So many times I've explored century homes and thought "why would someone leave this behind?".

I fucking get it. My god, do I fucking get it. Just over two years ago my wife and I bought a nice little house near the town I went to high school in. BIG garage, cute house needing a bit of work (in an awful shade of blue, but hey, we could paint it).

HOLY FUCK. And I won't even go into how we were fucked over when buying the place because of an almost entirely falsified real estate listing. That's another long, drawn out story about two old bastards and their bastard real estate agent. Our first propane bill was $1200 (for just over a month) and we froze. I put a wood stove in last year, and that's helped in a huge way.

As far as renos are concerned, I'm in over my head now. There are two halves of the home, the original side, which is made out of wood, two stories sitting on a stone foundation with no basement, I'd say this half is mid-late 1800s. The "new" half is wood siding with brick insulation and a proper basement, I'd say that half is about 100 years old.

The upstairs bathroom (in the old half of the house) was a total 80s cocaine nightmare. Hot tub, mirrored baseboards, etc. The plumbing would freeze in that room if it got STUPID cold (like twice per winter). Gutted that room back to the studs, installed a normal bathtub, insulated the walls, found a heating duct that had been floored over which was still connected to the HVAC system, so that made things a bit easier. But now, whenever the temperature gets even slightly below freezing, the pipes freeze. I guess I've rerouted cold air into floor by insulating the walls.

Here's the issue: The wall the plumbing is in is this 2 foot void where the two halves of the house are joined. It goes from attic to crawlspace, and I can't figure out where the fuck the cold air is getting in. Or at least that's what I'm assuming. There's obviously some way into the walls as I found a dead bird in the wall, and a dead bird in the basement (which doesn't have any windows or a chimney).

I found where the pipes were run through the downstairs wall and just installed a cold air return vent, to allow some warm air from the TV room to rise up, but this hasn't made a difference, other than making the TV room colder.

I tore out first wall (yep, there's a second wall too! This house is like an onion, it has layers and it makes you cry) in the scary closet area upstairs and used an infrared thermometer... the lower part of the wall was -4 degrees celsius. Air temp in "the void" seems to be about 1 degree above freezing. Also found some fluffy bits of snow in there, so there's DEFINITELY something going on, but I can't find the damn air leak. I've been wanting to see where snow melts off of the exterior of the house first, but it's been insanely windy here.

Anyway... I've fucking had it with this place, and that's just one of the seemingly hundreds of issues we've had. If I could afford to, I'd abandon it tomorrow and happily let some vandals burn it down.

I drew a crappy diagram of the layout with the bathroom and "the void" labelled.

home ownership sucks balls.
if I had to do it over again, I think I would've just kept renting.

Same here. My last rental place was pretty awesome, it was a former dealership and repair shop with a huge 2 bedroom apartment out back (on the water), and a decent landlord as well (big car guy).


The selling feature for this current place was the 35x60 foot garage, which is thankfully only about ten years old.

Posted by bandi Same here. My last rental place was pretty awesome, it was a former dealership and repair shop with a huge 2 bedroom apartment out back (on the water), and a decent landlord as well (big car guy). The selling feature for this current place was the 35x60 foot garage, which is thankfully only about ten years old.

we got lied to about this place as well... the guy we bought it from was a douchebag. We were told the appliances were only a couple of years old... yeah, the fridge was about 20, the washer/dryer were close to 18years old. The guy didn't take his garbage so I got stuck dealing with it. A year after we moved in, the boiler died so there was almost $5k US for a new boiler that never ran right for almost 8 years. Even now, the fucking thing is too small and runs constantly when the temperature gets below 35F. I had to put a roof on the main house. got swindled out of $3400 the firs time and had to have someone else finish it for $1000... and then, in September, I had to have the roof on the addition, my room. done for $600. What else? Had to have the back of the house rebuilt as it had rotted... the deck on the back needs to go or be rebuilt, I have a series of mystery outlets in a shed I have NO IDEA where the breakers are for them... yeah... I am just loving owning my own home.

on the plus side, no one can tell me where to park or how many cars I can have in my yard should that ever become a thing again. ON the minus side, I am surprised my neighbors haven't burned my house down because it's such an eyesore. (needs paint and a good landscaper)

Sounds like we bought a home from the same people. This place was listed with all appliances included (microwave, diswasher, propane stove, oven, washer, dryer and sump pump), and the garage was listed as having plumbing installed. The P/O ran a woodworking business out of the garage and it was jam packed, so when we looked at the place it was hard to tell if there was no plumbing.

The house was also listed as having a newer security system.

The microwave didn't work. The dishwasher didn't work. The washing machine had been taken apart and the pieces dropped into the tub. The oven didn't work. The sump pump started smoking as soon as I plugged it in.

