40 Times Boston Home Inspectors Discovered Such Interesting Things, They Just Had To Take A Photo
Just like Alpha Alpha Structural, Inc. (previously here, here, and here), Boston Home Inspectors also rain on people's parades. Well, kinda. In a nice way.
"We are hired by the buyer of a property to inspect the exterior of the house, basement, and structure along with all of the home systems," James Brock of Boston Home Inspectors told Bored Panda. "We test all the outlets, appliances, windows, doors, and bathroom fixtures. We, both, look for items not installed properly or that may be deteriorated, defective, or have an item of concern. For example, a leak or unsafe conditions."
Besides looking for problems or issues, the company educates the buyer about the investment that they will be making. "We teach them how the various components in their new home work and what to expect for life expectancy and what to plan for future maintenance."
During the past 24 years, Boston Home Inspectors have seen quite a bit in their job. From crazy DIY solutions to years of neglect, they share pictures of their most interesting finds on social media. Here are some of the most popular ones.
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Found The Cool House In The Neighborhood!
When talking about common problems, Brock said their Instagram is a pretty good representation of the big picture.
"As you can see, decks seem to have the most issues. Many are not built right or inspected annually for issues. Wood and metal deteriorate and corrode. Too many times people have a deck built and never give it a second thought for 15-20 years, meanwhile, the wood is starting to rot and the metal components rust."
"Also the famous uncle who knows just a little about everything, but is master of nothing, has now built your dream deck wrong! The deck is now potentially dangerous. I understand homeowners are trying to save money, but most times these items will cost them more in the long run," Brock explained.
Well, Hello Now!
When You Need Privacy!
There are a lot of things that could make a home dangerous: it could be the hot water temperature (140F), stairs without handrails, loose toilets, uneven front steps, leaning basement stairs, non-GFI outlets next to a bathtub, window seats in a child's room, clogged fireplace flues, large icicles hanging from the gutters, uneven basement floors for tripping, fire hazards like clogged dryer vents or wiring not to code. The list is long. Apparently, there are many items in a home that can become unsafe if installed incorrectly or have started to age/deteriorate.
Another Room With A View!
Just A Cool Set Of Stairs
"I love to use the analogy with home buyers, do you take your car in for regular maintenance and yearly inspection? Your home is no different than your car," Brock said. "Your home needs the heating and air conditioning system serviced and maintained annually. Same with the roof, dryer vent, foundation, decks, water heater, fireplace, etc."
Kids, Please Grab The Oven Glove For Me
Mother-In-Law Door
Interesting
If you want to prolong your home's lifespan, Brock advises having a professional tradesman, who you can build a long-term relationship with. "[Your home] is your investment and it needs to be protected (inspected, serviced, and maintained). There are several dozen homeowners who have Boston Home Inspectors at their home every 3 years to inspect the major items and components and give them a list of the next few things they should focus on.
For example, Brock said that in the next 3 years, some of these people will have the chimney pointed, repair some deteriorated wood and paint the weathered side of the house, fix the loose deck handrails and repair the leaning fence. "[Regular annual maintenance of the home and its items] gives the direction and what to focus on next."
Seriously?? I Know You Said It Wasn’t Finished Yet
That's impressive. It takes years of work to teach a house how to use stilts.
All Right, Put Back The Other Half Of The House
With This Design You Can Multitask. Wash Dishes While You're On The Crapper
This Was Sent To Me From Masong187!
While creating the Instagram page, Brock wanted it not to be a science book or manual, lecturing people on what they should or not should do, we get enough of that all day long, he said.
"I wanted a spot where people could go, relate to a picture as a homeowner, laugh, and say 'I'm glad that's not my house.' And at the end of the day, they can look at their own home ... and they can say 'At least my deck post is not sitting on a bolder.' Or 'At least my home doesn't look like that.'"
Almost!
Found At Work Today!
Now This Is A Basement We Can Party In!
Hmmmm
Wavy Deck! Imagine A Couple Of Cocktails
Children And Drunks Are On Their Own!
Would Love To Chat With Who Came Second!!
Sometimes You Just Need A Little Edge!
Almost!
Kinda Close....for New Construction!
Dryer Lint. The Cremated Remains Of Missing Socks
Remember When???
Timber!
Seen Something Cool At An Inspection
Day 3 Of 7! Mold Week
Stairway To Nowhere
Exactly! You're just not trying hard enough! RUN up the stairs!
