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Sep. 24th, 2002 06:31 pmHouse! House house house.
Inspection was this morning. It went OK. The big structural things are fine: the roof is in good shape, the basement doesn't leak, the walls are sound, the floors are OK, the heating system is newish ('95), etc. For a house built in 1885 and then left in Somerville, it seems to be doing pretty darn well.
Things we learned:
The wiring is largely fucked, and will need to be redone. This is a $manyK project that will need to be done by a professional.
The second-floor bathroom doesn't ventilate and appears to have been put together by monkeys. Untrained monkeys. Minimum, we'll have to put in a fan and a new faucet; more than likely, we're going to redo it entirely. That's OK, since it was previously ugly as sin. No, uglier.
The basement should probably not permanently house human bedrooms. It will be great crash space and TV/DDR room space, and we may tear out the basement "kitchen" and put in a washer/dryer. If we're not treating the basement as a separate apartment, we do not need three kitchens. That's OK, too. For a couple grand, we could eventually have the foundation drilled out and larger windows put in to one of the rooms, which would make the place up to code (and more pleasant), but for now, we're fine as-is.
The sellers dropped the price back down to the asking price, for a difference of about what the rewiring will cost. The bathroom will be on us. Hopefully, everything else can be done by our own earnest hands -- painting, redoing floors, shoring up the back steps, tilling the lawn, fixing the occasional window, whatever -- and will be rewarding and all of that other glowy homeowner crap.
The inspector was great. He took almost three hours and walked with us through every inch of the house, pointing things out as he was going and describing them, describing what it was he was looking for. Well worth it.
Now, for the paperwork! Oh my lord, the paperwork. This will get done, I have zero doubt, but it will suck getting all of the little legal bits ironed out. Time for my red-tape-fu...
Inspection was this morning. It went OK. The big structural things are fine: the roof is in good shape, the basement doesn't leak, the walls are sound, the floors are OK, the heating system is newish ('95), etc. For a house built in 1885 and then left in Somerville, it seems to be doing pretty darn well.
Things we learned:
The sellers dropped the price back down to the asking price, for a difference of about what the rewiring will cost. The bathroom will be on us. Hopefully, everything else can be done by our own earnest hands -- painting, redoing floors, shoring up the back steps, tilling the lawn, fixing the occasional window, whatever -- and will be rewarding and all of that other glowy homeowner crap.
The inspector was great. He took almost three hours and walked with us through every inch of the house, pointing things out as he was going and describing them, describing what it was he was looking for. Well worth it.
Now, for the paperwork! Oh my lord, the paperwork. This will get done, I have zero doubt, but it will suck getting all of the little legal bits ironed out. Time for my red-tape-fu...
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