood floors upstairs would still be warm!! Look at inserts for wood fireplaces also. Way too much heat goes up the chimney in a standard fireplace. Which reminds me, GET THE CHIMNEYS INSPECTED AND CLEANED!! Just had some friends lose thier house to a remodel job that overlooked the chimney and they installed a woodstove. Ember got in between the exaust flue and chimney and started a pitch fire (contractor said that they wouldn't need to clean the chimney because they were putting in a new liner). Window drafts are easy enough, caulk baby, caulk (if you are not going to replace the windows)!! As we told you the last time you were looking, did you get it inspected? If not, do it!!



TOXIC

 

[Michael S]

Rob there is a material you can put on the roof of your garage. I don't know the name of it but it is almost like the material used for the spray in bed liners they put in trucks. I have seen this producted used on some cement roofs here in Texas. Although there are not very many of them.

 

[Rob LaMoy]

Tox, I used to manage a hearth shop that sold fireplaces, wood and gas, wood stoves etc. The fireplaces are conventional but 90% of your heat shoots out the chimney. I will inspect the flues, but with a liner, there's really no need. I meant I was going to put in a wood buring insert. Drops right into the fireplace, seals out cold drafts and gives you the effeciency of a wood stove but with the large door, the look of a fireplace. With a large Regency, steel insert, I'll cut my fuel in half. Vermont Castings look nice (I've been to the plant and seen them poured) but are over priced and the cast iron is not as durable as a steel stove. I was constantly getting repair work for people that had over heated their VC stoves. You're not supposed to heat them that high, but steel is more forgiving. No doubt, the VC look great, but I want functional first. If you ever get your EPA non compliant arse up here, you'll see. October is nice for bird season! Hint.

 

[Scott Hammer TOXIC]

I'm sure people overheat the VC stoves because they are sooo efficient. It was already in my house so price wasn't an issue. Sounds like you will have the heat thing figured out. Here's another tip, a buddy of min has a fan and a tie-in somehow to his forced air furnace whereby he can heat his entire 2 story house with his fireplace IF he has to. With oil and the age of the house I assume you have hot water heat? I had 2, 250gal heating oil tanks in the basement of my MA house also but is was hooked up to a forced air furnace. Man could that dog put out some heat!! That sucker would fire up and the house wouls be warm in no time!! There was HOT air coming out of ALL the vents. The builder of my house was paranoid and built it during the bay of pigs crisis so he put the well head IN the basement, as well as the oil tanks and he built a hidden bomb shelter that even the prievious owners didn't know about. The entrance was hidden behind the cellar stairs. You went through a tunnel to an underground concrete room. I was eventually going to turn it into a wine cellar.



Get that hound of yours rested up, I'll be there!!



TOXIC

btw...The EPA has NEVER inspected my arse!!

 

[Rob LaMoy]

Yeah, baseboard hot water with TWIN 250's! Tanks that is, not HP! LOL She'll heat and when I put an insert in with a blower it should stay cozy especially with the fireplace in the other end crankin too.