Plumbing repair

Wednesday, January 30th, 2008

As I suspected the old cast iron pipe had rotted out underneath the basement floor of my rental unit. My buddy Paul (who has his own plumbing company) stopped by to take a look, and after a few swings of the sledge hammer, found the bottom of an elbow joint completely corroded out to the point where the high flow rate from the spin cycle of the washing machine was forcing water out from under the foundation and back through the stone wall of the basement.

I told him to go ahead and fix the problem, as it …


If it weren’t for the termites…

Saturday, January 5th, 2008

This afternoon I went over an looked at the property I’ve been watching for a few months. From the outside looking in, it appeared to be a rehab project that simply ran out of money. It’s typically opportunities like this that widen the margin on a deal, as most of the expensive stuff has already been taken care of by someone else.

Walking in through the front door, it was evident that the place had been lived in since the renovations took place. The carpet was dirty and stained, and there were remnants of belongings (crayons, broken pencils, etc) left in the kitchen drawers.

The walls in the …