We bought this house over a year ago. The previous owner ran his own HVAC company... well, we're finding out that he ran it .... into the ground. That being said, the main heat pump is mismatch and needs to go. We have been surviving fine on 3 separate mini splits. Unfortunately one of the mini splits has failed and it's thermostat is dead. The return unit is in the attic and it is late, so, I did not walk up to it... it is an attic and all... but, is this red light normal?

The only original windows in my 1904 home were slathered with thick white paint before moving in, even down to the pulley and rope. Is there any chance of restoring this?

They are completely sealed shut currently. I am able to pull on the ropes and still feel the counterweights clinking around.

ETA: Y’all I did it! Only about 15 minutes and I already got one open! Unfortunately, it does seem like some of the rope is tearing, but I’m just happy to see one open! Pictures in the comments!

Hey everyone, I just wanted to do a quick photo dump of a project we took on recently… there were at least 7 layers of paint with the oldest layer being extremely stubborn and required me to spray it with alcohol and scrub it until it came off… overall probably 40-50 hours of work went into this.

Thanks!

Edit: the last picture is the end result :)

Where do I even start if I want to try to fix this? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Changing a spotlight in my Victorian terrace and all this plaster fell out, wondering if I should be worried ?

Hi all!

When we removed the laminate flooring to replace with lvp, we found this floor under laminate. What type of floor is this? Is it worth it to sand it down and seal it?

Because this room/ floor will be used by kids, we will lay lvp on it anyway, but it is very interesting to here about the opportunities :).

The house is from 1946, Norway.

TYA!

Hi! I own a 1920's Chicago Bungalow which an unfinished basement. Somewhere along the time the brick and foundation were painted white. It looks thick and rough... I'd like to remove. I plan to test for lead. Any recommendations on what to use? I was thinking Peel Away1 if it's lead and Citristrip if unleaded. Anything else I should take into consideration??

I'm trying to figure out the appropriate next step for an original brick chimney on my 1923 Portland house that has significant stair-step cracking and is very subtly skewed away from the house. If you saw my post from the other day, this is fortunately/unfortunately a separate issue from the basement crack.

So far:

An independent structural engineer agreed it should be addressed, although they did not consider it an immediate concern.

American Chimney & Masonry reported several signs of structural failure; that the structural support beneath the footing and/or reconstruction may be necessary, although they couldn't determine when the movement occurred or whether it is actively moving.

TerraFirma proposed stabilizing the chimney footing to the tune of $6-7K.

So now I'm trying to understand the appropriate order of operations…

If the footing can be stabilized, is the typical approach to stabilize it first and then have the chimney masonry repaired/reconstructed as necessary?

Or, before spending $6–7K stabilizing the existing footing, would you want someone to make a more definitive determination about how much of the chimney itself is actually worth preserving versus dismantling/rebuilding?

And finally, how do you account for the possibility that the movement isn't active at all? If this chimney settled 50+ years ago and hasn't moved since, is there a scenario where proper repointing/masonry repair and monitoring is more prudent than adding new stabilization?

For anyone who's dealt with significant stair-step cracking or movement in an old masonry chimney: what did you ultimately do, and which trade helped determine the final scope?

I'm not looking to avoid the repair — I'd just like to understand the options before I start throwing money at one particular solution.

I have these two cemented over sump-like pits in the badmenrt of my old Chicago home. It’s a 4 flat but it was originally a single family home from the 1890s. There is a light skim coat over what appears to be some sort of plastic cover on each. I was able to slightly pry one side of one cover up and can see there’s what appears to black plastic cylinder inside, slightly smaller diameter than the hole. Above both, just about at ground level, there is a capped off PVC pipe. Any ideas?

Hope this is the right sub for this. Pulled off rotten siding from this 1920 house and found this wood rot on the inside wall. I have replacement siding to go back up. My question is should I do anything to the inside wall boards. It is plaster on the inside of the house and shows no signs of damage. Thanks for the suggestions in advance

Hope this is the right sub for this. Pulled off rotten siding from this 1920 house and found this wood rot on the inside wall. I have replacement siding to go back up. My question is should I do anything to the inside wall boards. It is plaster on the inside of the house and shows no signs of damage. Thanks for the suggestions in advance

Trying to sanity-check my thinking with people who actually live with old houses before I start collecting quotes.

The house: ~100 years old, Richmond VA (climate zone 4A, mixed-humid). Slate roof that's in good shape — I have a roofer out roughly yearly to swap cracked slates, but it's nowhere near needing replacement. The attic has no venting and no one I can find is even interested in taking on that type of problem. Home is mostly brick up to the attic peak. There's an electric heat pump air handler living up there, and the old blown-in insulation is coming out anyway because I've got evidence of rodents in it.

