I finally saw what 20 years of deferred maintenance looks like on a house up close

My buddy bought a fixer upper from the 1970s last spring. We pulled up some carpet in the living room and found hardwood floors underneath. Looked great at first until we noticed a massive dip in the middle. Turns out a pipe had been leaking under the slab for god knows how long before they just put down new carpet over it. The subfloor was completely rotted out, we had to cut out a 4x4 foot section and reframe it. What got me was how you couldn't see a thing wrong from the surface. The guy who owned it before just kept covering problems instead of fixing them. Has anyone else run into a house that looked fine but had major hidden rot once you started peeling things back?

2 comments

2 Comments

iris_stone281d ago

Peel back one layer of a house and suddenly you're playing Jenga with your bank account. Classic case of out of sight, out of mind until your floor decides to cave in.

jamieburns1d ago

And you just reminded me of something I've noticed with so many things we buy now. You buy a new car, and it's great until the warranty runs out and suddenly a sensor costs four hundred bucks. Or you get a new phone, and the case and screen protector cost almost as much as the phone did. Isn't it funny how the stuff we rely on every day always has that hidden layer of cost that nobody talks about? @iris_stone28 you hit the nail on the head with that one, it's like there's always a trap door in the budget.