The Home Ownership Thread

[brokencycle]

My neighbors have English ivy. It's a constant battle to prevent it from coming through my fence and infesting the yard.

At least it's better than Virginia Creeper, which was coming from the previously neglected other neighbor. We finally got that **** under control with a multi-year effort. Fun fact: Virginia Creeper contains oxalic acid, which can cause blisters!

We had creeping charlie. I won the war only by using kill all vegetation for 6 months spray.

 

[Van Veen]

I eventually want to nuke the ivy and plant native ground cover, but that's extremely low priority. As you can see from the vine cutting in the picture, it's well established.

Last house I nuked a ton of poison ivy when I first moved in. (Kind of regret that now.)

The house before that it was a constant battle with wild blackberry and Japanese honeysuckle from the neighbor's yard. The blackberry was the worst since it would shoot up suckers in the middle of my lawn.

 

[venividivicibj]

 

[Gibonius]

One word: bamboo.

Bamboo is the absolute worse, and of course the neighbors had that too. They waged a heroic battle against it, which ironically made it worse spreading into my yard.

My dog apparently developed a taste for bamboo shoots, and helped enormously in keeping it out of our yard.

We had creeping charlie. I won the war only by using kill all vegetation for 6 months spray.

Previous owners had neglected our yard pretty badly, and we had some combination of creeping charlie and wild violets. Ataturk ended up getting me the right horrible chemical death warfare to get rid of all of it without nuking the yard, but it took multiple years and more than a little work.

 

[Van Veen]

That looks like it's from extreme makeover or something. Just ******* bizarre. Can't get past the exposed OSB on the ceiling.

 

[Gibonius]

It's also like 2x the max price of other houses in the area. You could get a legit all-brick McMansion around there for 500k!

 

[jbarwick]

Last night we came home from my inlaws and I noticed one of the random path lights was on in front of our house. I have no clue how those lights are powered and we flipped a ton of light switches without any of them powering the path lights. We have had a lot of snow and rain lately so my thought was somehow the saturated ground is connecting the power source. Who knows.

Calling some landscaping companies this week to give us a quote on updating our lighting and will ask them.

 

[lefty]

If these are typical walkway lights, they are low voltage and there should be a transformer with a timer plugged in somewhere.

Landscape lighting is one of the easiest jobs to do. Go pick up a kit and spend an afternoon burying the lines and hooking it up.

lefty

 

[Van Veen]

View attachment 1558405

This is definitely me today.

The upstairs bathroom vanity had gross pitted chrome hardware. Yesterday I finally got around to replacing it with satin nickel hardware to match the rest of the fixtures. It is making me unreasonably happy (even happier than replacing the showerhead which was a plastic Home Depot special and nearly worthless).

Maybe it's a matter of getting the old homeowner's stink off the place.

 

[imatlas]

That looks like it's from extreme makeover or something. Just ******* bizarre. Can't get past the exposed OSB on the ceiling.

That bathroom sure would come in handy the next time you slaughter a hog, though. You can kill it, butcher it, and shower off, without ever leaving the room!

 

[brokencycle]

This does look vaguely like every BBQ place I've been to in the Carolinas.

 

[PhilKenSebben]

So my list of new ****

All new gutters, facia boards as needed, soffit vent reconstruction and addition: $5200

Learned that the leak in the garage was caused not by an ice dam, but by the garage being built/designed wrong in 1968. So that is great. Good news! There is a fix! $3200. ******* hell. Shopping this one around just in case.

Oh, Also learned that the cheap ass motherfuckers who owned the house before me went with a REALLY CHEAP roofing contractor and the roof is not going to last nearly as long as it should. Roofing guys best guess is that we will have 1/2 of the expected life expectancy (10, MAYBE 15 instead of 20.

Dumb *****. I swear, if one more neighbor tells me about how great these people were I am going to explode and go into the racial/ethnic stereotypes that have led us to this point.

Sigh. Anyone want to adopt a 34 year old? I am just looking for an inheritance, um I mean someone to borrow money from erm, Someone to love me. That's what I meant

 

[Van Veen]

This does look vaguely like every BBQ place I've been to in the Carolinas.

Open the cabinets and you'll find stacks of quarter pans, rolls of butcher paper, and those translucent red plastic cups like the ones at Pizza Hut.

Oh, Also learned that the cheap ass motherfuckers who owned the house before me went with a REALLY CHEAP roofing contractor and the roof is not going to last nearly as long as it should. Roofing guys best guess is that we will have 1/2 of the expected life expectancy (10, MAYBE 15 instead of 20.

Sounds like we are in the same situation. I have the roofing guys coming out again today to add on to their temporary fix. 2009 roof.

 

[nootje]

But you guys get to live with the “charm” an old building has. Which cannot be expressed in monetary terms.





(because the expense never ends)

 

[PhilKenSebben]

But you guys get to live with the “charm” an old building has. Which cannot be expressed in monetary terms.





(because the expense never ends)

I am actually pretty confident, looking at most of the structure of what I am seeing, that the expenses will be wrapped up pretty soon. Most everything else is cosmetic/design choice. Not that I have wasklhed the stank of the other people off of the house, things are good