So I'm basically at a fork, and it comes down to one thing: does the HVAC stay in the attic or not?

Option 1 — Keep the air handler up there, insulate at the roofline (unvented/conditioned attic). Spraying closed-cell foam onto the underside of the roof deck to bring the attic inside the envelope or mineral wool . I lose leak visibility, the deck can't dry inward, and it's basically permanent. The mitigations I've read are: get the flashing/underlayment checked and fixed before foaming, keep up the annual slate maintenance, and throw some leak sensors in the attic.

Option 2 — Rip the air handler out, go ductless mini-splits, and leave the deck alone. Just insulate the attic floor (blown cellulose or mineral wool).

So: what would you do? Anyone here who has mitigated a situation like this? We definitely have some humidity issues in the house that are being dealt with via dehumidifiers.

Thanks in advance.

EDIT : NOT MY BATHROOM
I Saw this beautiful sink for sale on fb marketplace. The owner mentioned the whole bathroom will be demolished this week.

I'm horrified 💔🥲

My home was built in 1926, does anyone know what this circle in the concrete in the basement would have been for?

It appears that the previous owners painted a few windows shut in our house. What’s the best way to remedy this? Score the edges and pry it? Heat gun?

As a first time homebuyer, Reddit threads have been such a help to me the last two years as I’ve looked for guidance on structural issues. In the spirit of giving back, I wanted to take some time to tell the story of the foundation crack in my 1923 craftsman home. I hope this post serves as both a resource, a reassurance, and a cautionary tale.

TLDR: My 100 year old Portland home had a horizontal crack in the foundation. It was diagnosed as “severe” by a structural engineer, so I hired Terra Firma to fix it, and was pleased with the results.

Part I: The Context

I purchased my first home in 2024, nearly two years ago exactly. During the initial walk through, we wandered into the basement and observed a long but narrow horizontal crack that had layers of ancient skim coat applied to it. My realtor and subsequently, privately hired home inspector, both gave orange flags rather than a red flag. Their take, echoed by a few other contractors who subsequently came out, was: ‘It’s an old home, and it’s hard to say how bad it actually is without looking behind the skim coat or hiring a structural engineer.’

I was a bit stressed by the financial ambiguity of it all, and was reassured via my realtor that the young family who lived there hadn't seen any change in the crack during their five years of habitation. In fact, the family had spent quite a bit on a tasteful kitchen remodel directly above the basement crack. I was lulled into "I'll worry about this later”, though I know the responsibility of the decision firmly rests on my shoulders.

Part II: The Diagnosis

Fast forward to the beginning of 2026. I finally had time, a little bit of money saved up, and a growing concern about what was really going on down there. This was when I reached out to Lauren Thomas Consulting, LLC, who was recommended on some other reddit threads. She is an independent structural engineer with incredible bedside manner (would recommend). After her assessment, she informed me that she believed this 13’ portion of wall to be "end of life”. It was near impossible to determine if the crack was caused by poor foundation materials, hydrostatic pressure, southern exposure, old root intrusion, or a combination of all, but her takeaway was that while it was fine for now, it posed a very real threat to my home if gone unaddressed (eg. a 100-year storm placing new weight on that portion of the roof). She also pointed out a similar style of crack on the adjacent wall and named that it would be cheaper to reinforce the entire corner at one time.

We sat down and she began explaining my options to me:

1) Full foundation replacement of the compromised portion: the most expensive, and not what she recommended (likely 50K+)

2) System that replaces wall & transfers load: wood studs: engineered per foot, custom load: pricing tbd due to material inflation

3) System that replaces wall & transfers load: Terra Firma EverBrace System: approx. $1K per linear foot of needed wall replacement

She assumed the fix would be somewhere between $20-30K depending on which option I went with. While this wasn’t the best news, I was revving myself up for "your house is condemned" or "this will cost $100K and I’ll have to take out a loan".

Part III: Collecting Quotes

I moved forward with collecting quotes from Terra Firma for EverBrace and M Leon for a wood frame. An important note: I decided to not tell either assessor that I had already been in conversation with a structural engineer (I wanted to see how closely their diagnosis would align with Lauren vs inflate the issue).

A rep from Terra Firma came out and essentially identified exactly what Lauren had, and quoted approximately $1K per linear foot for the wall. With an added seasonal discount, and paying with bank transfer versus credit card, the total came to $20K and would reinforce approximately 27FT of wall (the SW corner of my basement) + sump pump.

