My wife and I are currently looking into purchasing our first house. We hired a home inspector to inspect the home and we were both quite impressed with his throughout knowledge. I hope to learn enough about home inspections to do my own in the future, but for now hiring someone was a wise investment of our funds.

A couple of tips he passed down to me during the inspection were worthy of sharing on a broader platform. I also wish to remember them and therefore will record them here.

  1. When Caulking around bathroom/kitchen sinks, tile, corners, windows, etc. follow these steps. A) Put down the bead of caulk, just as you would normally. B) Spray Windex (or another soapy solution) around the the areas you applied the bead. C) Press the bead into the cracks (just as you would). The soapy solution will prevent the caulk from sticking to other surfaces as you smash it into it’s proper place. Note: this will only work with 100% silicon caulk (the white or the clear).
  2. When inspecting a house always check the grade of the soil around the house. If the soil is slanted toward the home, especially if there are no gutters attached to the home, there’s a good chance water will be following the grade of the earth and flowing deeper into the earth by following the outside basement walls. If it has not already, this will lead to leaks in the basement.
  3. If there are cracks along the foundation (basement) you can install crack monitoring devices that will record if the crack is continually expanding over a course of time you live in the house. This may or may not ease the thoughts of any home buyers after you when you decide to move into another house.
  4. There always needs to be a vapor barrier down between the earth and your house. The house we are looking at might not have on under a build on addition. We were unable to inspect the space because there was no access.
  5. If you are purchasing an old, historic home (think 100 years or older), try to not make major changes to the structure of the house. Since the house is old the structure can be of value to the next potential home buyer.

More tips to come in the future.

I will be starting a “Current Projects” portion of these entries. It will consist of the work or events that I’ve been involved with in the last 24 hours or so. By doing this I hope to be more productive and to encourage others to be likewise.

Current projects:

  • Buying a home (Signing papers, working with a home inspector, real estate agent, and banks).
  • Updating the official Gentoo wiki with accurate and relevant information (you can see some of my contributions here).
  • Leading discussion with Andrew at Moody Bible studies. I will be adding some of my study notes soon.
  • Watching the movie The Firm (Tom Cruise) with my wife. Interesting movie, but lots of profanity. For most people profanity is not an issue. I’m a Christian which changes my perspective on language a bit (being a Christian changes your perspective on everything). Sometimes movies with profanity in them are too much for me and my wife. There needs to be a judgment call made if the movie is “worth” watching or not. For this movie, we ended up watching all of it, but having to skip a couple scenes. Don’t read the Wikipedia article if you don’t want spoilers.