The garage was left with about 2 feet deep of trash in most areas, as well as the fenced in driveway alongside the garage... so it took me about a month and 15 trips to the dump to realize there was definitely no plumbing. (We had a legal agreement that the stuff would be removed by the time we moved in, but our old place had new tenants waiting and we had to get in here, the deal was that they were supposed to come back but they both "got sick", and to be honest, I didn't want them on the property again).

He also left his snowblower in the shed and came back and took it while I was at work.

It was cheaper to just buy a bunch of used appliances than to get a lawyer involved, but holy fuck... what an adventure.

The roof blew off within about 3 months of living here. The second (new) roof blew off last february (it definitely wasn't done properly), but at least insurance covered that.

The old prick even kept the door latches (you know, the old square, externally mounted ones in old homes that take a skeleton key), as well as the post mounted carriage lamp at the end of the driveway). Two summers ago, the ceiling fan flew apart, missing my newborn daughter by like a foot. Turned out the mounting bracket for the fan blade had been krazy glued back together at some point. I visited the fucker's house after that incident.

I haven't seen the old bastards that sold us the place recently, but I keep checking the obituaries to see if the pair of rotten old cancer bats have kicked yet.

As for the yard, the area behind the garage does kinda resemble a VW graveyard, and I'll build a fence once things calm down, but I'm in the middle of nowhere, so it's not visible to anyone unless they're driving by.

jesus, bandi… talk about the same boatage.

I happened to be behind the guy a couple months after we bought the house. He didn't know me because it was my mother's deal, I just live here. He was making fun of my mom, calling her a sucker. I tapped him on the shoulder, and in a convenience store full of people, called him and invited him outside so I could put his dentist in a new tax bracket.

he died a couple of years ago... no great loss, in my opinion.

we go through about $2500-3500 in fuel oil between October and May. the furnace runs non-stop. The boiler that my mother got stuck with is too small for this house... shit, there aren't even storm windows the windows that ARE in this place so you can watch the Sabres blanket in front of my window here flutter in those wonderful winter breezes.

(facepalm)

karma, bandi, karma will get them, but it just takes a while for it to happen.

Putting his dentist in a new tax bracket... I'm using that!

And yeah, our master bedroom, although it truly has a breathtaking view, it also has wind currents. We now move out of it in November and live in the tiny, cozy guest room. I'd like to gut the master entirely and redo it, but it's just not in the budget. (Especially now, I'm off work with a back injury so that's not good for the bank account.)

I just feel like we're so fucking upside-down on this place, if we were to try and resell it, a) nobody would be stupid enough and b) I couldn't live with myself.

Also, it's haunted but that's another story in another thread. And that's about the least of my concerns.

and the fun continues... that roof I got swindled on a few years back started to leak early in the year during thunderstorms. As the summer and now fall have gone on, the leak has gotten worse. Called one contractor i knew... Dicked me around for over a month. Called another contractor... too small of a job. A friend of mine offered to help, but he is way too busy with his job and side business... the guy who finished the roof and did a really nice job with it as well as the back of the house offered to come and look at it, but he had a bit of family drama over the weekend, so i am a little hesitant to call him... and the roof continues to drip.

On top of that, the boiler has not been serviced since the late summer of 2018... these should be serviced every year. It sounds like a controlled explosion when it starts up. Keeps you on your toes. On top of that where the outlet goes to the chimney is rotten and not ever really attached to the chimney. So waiting to die of carbon monoxide poisoning this winter. AND... lastly but not leastly, the chimney itself is broken near the top and needs to have the top 5 or 6 feet rebuilt.

try fixing this shit on a fixed income... yeah.

I actually found where the pipes have been freezing (three years later)- I built a large closet in the living room underneath where the bathroom is, and cut a small hole in the wall to access the pipes- there was an uninsulated area between two joists with air coming out well below freezing- with the pipes directly in its way. Stuffed some insulation in the hole, put up some vapor barrier and it's been fine ever since. (And way warmer in the house!)

So now I need to figure out where that cold air is being drawn in from, but at least it's a partial fix.

Posted by bandi I actually found where the pipes have been freezing (three years later)- I built a large closet in the living room underneath where the bathroom is, and cut a small hole in the wall to access the pipes- there was an uninsulated area between two joists with air coming out well below freezing- with the pipes directly in its way. Stuffed some insulation in the hole, put up some vapor barrier and it's been fine ever since. (And way warmer in the house!) So now I need to figure out where that cold air is being drawn in from, but at least it's a partial fix.

AHA! glad to hear it!

i managed to get the boiler serviced a few weeks ago. It runs much better, but the other work needs to be done come spring.

houses suck.