My first rental property turned nightmare

[Greg Rose]

Rewind to 2019, I bought my first house which was a duplex. I kept the section 8 tenants on the first floor and was planning on occupying the second floor. I decided to start gutting my unit as it was beyond repair. No biggy. Well as I started gutting, it was clear the extent of water damage was never disclosed and obviously hidden. Eh what ever I can handle this. Then a couple months in, I get a call from the building inspector which kicked off a 9 month long battle to do my own electric for my unit wholeness leaving the tenants alone. Long story short, i lost that battle because of “legislative intent.” (Per the letter of the law, I was correct but I digress). As a result, I had to convert it back to a single family home as I could not do any MEP system work. Once I terminated section 8 and started demo on the first floor, I found the water damage to the interior brick extended all the way to the first floor. Both tenants and seller said water issues were stopped (what a lie)  

The picture above is my current project which is replacing a bunch of brick that were basically water damaged clay and simply would not hold the lime plaster (as a first time plasterer, it sucks especially with stuff they used in the late 1800s. Iime sand and horse hair).

So long story short, I bought a money pit that I had to gut to the studs and bricks and redo every aspect of the house. I should have dissembled it and reassembled it brick by brick. Luckily I can do about 95% of the work myself.