re: Uncovering Poor Workmanship in Your Home

My sister and her SO bought their first house recently. It was house built in the 50's updated and added on to. Most of the "improvments" are homeowner diy. I don't even know where to begin about how many things are wrong with that place. Floors sloping like crazy, cracked tub, shite plumbing, old wiring mixed with new, omg. They thought that because they had an inspector come out that they were good to go. I just wish they'd given me an opportunity to see the house and give an honest opinion. As it is, they will be paying for a piece of junk for the next 30years.

The one thing I learned from that experience was that home inspectors are garbage. fricker wrote up a full page on a wrong size grounding screw in the electric box but didn't say shite about bathroom being 2" out of level from one end to the other. Inspectors get referrals from the realtor; realtors like to sell houses; inspectors don't want to upset realtors.

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There is excessive wood filler, grout, and sparkle everywhere.

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Were they crafty strippers or something?

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The one thing I learned from that experience was that home inspectors are garbage. fricker wrote up a full page on a wrong size grounding screw in the electric box but didn't say shite about bathroom being 2" out of level from one end to the other. Inspectors get referrals from the realtor; realtors like to sell houses; inspectors don't want to upset realtors.

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yep, and everyone wants the cheapest one they can find

Last house we bought was a flip from a foreclosure. It was our first house, so we overlooked a lot of things out of excitement. The seller did a lot of stuff himself. Put builder grade laminate flooring throughout the house, but used tar paper as underlay so the floor made a shite ton of noise. Didn’t seal the tile, so the grout got dirty in about a month. Master bath wasn’t level, so it leaked every time. When we had a freeze last year, the plumber came out and determined that our well wasn’t installed properly and most of the pipes weren’t even glued together.

The previous owners cut a whole into the wall for a doggie door big enough for a St Bernard. After it was abandoned, some kids snuck in and destroyed the place with spray paint. One night I noticed that in the master bedroom you could see a huge black vagina that was spray painted on our wall It had been painted over, but at a certain angle it was clear as day.

My first house was built in the 60s, and seemed to be well built.

Then I had to remodel the upstairs bathroom because the shower pan failed. When I did demo up everything was a mess. The leak had obviously been patched by the previous home owners, but not very well. The subfloor was all rotted, and when I cut that back I discovered the real problem.

The stink stack turned 90 degrees and 4 joists were cut down from 2x12 to 2x6 to accommodate the run of the toilet vent pipe. There was basically nothing to carry the load of the shower and toilet in that bathroom.

I had to re route the stink stack, which was cast iron, so was a real pain. I had to move the vent, so had to do roof work.

Also found out the bath exhaust fan was just blowing in the cavity between the ceiling and the roof. How there was no mold is beyond me. That was an easy fix, but unexpected.

None of the joists were exactly level, so there were shims and all sorts of little things robbing peter to pay paul to make the finished floor flush.

The toilet ended up needing a new flange which wasn't a big deal.

It should have been a 3 weekend thing, but took me 30 with all the issues.