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well english is my second language and i admit i need to improve but at least i can communicate. your comment is harsh and not needed really. if you did not like my post, just ignore it and move on.
Old houses are often quite strong, but they also can have problems that have festered for years. Certainly foundations are built differently now.
Take care of anything to do with water. Find out why the basement is getting wet. Check to see if you have any water damage inside from the roof. Then make sure you have no plumbing leaks.
I would not worry now about the carpet or the fake brick front. Blowing in insulation in the attic is cheap and easy. Putting in insulation in walls should be a priority as no amount of attic insulation will compensate for uninsulated walls, which is common in a
90 year old house. Fix any drafts.Make sure the wiring is safe.
Stabilize any problems. You may need a new roof or plumbing, but you can temporarily patch a roof or fix a leak until the real fix can be done.
As far as why the previous owner walked away, the most common reason is money. A lot of people bought homes as an investment, then found out they could not afford their investment.
Most recently occupied houses can be fixed. Unoccupied derelict buildings can deteriorate so fast they can be uneconomical to repair.
Jeff
? "leza wang" wrote
Relax. Sure, a 90 year old house may need repairs, but it has stood for 90 years already and another 90 or 180 is not our of the question. My son's house was built in 1752 so by comparison, yours is quite young.
Some water problems are serious, others are not such a big deal, like an open window. Once you move into the house and get a heavy rain, you can see if it is just a matter of grading or sealing windows, or routing drains from the gutters away from the house.
Finding a good home repair contractor is not easy. Talk to friends, coworkers, neighbors to see if they have used anyone local.
Second that thought - Find a friend who knows about repairs, an avid do-it-yourself person, ask around. Most of us who do these things ourselves are happy to pass on information to newbies like yourself. We have a lady, named Kate, who jumped into this group fairly recently, asking a lot of reasonable questions and who got a lot of very good responses and has now done a lot of repairs from what her posting indicate. But, please re-read your postings before sending them out, and use spell-check. I really did have trouble understanding some of your posting because the language/spelling was so far off.
Agreed- didn't mean to panic Leza like that. But the main point is to have somebody who knows what they are doing look at the place before spending any serious money. A good home inspector (if there is such a thing), or a good general contractor, can walk through the place, and in a couple of hours come up with a better diagnosis and possible cures, than we can do remotely sight unseen. Basement water problems could be major, or they could be trivial to fix. I have seen people drop $100,000 remodeling the upstairs of a place that had little or no foundation left under it. THAT is what you want to avoid. Good foundation to hold it up, then a good roof to keep it dry, and then move on to everything else.
I'd second that. Unless the roof is leaking, look at the foundation first. Toronto does not have a lot of snow on the ground yet, so check drainage levels If sloped towards the house you can still get a load of soil delivered and bank up to the foundation.By next week that may not be an option. Second priority is the roof - UNLESS the siding is insul-brick - which will neeed to be removed before you can get insurance.
Then check the wiring and plumbing. If Knob and Tube, you do need to replace it - no insurance company doing business in Toronto will take it on as a new account with Knob and Tube. Check the plumbing too. If it is still galvanized iron pipe and a cast iron sewer stack, you will need to replace all of that as well. Go with plastic drain/sewer. For the water piping you can use PEX or other non-copper piping, but in my opinion, copper plumbing is still better value long-term and I'd spend the extra and have copper installed.
All of this will involve opening some walls and working in the attic - so you want it ALL done before insulating anything. If the siding is being replaced it is often most cost effective to insulate from the outside - cavity fill insulation (blown or poured) or foam board on the exterior under the new siding both work well. However, if you need to do a lot of interiour tear-out, stripping the outside walls and installing new Batt insulation, then new dry-wall is often the best way to go. This allows you to install proper vapour barrier etc while you are at it.
Now this all hinges a bit on the neighbourhood. If it is a rough part of town, making your house the best on the street might not be, financially, a sound investment. If, on the other hand, most of the neighbourhood has been renovated and yours is one of the poorer buildings on the street, bringing it up to standard will greatly increase the value, and it is well worth spending a bit extra to make things top quality. Don't waste money on frills that you can add later
- just get it solid, straight, tight and clean. If and when you have walls open, think ahead and make sure you get everything into the walls that you may want in the next 5 - 10 years - things like TV cable, phone lines, etc cost VERY little to install now, and are a real job after everything is insulated and finished.
Leza
After shopping for a qualified inspector that may not be a bad choice for you. It would allow you to get some advice from someone who is not trying to sell you anything. They can identify most of the problems with the home and give you some indication of the best order to do the work. Check around and find out who is the most honest best educated one in your area. You may be able to get a nice discount since they will have little risk in this friendly inspection.
The things that you, a new homeowner think most important may be the least important. I have seen people spend money on new paint, carpet, cabinets and a lot of interior stuff while the roof over their heads was slowly rotting away.
Good points, and very close to the situation. As I recall, there had been a small porch with very bad surface spalling, and instead of replacing it, the previous owner had gone for a huge deck. So most of the ground under it is dirt, and low. As for the mosquito breeding pond, it's been my experience that the water manages to migrate down along the foundation.
I hope you got it real cheap. Is it in Toronto? or Hamilton? - how far out?
If the house is insul-brick (looks like brick but made out of wood-fibre type crap with stone finish like shingles) no Canadian insurance company will insure it. MANY houses of that age were sided with insul-brick.
is that because of asbestos in siding?
does the home have any knob and tube wiring.
i looked at a home nearby, owener was looking for volunteers to help rebuild. it was near a closed mine, and along the railroad tracks.
It must of been built as people picked up stuff that fell off trains.
A hodgepoge of misc material using some railroad track as framing. the track was worn.
felt bad for the guy his wife tired of the mess and moved out taking the kids.
will have to drive by and see what he did.
Chuckle. At estate sales in older blue-collar parts of town here, more than once I have looked up at the center beam in the basement, and realized it was an upside-down stick of railroad track. Grand Trunk used to have a pretty big repair shop here, back before CN absorbed them into the parent company.
Hmmm,
2011 minus 90 goes back to 1921. Isn't that the time resources were scarce? It was B4 I was born.
Shingle of course.
I betcha she does better writing english than you would her native language.
Jeff
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