I just keep finding more house problems.

[daddo]

Got the particle board pulled up in the kitchen (My nail puller post). There's always been a little sag in the kitchen floor and thought I would fix that while I was at it. I found there is only 12" of room at the most under the house so I cut a good sized access in the kitchen floor to see what I could do. I found an 8 foot beam right under a wall eaten by termites and broken. Now I have to cut out a large portion of the flooring on both sides of the wall to replace this beam. I'm having a termiter guy come out while I got it open.
  Crawling under there I then found there is a slab of concrete just before the back door. Seems this slab used to be the back porch and steps at one time I'm sure- they then added on to the house and built over the concrete. This is causing a slight hump in the floor as the area naturally settles and rises during the rainy/dry seasons. It going to have to stay.

 A normal paint and cleaning job has turned into a bath remodel, rewiring, paint, new floor covering, beam repair, termite job, new window screens in 3 rooms, new kitchen counter tops and add a cabinet...................

 I keep reminding myself- it's just an old rent house. It's going to take a year to get my repair investment back doing all the work myself.  


I'm getting to old for this cra..............................

[Duane N]

I bought my "fixer upper" back in 1998 and I learned quickly when deciding to start a project whatever you have for a budget double it because you'll run into other issues as you open things up and fix things you didn't plan on fixing because you're into it too deep at this point.  My foundation was solid and no termites...everything else has been cosmetic.  I'm still working on it to this day and I'm actually re-doing some stuff I re-did 10 years ago....lol.

My sister and her husband decided to re-do their kitchen and I explained to them how they're going to end up spending more than they anticipated....they didn't listen.  They found the previous homeowner had jack-legged the electrical in their home and they ended up updating their panel and electrical service.  Their budget was shot at that point.

[elinourrumming]

I empathize. Hang in there!

[Snipe Hunter]

I have a bad habit of buying fixxer-uppers. I always look at houses as money. How much can I get it for? How much do I have to put into it? How much can I get out of it? My agent has always said: "You should really be a home inspector"... the rest is history. Now I have to get back upstairs and take out a couple walls.

[Bob10]

Well I am here to tell you that you lucked out and in a large way.  Imagine you put in tile and then discover the broken beam.  I installed a cast iron tub that looked perfect then the rest of the shower and it wasn't until I was done and it got wet that I saw the tub had a hairline crack.

[museumguy]

Or, we did a kitchen renovation about a year ago. All new cabinets, granite tops and they had a new tile floor installed. A couple of months ago, we got a call that things were starting to look out of level. It turns out the structure under the kitchen was insufficient to hold all of the weight of the renovation. The floor is sagging and stuff is starting to crack and get out of level. No one thought to check the structure first. It is built to code, minimum code at best. It wasn't meant to hold the weight of a tile floor and granite tops. Not sure of the outcome of this one.

[Bob10]

matches, call to ins you know the drill

[daddo]

It's dirty work and tiring, but I must admit, I'm enjoying it especially with the cooler weather.

I can't help it, I'm going to pull a few floor boards over the concrete and see if I can give the floor/joists/whatever some space to stop that hump.

[Bob10]

Can you add structure to span that area allowing you to support it on something more stable?

[Snipe Hunter]

Or, we did a kitchen renovation about a year ago. All new cabinets, granite tops and they had a new tile floor installed. A couple of months ago, we got a call that things were starting to look out of level. It turns out the structure under the kitchen was insufficient to hold all of the weight of the renovation. The floor is sagging and stuff is starting to crack and get out of level. No one thought to check the structure first. It is built to code, minimum code at best. It wasn't meant to hold the weight of a tile floor and granite tops. Not sure of the outcome of this one.

I can't imagine a floor structure not being ably to bear the weight of a modern kitchen.