So, a little back story-my wife bought the house we're living in in 2017, which was before I knew her. She fell in love with it at the time-she was in her mid-20s and even though it's on the small side, it was just the house she'd been looking and saving her money for.
It was built in 1953, and again in spite of its 1000 square feet, you can tell it was built with quality materials and generally just well built all around. There little things you really just don't see anymore, like plaster work(yes it is all plaster) "surrounding" the door frames so they are flush with the walls. Unlike my parents 30 year old house, the floors don't creak. I hadn't paid attention to it until my father-in-law pointed this out, but it's also a really quiet house. The neighbors mowing sounds like it's down the street. We are close to a moderately busy street(Main Street in town) and don't hear traffic noise at a bothersome level even when the 1970s Silverado with a rotted bed and no muffler comes roaring by.
The property records, as far back as they're available online, tell me that it was sold to a local property management company in the 90s. It was then sold to a local "rehab" company in 2016(we often get mail addressed to someone who died in 2016, so I'm guessing they sold it when a long time tenant passed away) and then was sold to a real estate company in 2017.
When my wife moved it, in looked clean, shiny, and new with new windows, vinyl floor, a new front door, garage door, counters, and the like.
Over the past 3 and a half years or so I've been spending time in here(and a little over a year living here), I've watched things wear or even just fall apart despite what I'd not consider any sort of abnormal wear and tear. The flooring in high traffic areas is starting to wear through to the vinyl or peel. They did leave us a couple of boxes of flooring out in the garage, and I've become quite adept at yanking up a plank and replacing it, but then that leaves us with an out of place nearly new plank. While we're at it too, I'm guessing most of the house was carpeted, and they didn't bother installing quarter round when they put the laminate in so there are ugly baseboard gaps(getting some quarter round fitted is on my to-do list) The whole thing should be redone, but we need more space and are basically riding things out here until the market hopefully cools some. The shower has an overlay that's seemingly impossible to keep clean. A piece of siding fell off the other day and wrecked two other pieces in the process-fortunately again a dozen or so pieces up in the garage rafters came to the rescue.
While I'm at it on the floor, one of the first projects I tackled, before I moved in, was replacing the 4-bolt, 5 gallon toilet that was original to the house. That turned into something of an achaelogical dig, as I found 5 colors of paint behind the old tank(which sat flush with the wall), each nicely representative of different decades, along with bare plaster. Under the laminate in the bathroom there was some very 1970s linoleum that the new floor had just been laid on top of(and of course I can't fault that one entirely as under the linoleum was straight out of the 50s black and white checker tile).
I'm frustrated now, though, over the crummy garage door that's cheap sheet metal. Yesterday, I went to close it and saw the top panel of it folding up after the bracing to which the opener attached broke loose. I cut the door opener loose, rolled it down manually and locked it, and have just spent two hours with a pop riveter, some steel bar stock, and JB weld building up and reinforcing the door to at least allow it to function(hopefully) until we can get a new one ordered(going this afternoon to look) and installed(who knows how long on that).
By the way too, we have a nice shed out back with a poured concrete floor and cinder block construction. It once had windows(as did the garage) but they blocked up with plywood on the inside and covered with siding on the outside. The shed is wired for electricity, albeit with a scary looking fuse box, but there's no power actually coming in to it. I don't know when that went away, but the light sockets all have CFLs in them so I'm guessing it wasn't too long ago. It's big and study enough that it would make a great workshop, but of course that's out now.
As a broader theme, though, it seems like when this was done, the "flippers"(I don't know of a better term) just tried to go as cheap and fast as they could to make it look good and sellable. I guess that's the name of the game. It's just a shame to see this mixed in with so much underlying quality....
It was built in 1953, and again in spite of its 1000 square feet, you can tell it was built with quality materials and generally just well built all around. There little things you really just don't see anymore, like plaster work(yes it is all plaster) "surrounding" the door frames so they are flush with the walls. Unlike my parents 30 year old house, the floors don't creak. I hadn't paid attention to it until my father-in-law pointed this out, but it's also a really quiet house. The neighbors mowing sounds like it's down the street. We are close to a moderately busy street(Main Street in town) and don't hear traffic noise at a bothersome level even when the 1970s Silverado with a rotted bed and no muffler comes roaring by.
The property records, as far back as they're available online, tell me that it was sold to a local property management company in the 90s. It was then sold to a local "rehab" company in 2016(we often get mail addressed to someone who died in 2016, so I'm guessing they sold it when a long time tenant passed away) and then was sold to a real estate company in 2017.
When my wife moved it, in looked clean, shiny, and new with new windows, vinyl floor, a new front door, garage door, counters, and the like.
Over the past 3 and a half years or so I've been spending time in here(and a little over a year living here), I've watched things wear or even just fall apart despite what I'd not consider any sort of abnormal wear and tear. The flooring in high traffic areas is starting to wear through to the vinyl or peel. They did leave us a couple of boxes of flooring out in the garage, and I've become quite adept at yanking up a plank and replacing it, but then that leaves us with an out of place nearly new plank. While we're at it too, I'm guessing most of the house was carpeted, and they didn't bother installing quarter round when they put the laminate in so there are ugly baseboard gaps(getting some quarter round fitted is on my to-do list) The whole thing should be redone, but we need more space and are basically riding things out here until the market hopefully cools some. The shower has an overlay that's seemingly impossible to keep clean. A piece of siding fell off the other day and wrecked two other pieces in the process-fortunately again a dozen or so pieces up in the garage rafters came to the rescue.
While I'm at it on the floor, one of the first projects I tackled, before I moved in, was replacing the 4-bolt, 5 gallon toilet that was original to the house. That turned into something of an achaelogical dig, as I found 5 colors of paint behind the old tank(which sat flush with the wall), each nicely representative of different decades, along with bare plaster. Under the laminate in the bathroom there was some very 1970s linoleum that the new floor had just been laid on top of(and of course I can't fault that one entirely as under the linoleum was straight out of the 50s black and white checker tile).
I'm frustrated now, though, over the crummy garage door that's cheap sheet metal. Yesterday, I went to close it and saw the top panel of it folding up after the bracing to which the opener attached broke loose. I cut the door opener loose, rolled it down manually and locked it, and have just spent two hours with a pop riveter, some steel bar stock, and JB weld building up and reinforcing the door to at least allow it to function(hopefully) until we can get a new one ordered(going this afternoon to look) and installed(who knows how long on that).
By the way too, we have a nice shed out back with a poured concrete floor and cinder block construction. It once had windows(as did the garage) but they blocked up with plywood on the inside and covered with siding on the outside. The shed is wired for electricity, albeit with a scary looking fuse box, but there's no power actually coming in to it. I don't know when that went away, but the light sockets all have CFLs in them so I'm guessing it wasn't too long ago. It's big and study enough that it would make a great workshop, but of course that's out now.
As a broader theme, though, it seems like when this was done, the "flippers"(I don't know of a better term) just tried to go as cheap and fast as they could to make it look good and sellable. I guess that's the name of the game. It's just a shame to see this mixed in with so much underlying quality....