The Home Inspection

Today we met a home inspector at our prospective home. This house is a fixer upper, but we needed to make sure we knew the extent of the work before we moved any further forward in the process. We hired an incredible inspector who we felt went above and beyond. He sent us a 35 page report complete with pictures and explanations. We also found out that there were some minor disasters about the house we weren't aware of. Besides the obvious things we found out that the previous owner was a Jack of all Trades and a master of... well, definitely not electrical work. There was no electrical ground anywhere (minor problem). Even though the electricity was turned off, some of the lights in the house were working. How could this be? He created a electrical box without a master off switch. That and the dozens of junction boxes all over the house convinced the inspector that the house just needs to be completely rewired from top to bottom (big problem). The previous owner also tried his hand at plumbing. There are pipes running along the wall without insulation, (minor problem), and pipes that are too long without release valves and made out of PVC instead of copper (little bit bigger problem). The house is on a hill and water collects around the foundation so a load of clay/dirt needs to be brought in to regrade the back yard. (big problem but relatively cheap to fix). The broiler and AC were an adventure of there own, and the dish washer wasn't hooked up to the water so when he turned the water on, it flooded the kitchen.
BUT, we're not giving up quite yet. We've filed an addendum to our contract asking the bank to fix these problems. With our experience with this bank we aren't expecting a positive response, but we're keeping our fingers crossed. If they refuse to bend we just may be back to Step One.

On the funnier side, we're trying to keep Alex informed of the house plans in the style of three year old language. So when we left him with a babysitter today to go to the home inspection, we told him the house was getting checked out by a house doctor to see if it had owies. When we got home he asked about the owies and we told him the house had more owies then we'd hoped and we were waiting to see if the bank would help make it better. Well, my little computer whiz pulled up the Inspection Report on the computer and "looked over it." He then pointed to some of the pictures and told me, "If the bank can't fix the owies then I can do it. See this owie? I would use my hammer to fix this one. And this owie? I would use my doctor tape to make it all better. It's ok, if the bank won't fix it, I can do it all. I can fix it."