What to look for when buying a house

When you’re finally able to buy a house, you might be on a high! Until you ask a contractor if he thinks you’ll be able to be settled there within two months, and he laughs at you. Here’s a quick guide on some things to look at before buying a house:

Floors

Pull up a loose corner of wall-to-wall carpet. Hardwood below? Great! Just a subfloor underneath it? It will be relatively inexpensive to install vinyl flooring or a new carpet, but expensive to install wood or tile floors.

Check below oddly placed carpets for damaged flooring.

Feel how soft the floors seem as you walk around. If a floor feels spongey, you may need to install both new flooring and subflooring.

Replacing tiles is not an easy fix. Every built-in item in the room first must be uninstalled. Doing a mud job over the old floor and installing new tiles without removing the old will lead to more problems down the line.

Walls and Ceilings

Try to look past ugly wall colors. Instead, look for high ceilings, which are a plus. Repainting isn’t cheap, but the end result outweighs the cost.

Don’t worry about paint coming off a ceiling in angular shapes. It means that the paint is old, and it’s an easy fix. But round irregularities in the ceiling means a leak somewhere. Brown spots on walls and ceilings also indicate leaks. Fixing leaks usually leads to other necessary fixes. You might find yourself replacing several pipes and rebuilding a few walls.

Hairline cracks in walls are usually unproblematic, but if a crack is wide enough to get a pencil tip in, stay away from that house.

Moldings can easily be removed or replaced — but the house will not look bigger without them.

If an open house has scented candles, open windows, and fresh baking, there is a smell being obscured. Look for mold and ask about the sewer. Some of these issues are impossible to fix.

Look up images of termite infestations and mold problems so you can look for these issues, especially in basements.

Check behind oddly placed artworks for wall damage. Small wall holes and bumps are easy to fix. Very bumpy or pocked walls and ceilings often have to be completely replaced, unless you’re willing to live with the imperfections.

General Space Planning

There are many good solutions for immobile support beams. They can be dressed as a pillars, turned into floating walls that house a bar or an interesting built-in feature like a climbing wall, or used to hold hooks for small toys.

Take measurements of your own furniture so you can see how they’ll fit in rooms. Two twin beds may fit better than one bulky king.

If you’re viewing a house in the winter, ask if the trees are fruit trees.

Electric

When you’re serious about a house, make an appointment to see it at night. This gives you an idea of how much more lighting the house will need. It’s expensive but necessary to add spots in dark areas. The quality of lighting greatly impacts the quality of living.

Check the number of outlets in each room. Bring a small gadget to check that outlets are working. It’s not hard for an electrician to wake up a dead outlet, but it’s expensive to add more.

Roof

Straightening attic walls to increase usable space is a major renovation that costs a lot. Ideally, this should be done before moving into the house. (At the very least, do this during warm months.) Don’t forget to add windows.

Skylights are noisy in the rain and very hard to clean.

Bathrooms

Retiling usually leads to an entire bathroom redo.

Run the hot water to see how hot it gets and how quickly it heats up. Ask if you can keep it on while you view the house in order to see how long the hot water lasts. Ask the age of the current boiler. A new boiler is a large expense.

Stairs

Rebuilding, removing, or moving a run of stairs is a major renovation.

It is easy and inexpensive to install new carpeting along stairs, whether full or a runner. It’s also easy to repaint risers. Painting treads is not a great idea because foot traffic wears paint away quickly.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 951)