Inspections and Estimates

As I mentioned before, we had the inspection on the house last Friday.  A few different things were found, but no real surprises. 

The level of radon was found to be 6.1 and the EPA says it should be 4.0 and under; however, the reading was taken in the earthen basement where we will be spending about zero time and the level in the actual house will be less. I'm okay with this...

On the first floor, there was not much to note in the living room or dining room.  The stairs to the second floor don't have a railing (which I like), but that was noted as a safety concern.  The kitchen seems all good except the sprayer on the sink leaked a tiny bit.  The freezer temperature was only 25 degrees and the ice-maker gave water but wasn't making ice, so who knows what that means!  The first floor bathroom contains the washer and dryer as well; the dryer does not vent to the outside which is a small issue (and one we already planned to correct).  Other than that, the bathroom was in working order, albeit goofy (the set-up is odd; the floors are stained plywood; the cabinet under the sink looks like a child put it together, broke some pieces, then the parents tried to make it look ok again).  The storage area off the bathroom (which has exterior access as well, so is more like a built-in shed) has a few issues with the roof; it is a shingle roof and the water rolls off the edge and was getting in. 

Moving upstairs, the bathroom sink stopper isn't working right but a $2 clip will somehow fix that issue.  The bath tub stopper isn't working either, but for that, we can just buy a $5 cork thing to plug it up (cheaper and easier!).  The GFI outlet worked originally and then stopped...  We couldn't figure out if there was another GFI outlet it was connected to that was tripped or whether the outlet just went bad.  Other than that, the bathroom was fine.  Nothing major was noted in the front bedroom or the den/study/library/whatever.  In the master bedroom, the door to the balcony is hard to operate and will require trimming the bottom off the door and lifting the threshold by the same amount as we remove from the bottom of the door.  However, the balcony out that door needs a lot of help.  The wood boards are rotted at the ends and that makes the railing and roof supports loose.  Finally, one of the steps on the way to the attic is broken a bit, but not a huge deal.  Moving outside, some of the windows are old wood windows (but we plan on replacing them all eventually anyway).  There is a few dings in the metal siding and one piece of siding needs tucked back into place.  The metal roof is all being replaced and while that's getting done, the antenna on the roof should come down and ventilation should be added to the attic; we are hoping the sellers get this done during the roof repair.  Other than that, there is just a few cosmetic things to fix up outside, some lawn maintenance to do, and a step to fix (the step from the patio off the kitchen is crooked and could be a safety hazard).

As for the estimates and fixes...  The kitchen sink will be fine - it could be a few issues but we can't know what until we start to try to fix it, but at worst, we just need to replace the faucet. The freezer is a big unknown because it could need replaced; however, it could come down in temperature when filled with food and the ice-maker could be a quick fix too.  We'll just figure that one out as we go... As for the storage area and the leaky roof, this will be a bigger project; there are a few boards that need replaced due to water damage and the roof needs a drip-edge added.  The GFI outlet is just bad - the wiring is fine so the outlet just needs to be replaced.  The balcony is going to require removing all the floor boards, adding some extra support to help out any support beams that have some damage, and then priming and painting it all.  We just got the estimate back and are asking the sellers to either fix the storage area roof and replace the boards and then fix the balcony or to give us the money (either in a combination of seller's help and reducing the price or just reducing the price) to do the repairs ourselves.  Wish us luck!!