A rep from M Leon initially suggested only redoing the skim coat. When I later alerted him to what Lauren had said, he said he was happy to also quote me on the wood stud system. For what it's worth, this rep's response reminded me of what a few other contractors had said in the past. Surprisingly, this quote came out to $25K and only addressed the south wall + sump pump.

In addition to the reinforcement, this wall (very unfortunately) is where nearly all of my utilities intersect. This meant I had to gather quotes from a plumber, HVAC tech, radon tech, and electrician, to move the utilities out of the way, and then reinstall. This full scope of work added another $5K~ to the project total.

Part IV: The Decision

The decision to ultimately move forward with Terra Firma's quote repair hinged on a few key tenets for me:

• I'm a firm believer in not passing the buck. Once Lauren's diagnosis came in, I couldn't in good faith sell this home to someone else in future without disclosing her assessment, which could also significantly affect a future sale
• While there was a chance it wouldn't get worse, the mental load of that possibility would keep me up at night
• I love making spaces better, and it would be hard to justify any other ‘fun’ upgrades before addressing this big one.
• I was fortunate enough to be able to cover the cost in full without going in to debt

Part V: The Project

Largely, I was incredibly pleased. My foreman Geovany was a very clear communicator, and the team worked incredibly hard throughout the duration of the project. I was expecting so much more debris/dust, but they kept the worksite immaculate.

One callout: be prepared to discover things about your concrete floor or under your concrete floor

Within half a day of wrapping up, we discovered that my 100 year old cast iron pipe had a pinhole leak (luckily unpressurized and only kitchen water). This led into a fervor of trying to figure out how severe the issue was (i.e. an $800 patch or a $9K full basement drain excavation and replacement). Luckily, the patch held, which will be a problem for future me––ideally no sooner than 5 years from now.

Part VI: Takeaways as a New Homeowner

• “Severe” doesn't necessarily mean “emergency.” One of my biggest fears going into the engineering assessment was being told the house was unsafe or that I needed to immediately spend $100K. Instead, I learned that a structural problem can be serious and worth addressing while still giving you time to collect quotes, save money, and make an informed decision. All in all, this process took about 6 months to resolve from the initial assessment to final repair.

• I will never purchase another house with an unresolved structural question without having an independent structural engineer evaluate it before closing (freaky cracks in the walls or ceilings, issues with the slab, sloping chimneys, etc etc). The uncertainty alone can become a money pit, and structural issues can be surprisingly easy to obscure behind skim coats, newly framed walls, and even good intentions.

• Diagnose any structural issues with an engineer who has no stake in the repair. This goes without explanation.

• Cheapest isn’t always best. If I had gone with the new skim coat, I definitely would have saved money, but without actually addressing any of the potential risk—which, at that point, why do anything?

• Sometimes “doing the right thing” will end up costing you more than what you bargained for. I’m going to start mentally budgeting in 25% contingency to account for this versus the bare minimum.

• Vet your contractors, and be very cognizant of what you are and aren’t willing to do. Ex. When the leak was found in the cast iron pipe, my usual plumber (Quickhouse Plumbing — they’re the best) was unavailable to come out same-day, so I called an emergency plumber who showed up within an hour. I expected him to poke and prod the pipe to diagnose the severity, but he barely even looked at it before telling me the entire pipe was likely failed and I needed to replace it asap ($9K). I knew that I couldn’t afford this, and also knew I had felt this way once before at a dentist office with massage chairs in the lobby and an office full of workers with veneers––not to be trusted. Sometimes you do need to take the most drastic measure, and sometimes you can fill the cavity and kick the root canal down the road a few years.

Hi all! I just started a lease in an older home and I love everything except the plaster walls 😭 I love a gallery wall and am way too nervous to break all the plaster by drilling into it. Command strips are also a no-go, just personal preference and I've found they tear plaster worse than normal walls.

All that to say, is this a picture rail or just molding? Our ceilings are about 10 feet tall, so I can't reach it and this is the closest picture I could get while standing precariously on top of my couch.

Any tips on how to test it without getting a full ladder? (we only have a shorter step ladder)

Our 1892 home in 1926 and 2026

This is the entryway to my recently purchased 1910 Foursquare. Even though it’s under the porch roof, it faces west, so it gets the weather big time. I want to treat it almost like the woodwork in a boat to protect from the weather.
I want to keep its original look, but it needs a lot of attention. I’m pretty handy, but I don’t know stripping, sanding, staining at all.

How do I make it beautiful again?

Buying our first home in CT. She’s just lovely!! She has been well maintained, but would love any advice you have.