The worst horror stories - help us all learn what you've learned

[Ritch Bonisa]

I'm lucky, I get to talk to investors all around the world.  I learn something new on a daily basis.  I'm thankful for that.  I also understand that we don't learn anything unless someone else learned the hard way.  

I'm asking for some of those instances when you learned - "the hard way".  Please share a horror story if you can, but also please share what you learned from it.  This can be very helpful to newer investors and I think everyone who comes here wants to connect and learn something new.  

Keep it short if possible - and Thanks for your participation!

[Deanna McCormick]

@Tony SanFilippo

Cat Pee Flip.. yup did a 4 br house,, the attached garage was her cat kennel.. pee up to the rafters.. and they got in crawl space from garage to behind the fire place.. so all the insulation between garage and house was reeking with cat pee and odor,, so off came the sheet rock between house and garage and interior on same common wall.. we had to Kilz the fireplace block up to the roof.. interior brick was ok but all way up to roof of garage was bad. The sheet rock in roof of garage was urine soaked because cats were up in the insulation.. so that all came down, we had to kilz the entire interior of garage to seal all the framing and put in new windows. and garage doors. 

I scraped off crystallized dried cat urine from the floor in double garage, using a garden hoe, then we power washed it, used hydrogen peroxide in gallon jugs from beauty supply applied that to help get more of the urine up and off.. Finally I used gallons of paint stripper, poured that on let it sit for a bit and it actually lifted the cat pee right up into a yellow foam.. and that actually took it off the cement floor.. we after several months using various products and then odor killers... found Odor medic to work the best for us.. along with Ozone machine..Final finish to cement was we painted with a cement sealer paint. 

Inside was terrible also all sub floors in most rooms had to be replaced and those not were sealed with kilz. all sheet rock was removed at least 24 inches up from floors in every room and all base trim gone,, we kilz the studs before repairing the wall and putting back that sheet rock and also kilz the floor joists where we removed sub floor.. new insulation and new rock. , 

We got house for 191K sold for 430K cleared about 70 K and took us much longer than expected..

Worst job ever, never thought it would ever smell good enough to put on market but we won.. after a couple of asthma attacks and lots of labor.. the city had lived trapped about 40 cats previous owner was feeding out of her garage along with about a dozen she had inside..