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One of the weirdest buildings I've ever been in.
Load More Replies... It's where I keep my collection of unsettling porcelain dolls.
Why don't you walk in and close the doors? See where the building inspectors that were here before you went.
It's NOT Narnia,.. It's HOGWARTS !! how dare you !!??? lol
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Don't go up it I once read that if you find that you might get possesed
That is where I would go in the 90s to talk on the phone to my friends. Just pull the extra long phone cord under the door, sit on the steps, close the door if the parents are being casually nosey.
It used to go to somewhere, given how worn those stairs are. It was probably walled up during a renovation.
I am SO going to do that in my house with a fake wall you can push
We had stairs like these in our house. It was built as a normal house, then someone turned it into apartments, then back into a house again. The stairs originally were servants stairs from the kitchen to the back bedroom. It was always so annoying because my bedroom was that back bedroom & having my own stairs would have been awesome.
Behind one pf those walls is the rest. Common for old homes. They were the servants stairway so they weren't seen buy owners and guests in the home.
"The legend goes that our crazy Gramma Izzie that lived upstairs, died... but that was after dad got out the sheetrock and paint."
Portal to another dimension, but one needs the proper key to open.
Stairs like this are common in some of the old houses that were broken up into apartments where I live in the preservation district of my city. Contractors took the easy way out when dividing them. I had an apartment once that had stairs going up to nothing in my bedroom closet. Very inconvenient!
There was one like this at a place my sister stayed. The stairs used to lead to an attic, but the landlord blocked it off because people kept forcing open the door.
Second story bedroom closet had three steps to no where in it. It was only a two story building at that time.
My dad took the wall out of our house a long time ago and we found a staircase like that.
My first apartment building had a large staircase in the lobby that went up to the ceiling. Saw more than one guest or new resident try to use it and bump their head
That's what some owners after us did with the servent stairs at our old house.
Some pychopath killer built dead-end turns and doors that led to nowhere in his home to confuse and trap his victims.
Reminds me of Splash Mountain at Disneyland, it went through three different contractors. There are stairs and passages that go to nothing but a wall.
there could be a secret door on the other side the ghosts like to hang out you just need to kill your self become a ghosts and go threw the wall
Looks Like I’m Going To Have A ‘Fun-Gi’ Day! Ok I’ll Stick To Home Inspections And Leave The Comedy Alone
I Bet The Tree Will Win!
I Have No Idea???
Somebody Forgot To Change The Water Filter
Hope The Rock Doesn’t Move!
Who Left The Trx Out During The Home Inspection??
More Water Is Going Up Than Down!
Found The Dryer Vent!
Why Bother??
Damn I Missed The Roof Party!
Holy Duct! You Can’t Make This Stuff Up! Fire Waiting To Happen!
When You Run Out Of Shims!
Note: this post originally had 150 images. It’s been shortened to the top 40 images based on user votes.
Boston, USA is an older town, with housing stock that is also old and predates modern building standards, hence the state of decay as well as ridiculousness of some of the upgrades. Honestly though, the situation is the same across Europe where the stock is old/ survived the wars.
There are still building codes and laws in Europe, you know. I lived 30 years in a flat in the attic of a house from the 1880's. Everything was up to code and safer than the s**t in these photos.
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Rough calculation, your 11.50pm is my 9.50pm Lol, it's perfect for evening scrolling!
Load More Replies... "not sitting on a bolder" - I lived on the side of a mountain in an area that had experienced glacial activity eons before. The house across the street had one back corner that sat on a boulder that took up the entire back of the yard (what yard?) And then disappeared into the side of a hill behind the home. Ice vs rock? Ice wins every time. Geology 101 The mountain also had a fault line that ran across the top of it and unfortunately the only road going over the mountain ran right over it. In the winter the road actually raised up about 2 inches on one side of the fault. It was very disconcerting to drive over it going to work. Come Springtime, it leveled out. But hey, on a clear cloudless pollution free day, you could see Manhattan 35 miles away and the twin towers slowly being built. That was cool...
So much mould. I doubt this is just a Boston problem tho this is just where these inspectors work. I've seen and lived in some real shockers in my day and I'm not american. Mould is the worst though it stinks it makes u sick and it generally grows in the cold and damp. I learned quick to look at the backs of the curtains when checking out a rental
Also, give the bottoms of the walls under windows a quick push. If it has any give whatsoever, it's moisture compromised and definitely has mold (at the very least.)
