The Glade 4.0

So the guy we bought the house from, was apparently the worst landlord ever. And the tenants were happy to not do any basic maintenance on the house.

I have never before seen air filters as dirty as the ones I pulled out of the bedroom returns.

Over half of the light bulbs are burnt out, including a half a dozen in the living room/kitchen area, several upstairs, all 6 of the bulbs in the coach lights up front, the one over the front door, and the bulb in the house number thingy.

The sink faucet in the kitchen is repaired with electrical tape, the garbage disposal is non functional, and most of the other faucets are gunged up with calcium deposits (I hope that's all it is). We knew about this from the home inspection though.

The seller never retrieved the clickers(Complex or garage) or mailbox keys back from the previous tenants, so we don't have access to our mailbox until we can have the USPS rekey it. In the interim, unknown persons can get into our mail. (Granted, nothing super important should be going there yet, but still.) New garage clickers are $40 each, for the garage, and probably the same from the HOA for the front gate.

We knew about some of this, but its the little things that frustrate me.

The good thing, the house is only 5 years or so old, so it shouldn't be too bad. Nothing was upgraded at construction, so all of the fixtures are basic contractor crap. There's a long, expensive road ahead of us, but its OUR long, expensive road

Wouldn't trade it for the world.

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Holy shitsnacks!

It's something you can do in stages though. The house I grew up in was a long string of renovations and an addition. Having a much newer house you should be fine.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Welcome to the joys of homeownership!

Be sure you research any contractors you might hire to do the work that you can't or don't want to do. Better safe than sorry.

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"Said I never had much use for one, never said I didn't know how to use one!"~ Matthew Quigley

"nothing like a little meow in bed at night" ~ Bruskey

"I gotta float my stick same as you" Hondo Lane

"Fill your hand you son of a *****!"

The things you listed are relatively minor. Hopefully the home inspector did a thorough job. Homes can become money pits really fast.

Congrats on the purchase, and good luck to ya.

You're probably safe with a 5-yr old house.

Roof's fine, most appliances, plumbing, structure, etc.

All of that is minor, piddly stuff. The bad news is, you could come up with a list of equivalent items in my house, and I spend a lot of time maintaining it. So, you have that to look forward to.

I found out this week, when I went to repair what I figured were broken switches, that there are likely some non-compliant, inaccessible junction boxes buried in the walls somewhere, changing over from 30-year-old wiring at the switch to 50-year-old wiring at the fixture. With, you know, bad connections, because the dysfunctional lights in question don't respond to manually closing the circuit at the switch.

So, you know, that's fun. Especially when I went out of my way to get the electrical inspected, cleared, and upgraded when I moved in. Now I get to knock out some walls *after* moving in.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I hate electrical. My father told me horror stories of a house he owned in Newport.

The interior walls were open, roof to foundation, no insulation, with 50-year old wiring. Houses in the area were torching left and right.

He was upgrading the wiring, and shut off the main breaker to the house. He was working in the attic, when he suddenly realized he could see. At the far end of the attic, a light was on. At that point, he was done - and called an electrician.

F that.

I have a toilet that flushes itself randomly. No leaks, fully checked. Just... flushes.

This weekend I am replacing everything but the porcelain. Hopefully, the ghost is haunting the toilet innards and not the toilet itself.

Wow, yeah. My bullshit tolerance for electrical is similarly low. Yeah, I know how this **** works. I can build circuits, and tell you all about resistance, conductors, current, voltage, whatever. I'm okay with flipping a breaker off and poking around a junction box to replace a switch, or probably (though I've not had to do it) a fixture. But when we throw in the human element of doing **** you're not supposed to, or overlooking something when you do an upgrade, or using poor/non-standard labeling... **** it. I'll pay a dude to be deliberate and thorough and not zap himself while he fishes around in my walls. Especially in a house that's old enough to still have the porcelain mounts for tube and knob wiring in the attic.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Ahh the ghost pooper.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

The rental house was lived in from the time it was new to about 11 years ago by an old guy from Germany. He liked to do things himself. Things like saw doors in half and run a small business out of that room with the bottom part of the door sealed.

Convert the garage to a bedroom and just add in a bathroom and laundry room (tub drained down. Literally a foot and the just ran onto the ground under the house. The house had like 5 different panels and the circuits make no sense at all and there isn't a single room where everything is on the same one. It took a few years but we are down to two panels and strange circuits and everything else being fine.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Heh, yeah. I know its all minor BS stuff, but it adds up quickly.

The bulbs weren't burnt out, the previous tenants had partially unscrewed most of them I guess to save power or something. The coach lights were all out though, and there're 6 little halogen bulbs in the number plate. At $5 each at Lowes, I found an online option for $.35 each.

Office is about 50% painted now, New toilet seats installed, new door locks are all completed, erased all the stored codes on the garage opener and whatnot.

I don't think there's any actual contractor work to do, its just all little maintenance bs

Also, the appliances are the basic awful ones you get for free when you buy the home as new. Those are going to need replacing asap. Hell, the top shelf on the dishwasher isn't tall enough to accommodate average sized water glasses, let alone the supertankers I usually use

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Holy shitsnacks!

We had some weird electrical stuff in our house in Ohio which is now over 100 years old (though we no longer own it). I discovered when replacing the ballasts in the florescent lights in the basement that the basement lights were on the same breaker as my daughter's 2nd-floor bedroom.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

That's like Mom's house. All of the outlets in my room, the bathroom, and one of the outlets in the office are on one breaker. I don't know what sort of crack Electricians smoke, but its got to be some good stuff.

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Holy shitsnacks!

My house was built in 1949. Some wiring was upgraded in past remodeling projects, but
Most is still ungrounded. I'm about to drop nearly 20k into new HVAC that will probably bring up more issues. Home repair never seems to end, but it still beats fighting with a landlord hands down.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

I had an electrician come in and install an outlet. He tried to feed off the basement light to avoid cutting drywall, which would have put my entertainment center upstairs on the same breaker as the basement lights.

We had words.

I bought a foreclosure so I was pretty lucky in that the bank fixed most of everything before I bought it. Apparently the previous owners for some reason decided to strip the place of any and all pieces of metal that they could pry loose/unscrew before walking out. They had to replace electrical outlet covers, faucets, door hinges and doorknobs, the HVAC duct covers, the dryer vent pipe, stovetop surfaces, and tons of **** like that. The only real issue I have left over is some nasty water damage in one corner. The leak that caused it has been fixed, but you can still see the effect it had on the wallpaper, and I understand that completely fixing it would be monumentally expensive, as I'd have to tear out all the wallpaper, re-mud the corner and then put in all new wallpaper over it.

You can fix that yourself. Tear out all the wallpaper, probably tear out the wall board, replace it, paint. (I hate wallpaper.)

It's a decent amount of work, but doable.

HVAC is currently being replaced. The I goodness we aren't having superbly weather right now. Very happy with the company and progress so far. This will make life better.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

This is pretty common in a foreclosure.

Yep, one nearby had holes in the wall from having all the wiring stripped out as well. Some folks are sore losers. Neighbors said the guy was a real jerk and they were happy to see him go.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

well, they can sell the scrap metal. The foreclosure happens either way, so its financially advantageous for them to do so

Most states now have restrictions against recycling obvious construction debris without an active construction permit.

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People still take in copper obviously ripped from commercial electrical systems. Was a big problem where I used to live. Of course every few months some moron would try to rip the copper from a live transformer with predictable results.