At the end of each year, I post our Top 20 Home Inspection Photos. These photos are usually of some of the most egregious, hilariously wrong conditions that we’ve found during home inspections, and they all come from photos that we’ve shared throughout the year on our Facebook page. That post will be coming next week. This year, however, I’ve started sharing some of our favorite photos of cool or unusual finds during home inspections. We don’t find nearly as much good or interesting stuff as we do bad stuff, but we like to share it when we come across it.
Huge shower, old house, recent remodel
Drain under walkway – I’ve complained blogged about home builders not providing any method for water to drain away from the home, but this builder got it right! They installed a $5 section of corrugated drain in the yard before the walkway was poured. Nice detail.
Welded steel newel post – The owner’s explanation: “I don’t like $#!% moving.” It sure didn’t move. Well done, buddy.
Stairway no nowhere – while at first this seems a little bit silly, and it’s arguably an attractive nuisance for kids, just think about what happens over most stairways to the basement. Either there’s a closet behind the stairway or the whole area is open. This is a pretty neat alternative.
Permanent Improvement – while super old insulation isn’t necessarily a good thing, it was cool to see this old certificate from 1956, which bragged about the permanent improvement to the property from three inches of insulation. Click on the photo to see a large version.
Bonafide Asbestos – how can you tell if floor tiles contain asbestos? 1. They’re 9″ x 9″ tiles. 2. There’s a box nearby saying they’re bonafide vinyl asbestos tiles. While asbestos isn’t considered a good thing, the actual risk created by these tiles is essentially zero, unless someone decides to take a belt sander to them. At any rate, what makes this so cool is that they still had the box!
That’s not a subpanel. Click on the photo to see what someone used this box for.
Strong Stairway – it’s quite unusual to find a big chunk of concrete used as the stairway stringer for residential construction.
Original Appliances from 1956 – they still worked too. The second photo below shows the wall mounted refrigerator.
27 Year-Old Virgin – original oven, home built in 1987. The racks were still wrapped in plastic.
Nice solution – here’s what to install if you have an old two-handle bathroom sink faucet with separate spouts for hot and cold. Click here for an example of what this fixes.
Nice garage lights – these beat the heck out of any work light.
Linters Insulation – ever seen or heard of it? We hadn’t either, but here it is. It’s apparently a cotton based product.
This stuff was featured in an issue of Popular Mechanics from 1940:
Curtain rods are expensive. EMT goes for 33¢ / ft at Home Depot.
Coolest playhouse ever
If you like these images, please “like” our Facebook page or “plus one” our Google+ Page. We post these types of photos on Saturdays when we have them.
Author: Reuben Saltzman, Structure Tech Home Inspections
