BarryC
09-28-2005, 07:07 PM
Hello,
I was just thinking about this, so I figured I'd tell the stories to see what you think, or whatever.
My parents bought a house when I was in Kindergarten. It was a 24' X 32' Cape Cod house on 2.125 acres. They got it for $23,000. It was solid as a rock, built like a fortress (built around 1949). My dad added a second story with attic in the late 70s. They sold it in 1985 for $119,900. This is probably a typical house story.
Now compare it to the following house: In 1985 they bought a 2 year old, 34' X 40' Colonial on 5 acres for $100,000. It was built by the owner. He was in a hurry to sell because he was out of work because of a dog bite or something. I was 21, going on 22 at the time. We soon discovered that the bedroom closets had no doors on them. The clothes poles were really galvanized pipes jammed into the sheetrock walls! In fact one was so large in diameter that you couldn't hang a hanger on it! The bathroom in the master bedroom had never been outfitted with bathroom fixtures, but instead had had a washer and dryer in it.
The house is 460 feet back from the road but there was only one pole holding up the electric and phone lines between the house and the road and it was within 40 or 50 feet from the house. So the pole in the yard and the pole at the road were bending badly under the weight. It was scary to look at. It was all put underground later.
Within 3 or 4 years the middle of the house was sagging so badly that you couldn't close the bedroom or bathroom doors all the way. There was an I-beam holding up the house with no columns or posts. That had to be taken care of.
The chimney was 3 flues wide and attached to the back of the house, or so they thought. By the mid to late 90s it had fallen so far away from the house that at the roof overhang it was 8 to 10 inches away. It had to be taken down, a footing poured and the chimney built back up and attached to the house.
There is a concrete ramp in the back yard leading to a standard size overhead garage door to the basement. One of the retaining walls holding back the yard collapsed in a severe rain storm in the late 90s, and that had to be rebuilt.
The front yard had originally been sodded but one day when I decided to transplant a small Holly tree into the yard I discovered that there was a layer of natural gravel on top of the topsoil! It took me an hour and a half to dig a hole that was maybe 15" wide and 10" deep.
Then about 4 or 5 years ago the roof had to be replaced.
It's all history now and I only talk about it because I like to tell stories. Does that make sense? But it is pretty bad. What a house! Too bad it's all true.
Does all this sound a bit extreme? Anyone have experiences like this? Or even worse? I'm curious if this is somewhat common, or not at all.
Barry
I was just thinking about this, so I figured I'd tell the stories to see what you think, or whatever.
My parents bought a house when I was in Kindergarten. It was a 24' X 32' Cape Cod house on 2.125 acres. They got it for $23,000. It was solid as a rock, built like a fortress (built around 1949). My dad added a second story with attic in the late 70s. They sold it in 1985 for $119,900. This is probably a typical house story.
Now compare it to the following house: In 1985 they bought a 2 year old, 34' X 40' Colonial on 5 acres for $100,000. It was built by the owner. He was in a hurry to sell because he was out of work because of a dog bite or something. I was 21, going on 22 at the time. We soon discovered that the bedroom closets had no doors on them. The clothes poles were really galvanized pipes jammed into the sheetrock walls! In fact one was so large in diameter that you couldn't hang a hanger on it! The bathroom in the master bedroom had never been outfitted with bathroom fixtures, but instead had had a washer and dryer in it.
The house is 460 feet back from the road but there was only one pole holding up the electric and phone lines between the house and the road and it was within 40 or 50 feet from the house. So the pole in the yard and the pole at the road were bending badly under the weight. It was scary to look at. It was all put underground later.
Within 3 or 4 years the middle of the house was sagging so badly that you couldn't close the bedroom or bathroom doors all the way. There was an I-beam holding up the house with no columns or posts. That had to be taken care of.
The chimney was 3 flues wide and attached to the back of the house, or so they thought. By the mid to late 90s it had fallen so far away from the house that at the roof overhang it was 8 to 10 inches away. It had to be taken down, a footing poured and the chimney built back up and attached to the house.
There is a concrete ramp in the back yard leading to a standard size overhead garage door to the basement. One of the retaining walls holding back the yard collapsed in a severe rain storm in the late 90s, and that had to be rebuilt.
The front yard had originally been sodded but one day when I decided to transplant a small Holly tree into the yard I discovered that there was a layer of natural gravel on top of the topsoil! It took me an hour and a half to dig a hole that was maybe 15" wide and 10" deep.
Then about 4 or 5 years ago the roof had to be replaced.
It's all history now and I only talk about it because I like to tell stories. Does that make sense? But it is pretty bad. What a house! Too bad it's all true.
Does all this sound a bit extreme? Anyone have experiences like this? Or even worse? I'm curious if this is somewhat common, or not at all.
Barry