The Home Ownership Thread

[gladhands]

It's a 112 year-old 4br/2ba,3 floor frame Victorian in the middle of the city. . It's the actually the second house that we put an offer on. The first was a similar hose in the same neighborhood. It needed 20k in roof repairs, and that was just the tip of the iceberg. The inspection report was 18 pages. It was so bad, we didn't even ask them to make repairs, we just walked.

The inspection report on our home was pretty decent and the sellers agreed to mak most of the repairs. I still expect it to be a money pit.

 

[lefty]

In this helpful video your house will be played by Paulie.


Little hint. Spend $300 and have the main cleaned out. There's nothing worse than a backed up sewer and it will back up on the day of your first party. Or Christmas.

lefty

 

[nootje]



I just joined your little club yesterday, and I'm absolutely terrified. Having lived in apartments my entire life, I know absolutely nothing about home repairs. I did buy a ladder, though.

we're opposites. I'd love to move and own my own place. The rental apartment we now live in annoys me to no end. Everything in this dump is low end, the every single fitting, tile, cabinet and what else you can think of. Its all stuff i could easily replace myself, having done that sort of jobs all through my youth, and being blessed with a knack for it (two right hands?). But I wont/cant, as we both dont know where we'll work next year. I'm not upgrading for someone else.

as an aside, its interesting to see the differences in the materials used for a home in for instance Thomas's case, and most Dutch houses. We wouldnt dream of using wood on the outside of your home...

 

[Blackhood]



I blew a grand on two Japanese maple trees this weekend.
Now I have to go pick them up and get them in the ground.
We also splurged on a pair of gorgeous glazed ceramic urn planters for our front entrance. They're really stunning and I'm in love with them but it's only recently (e.g. post-purchase) I've considered that I'll have to bring them indoors during wintertime for fear they'll crack.

We have a few of those kind of urns. If you can stand the poor visual impact, consider just wrapping them in bubble wrap. We've kept many an olive tree alive through snowy winters through judicious use of 10 yards of wrap!

 

[lefty]

Depends where you are. I would being them into the garage at least during the winter months.

lefty

 

[eg1]



we're opposites. I'd love to move and own my own place. The rental apartment we now live in annoys me to no end. Everything in this dump is low end, the every single fitting, tile, cabinet and what else you can think of. Its all stuff i could easily replace myself, having done that sort of jobs all through my youth, and being blessed with a knack for it (two right hands?). But I wont/cant, as we both dont know where we'll work next year. I'm not upgrading for someone else.
as an aside, its interesting to see the differences in the materials used for a home in for instance Thomas's case, and most Dutch houses. We wouldnt dream of using wood on the outside of your home...

Is that an issue of scarcity, durability or aesthetics?

Most single-dwelling exteriors in southern Ontario are brick or brick and siding, the latter either aluminum or vinyl. More rare is stone and/or wood, with stucco making recent inroads.

 

[Ataturk]



It doesn't work, by the way. I mean, it's obviously toxic to the bahiagrass, but it doesn't kill it--just stunts the growth a little.
I need something more powerful. Google says I should try sethoxydim, which kills it a little better but is poisonous to just about every grass. In fact it's sold as grass killer--but it doesn't kill centipede. Fortunately my yard is mostly centipede.
I really don't like centipede by the way. It's the weakest growing grass there is. Supposedly it's good for drought and shade but the roots are so shallow in clay soil that it's a really poor performer in both, especially under a tree that takes all the water. It also has a yellowish cast to it unless you constantly give it iron.

Sethoxydim doesn't work either. That's $20 well spent. I really should read up more on this more before buying stuff--though it is useful for killing grass, and other regular grasses in my centipede, if I decide I want to do that. Got some bermuda in there. I don't really have any reason to want it gone, though.

You just can't trust random websites about what works, apparently.

Turns out what I really needed for the bahiagrass is metsulfuron aka Manor. It's not widely available except to "professionals," but I got a 2oz bottle online for about $45.

 

[nootje]



Is that an issue of scarcity, durability or aesthetics?
Most single-dwelling exteriors in southern Ontario are brick or brick and siding, the latter either aluminum or vinyl. More rare is stone and/or wood, with stucco making recent inroads.

Its all brick here. My guess is durability, as scarcity should not be the problem. And given that we have our fair share of ugly houses, its not aesthetics either.

Most houses have either brick/brick or brick/concrete block walls, with isolation in between. This is due to regulations, especially new houses have to meet very high isolation standards.
As an example, my mother had a house build during the course of this year. Her windows are triple pane, and the walls are that double brick I mentioned. As a result it is almost too isolated, when the hood above the stove is turned on the room cannot get enough fresh air in, and thus sucks the smoke out of the closed fireplace..

 

[Ataturk]

Most "brick" houses in America are brick veneer--the bricks are the outer layer of the wall and aren't holding the building up. Lots of reasons for that.

If you have double/structural brick walls in Europe I'd guess it's because of a shortage or high cost of wood, not durability.

 

[Mr Herbert]

down in Australia nearly everything is brick and where i live almost exclusively double brick - which is pretty crazy because it gets bloody hot and brick is pretty poor insulator. but timber is a bit of a rare commodity. I find the idea of aluminium, PVC or cement board siding to be a bit crappy but ive never seen it in reality.

durability is a real reason to choose brick - it has a load less maintenance than timber houses.

i would like to build a rammed earth or straw bale house one day

 

[nootje]



If you have double/structural brick walls in Europe I'd guess it's because of a shortage or high cost of wood, not durability.

I doubt about the cost of wood though. My mother had a quote done for a wood version of the house she had build this year, which was about the same price as brick. This was for the swedish type.. She chose brick due to the lower maintenance cost.

And the most probable reason for not using structural brick walls in the US is probably the cost, bricklayers are expensive, a solid slab of concrete isnt. I always wondered about the low cost of houses on your side of the pond, and think that that might be the cause..

sorry about the threadjack guys..

 

[Mr Herbert]

houses are cheap to build in the US because they use PVC siding

 

[Ataturk]

If wood is the same cost, that shows that it's still expensive compared to the US. And I think wood used to be more expensive in Europe. I guess you can get more of it now from Russia than in the good old days.

But, anyway, brick is not a good insulator. It's porous--water literally passes right through bricks. So you can't insulate between double brick walls, as far as I know--it has to be left open for condensation to drain. That's why there are gaps left in the mortar between bricks at the bottom of the wall.

Presumably the inside bricks have another layer of insulation over them, which means the wall is going to be thicker and still probably not as good an insulator as a brick veener wall -- which has bricks, space, sheeting, a 3.5" wide stud cavity filled with insulation, then drywall.

 

[Thomas]



houses are cheap to build in the US because they use PVC siding

Not the ones I've seen. They're cheap largely because they're done en masse, in developments, by largely low-cost and sometimes-moderately-skilled labor. It does help, though, that they use large-scale pre-fab products like sheetrock and hardiplank as opposed to plaster and brick. That, at least, keeps labor costs down.

When we built in a development, the land was purchased in bulk and parceled out and the homes were built in a largely assembly-line process - except that the houses were stationary and the crews moved from house to house.

 

[Piobaire]

The US also has large domestic supplies of timber, as well as easy access to Canadian supplies, which are far larger. I seriously doubt it is the material used for external sheathing that is the major driver in US housing prices.