tonight’s house was quite the nightmare. should have just had the fire department set fire to it and start over.
damon didn’t seem quite as scared as when they were doing the deck/room thing. but his eyes did pop a bit when he saw how much that wall was bowing.
and mike thought he could get away without redoing the basement… best laid plans of mice and men.
Someone almost destroyed that house making it open concept. They pulled down almost every wall on the first floor. No wonder the second floor was sagging so bad. They’re lucky the thing didn’t fall in.
Add in that bulging wall in the basement… 
Plus the asbestos and mold. Man, that house was totally screwed.
It was a multiple month $300 000 job. I would have taken the meeting with him, told him never mind, called in a demo crew and put in a new house. Heck, you could slip in a prefab for probably $100 000 …
I would be willing to bet that the city would have been more down with a teardown and new building than an amelioration and remodel.
I actually have to wonder if there is some sort of legal recourse for such an obvious coverup of conditions and bogus inspection. Having the inspection done and the binder ‘available to anybody’ to me smacks of some sort of collusion between the seller and the inspector, and perhaps the selling agency …
Not to mention the whole wall supported on glass brick window that was 3/4 underground.
Did they ever mention anything more about the buried chimney pipe?
nothing on the chimney pipe, at least on ep. 1.0. perhaps we will find out on ep 1.5 next week.
damon wasn’t kidding when he said he was having his post forwarded. he will be living there for quite a bit.
good thing glass block is very sturdy!
I loved this last episode! That house is just a total wreck. Bowing wall, messed up electrical, plumbing going UP, bad structure. I always dvr the eps so I can get the highlights w/o having to hear the preaching by Mike Holmes and the idiotic statements by the home owners. Usually I watch it when nothing else is on… I’m actually anxious to see the next episode.
So… Does anyone else think that Damon should be the one with his own show? He rocks.
I’m amazed Pinky (she was on Holmes on Homes) didn’t get a show. After working with Mike, she knew a lot more than a lot of those home improvement hosts on hgtv.
I like Damon too. He does seem a little too hard on the crew. That may be because he’s so stressed himself. He needs to learn some way to chill out a little. He’s wound up way too tight. It’s not healthy.
I wasn’t paying close attention to the first half. Was the bulging wall covered by drywall hiding it? Because I just can’t see someone missing that detail. I have to think that the seller just covered it up because I would imagine that the water would have been streaming in that wall and would have ruined the drywall there very quickly.
The other fun detail is that the brick on the second floor wasn’t properly supported so it was cracking and was going to come down onto the first floor.
The scary thing is that the inspector wouldn’t have caught the worst of the issues, namely the asbestos in the plaster or the bowing wall if it had been covered up.
I have to wonder if there wouldn’t have been an easier way to remediate the asbestos.
the basement wall was covered by drywall. it was a finished basement.
the house looked really pretty, until you took a good look at things most people don’t. like the baseboards, where walls met ceilings, etc. then you start to see little things, then you start to wonder, then you run from the house, waving your arms, screaming: “danger, danger”!
it was a good thing that the fellow they had in to redo the bathroom mentioned that the floor was sinking. that was what triggered the homeowners to find out what was going on.
Easier? Yes. Better or proper? No.
As they were gutting the house, the only sensible remediation was complete removal.
If you’ve got drywall joint compound that contains asbestos, it’s not going to leap out and cause mesothelioma just because it’s there in a wall that’s probably coated with paint. But, as soon as anyone in the future drills a hole into it or pulls down the wall in a remodeling project without knowing there’s asbestos there, it’s a problem.
Almost always, the best route is to remove it. Once in a while, leaving it alone and encapsulating it is workable - for one example, at my old high school, there’s a room that’s been sealed off - the windows and doors were removed and bricked up as there was so much asbestos on the old boiler and piping that it was more economical at the time to install the new boiler somewhere else and entomb the old boiler room.
poor damon. a simple leak… ends up being a total gut and redo.
i can understand him being upset. he has to answer to mike for the costs, time, and labour for a total redo for a simple leak. not fun being the lead guy. it went from $ to $$$$$$$$$.
him swinging on the swings saying “it was just a leak” was cute. i wanted to give him a doughnut or something.
eta: i bet that window thing was were the dryer vent was. before someone decided to move the dryer somewhere else and route the vent throughout the entire house and garage. there are a lot of windows that look like that in my 'hood.