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I know I am late to the party, but having bought half a duplex, learned how stupid that was the hard way, then bought a condo in a larger complex (and looked at a whole slew of places each time) in Boston, absolutely none of this surprises me and in fact I have seen worse first hand (we took down an unused chimney in that first duplex just lifting bricks off with our hands). I'm not saying Boston is the worst, but it lets developers get away with keeping some amazingly bad stuff if they "don't alter the frame or foundation". Add that to most houses being over a hundred years old with some older than the USA, and there is definitely some cringe worthy building.
I did a remodel on an old mobile office once. During demo we found a rotten hunk of moldy metal that used to be a water heater completely sealed up in the corner behind the base cabinets. Literally the only way to get to it would be take out the countertop or destroy outside floors or walls.
The house I live in used to have a car jack holding up part of the ground floor. That's fixed now but my floor still has several dips. I am lucky that my roof is still good. House was cheaply built in 1927.
Since some of these defects (or incompetence) are at the very foundation, how on earth these houses pass safe occupancy inspections? Or is that not a thing in the that town?
Safety is a thing, but the cost of retrofitting or repairing is often more than the house might be worth. So people mask it as best they can and there we go. Alas.
Load More Replies... DIY is fine... But keep in mind that there is a REASON things are done a certain way (even if you don't know what the reason is).
Load More Replies... Boston, USA is an older town, with housing stock that is also old and predates modern building standards, hence the state of decay as well as ridiculousness of some of the upgrades. Honestly though, the situation is the same across Europe where the stock is old/ survived the wars.
There are still building codes and laws in Europe, you know. I lived 30 years in a flat in the attic of a house from the 1880's. Everything was up to code and safer than the s**t in these photos.
Load More Replies... Rough calculation, your 11.50pm is my 9.50pm Lol, it's perfect for evening scrolling!
Load More Replies... "not sitting on a bolder" - I lived on the side of a mountain in an area that had experienced glacial activity eons before. The house across the street had one back corner that sat on a boulder that took up the entire back of the yard (what yard?) And then disappeared into the side of a hill behind the home. Ice vs rock? Ice wins every time. Geology 101 The mountain also had a fault line that ran across the top of it and unfortunately the only road going over the mountain ran right over it. In the winter the road actually raised up about 2 inches on one side of the fault. It was very disconcerting to drive over it going to work. Come Springtime, it leveled out. But hey, on a clear cloudless pollution free day, you could see Manhattan 35 miles away and the twin towers slowly being built. That was cool...
So much mould. I doubt this is just a Boston problem tho this is just where these inspectors work. I've seen and lived in some real shockers in my day and I'm not american. Mould is the worst though it stinks it makes u sick and it generally grows in the cold and damp. I learned quick to look at the backs of the curtains when checking out a rental
Also, give the bottoms of the walls under windows a quick push. If it has any give whatsoever, it's moisture compromised and definitely has mold (at the very least.)
Load More Replies... I know I am late to the party, but having bought half a duplex, learned how stupid that was the hard way, then bought a condo in a larger complex (and looked at a whole slew of places each time) in Boston, absolutely none of this surprises me and in fact I have seen worse first hand (we took down an unused chimney in that first duplex just lifting bricks off with our hands). I'm not saying Boston is the worst, but it lets developers get away with keeping some amazingly bad stuff if they "don't alter the frame or foundation". Add that to most houses being over a hundred years old with some older than the USA, and there is definitely some cringe worthy building.
I did a remodel on an old mobile office once. During demo we found a rotten hunk of moldy metal that used to be a water heater completely sealed up in the corner behind the base cabinets. Literally the only way to get to it would be take out the countertop or destroy outside floors or walls.
The house I live in used to have a car jack holding up part of the ground floor. That's fixed now but my floor still has several dips. I am lucky that my roof is still good. House was cheaply built in 1927.
Since some of these defects (or incompetence) are at the very foundation, how on earth these houses pass safe occupancy inspections? Or is that not a thing in the that town?
Safety is a thing, but the cost of retrofitting or repairing is often more than the house might be worth. So people mask it as best they can and there we go. Alas.
Load More Replies... DIY is fine... But keep in mind that there is a REASON things are done a certain way (even if you don't know what the reason is).
Load More Replies...