As you can see from the pictures, we wound up cleaning out the old joining cement and reinforced the entire walls.A friggin' nightmare.

This is a self-inflicted wound!

I'm also an IT person by trade, too, and somehow wound up owning a property management company.

I bought it as a primary residence with the intention of living in it for a few years then renting it out.I wound up selling mine because the HOA fees increased 3 times in over 2 years from $445 to $605 a month and the increasing crime in the area and the pro-tenant laws (it was going to be difficult to get a non-paying tenant out from talking to other landlords). 

Wound up digging up the entire original cast iron sewer pipe and discovered it had almost completely rusted out.

One dead, the other wounded but alive. 

We hit some red tape and wound up cutting our losses. 

I wound up ordering my cabinets and adding a peninsula for additional counter space.  

I wound up foreclosing on both of them and made about $50K on them. 

The quotes for putting a bandaid over a bullet wound are silly and in the end will cost you more than doing it right the first time.