Custom Search
|
|
A Review Of 401 4th Avenuewest Mobridge South Dakota 57601 Home For Sale
We have seen this property and I would describe it as an oil painting. The place is pleasing from a distance, but once you get close enough to see the details the beauty is lost. This home truly needs a lot of investment and I saw nothing that convinced me that this property is worth the listed price. Everything that I read online relative to this dwelling is completely accurate. One thing that has not been mentioned, that you deserve to understand is that there is an aging garden shed in the rear. This shack measures about 11x10 and is wood framed. The It has to be one of those “pre-built” garden sheds. This unit is quite old and some of the corners have seen water damage. What is confusing about this shed is that it sits on the back corner of the lot, very far from the back door and it is so close to the fence that mowing between the shed and the fence would be a miracle. The shed also limits access to the back gate. Additionally, the back yard is surrounded by numerous kinds of fencing. Along the rear of the property is an old six foot wooden privacy fence that is in serious need of repair or replacement. Along another side, separating the 401 4th Ave West lot from the adjacent property is a short wooden fence of maybe 4 feet tall. Elesewhere they has used a dog pen to to be used as a barrier across the east side. Last, another squat wooden fence connects the south side of the house to a bushy hedge that covers the complete length of the backyard. The hedge is really the only marginally attractive aspect in this area and when I was there it was in dire need of clipping and shaping. All of the fencing should be removed and replaced with all new wood. Moving inside, standing in the dining area you can clearly see evidence of significant water leaking through the ceiling. The ceiling is covered with old fibrous tiles and once wet they become warped and brittle. These have been wet more than once. To correct this, the entire ceiling should be removed and dry wall installed and a modern texture applied. Of course, you will need to address the cause of the water leaking through the ceiling or you will have new problems. Every window in this house needs to be replaced. It would appear that the home has the original windows and they are in poor condition. Most either do not have a way to put external storm windows in or the storm windows are missing. As far as I can recall there are approximately 11 to 14 windows in this structure. Replacement costs will be quite high because these are not standard window sizes so you can expect to pay upwards of $800 or more for each window. You do not have to worry about replacing the kitchen windows (or maybe you should worry) because the kitchen cabinets have been built over the windows. Replacement would require removal of almost the entire kitchen wood work. The kitchen looks like an extremely low-budget version of HGTV. Instead of installing a copper backsplash, someone actually glued cheap, tacky vinyl ceiling tiles to the walls. They did not bother to cut out spaces for things like light switches and outlets either. It looks like a very bad amateur kitchen facelift. Interestingly, they used vinyl ceiling tiles on the walls, and then decided to use faux painted wall paper on the ceiling. Maybe this kitchen was built for Willy Wonka and the walls are the ceiling and the ceiling is the walls. The appliances are totally unremarkable. Nothing in this kitchen says, “wow” except the bad things. The floor covering is “ok” except for the unprofessional transition from the kitchen into the pantry/out house. Not that having a commode in your pantry is not strange enough, but they opted to glue the mismatched seams of the linoleum instead of installing a proper transition strip. No doubt another money-saving idea. Earlier I referred to this house as an oil painting. Every room in this house has paint that is meant to cover up some imperfection. This house is filled with outdated, cheap, thin, wood paneling and every square inch of it has been painted. The person who lived here obviously thought that you could faux paint your way to happiness. After seeing the water damage in the dining room, I wondered what the painted wallpaper on the kitchen ceiling was meant to hide. The floors in the living room/dining room are some of the worst I have ever seen (that was until I went upstairs, but more on that later.) They have obviously been refinished, again by an amateur with a limited budget. There are several holes drilled through the living room floor to the basement. I assume these are to pass wires from one floor to another. After all, it is much cheaper and a lot easier to drill a hole the size of your thumb in the floor then to actually have wires and outlets installed in the walls, right? Speaking of holes, there is a hole that goes totally through the outside wall of the house in the middle of the longest wall in the living room. This hole is about 2.5 inches in diameter and houses some kind of metal pipe. The hole and pipe, I assume to save money, have been filled with expanding foam, presumably to block air and rodents. The foam has begun to disintegrate and will needs to be replaced with new expanding foam or, the better solution would be to have the pipe removed and the hole professionally repaired. This is simply another in the long list of costs that a new owner can expect to face. Moving downstairs to the basement, you will see that this basement is for the most part unfinished. It is quite obvious that this basement has been the host of more than one flood. The closet doors are made from cheap (I seem to be using that word a lot) particle board, which like the ceiling tiles in the dining room turn to crumbly dust when wet. You can clearly tell that there has been water damage, but once again, it has been artfully camouflaged with paint. The darker and more disturbing issue in this basement is that of raw, untreated sewage flooding. Insurance companies call this “black water” flooding and it is meant to be treated like biohazard, because is a BIOHAZARD! This was taken from an information resource on plumbing problems, “Once they happen, sewer backups can be the most expensive and difficult to overcome. Typically they happen as a result of heavy rains that overwhelm the city sewer system such that the water pressure in the system forces the sewage back up into home basements.” The emotional damage of having inches of human excrement bubbling into your home si bad enough, but to consider the health consequences is worse. One article warns, “If a sewer backup occurs, proper cleanup procedures must be followed for safety reasons.” Raw sewage contamination, if not properly treated by a professional cleaning service, can cause the growth of several molds and bacteria that can cause serious health concerns. Wikipedia reports the following about the most common bacteria associated with human excrement, “diseases that may coincide with fecal coliform contamination include ear infections, dysentery, typhoid fever, viral and bacterial gastroenteritis, and hepatitis A.” Another common basement contamination follow raw sewage contamination is black mold. Here is what one might expect while living n the home where black mold has been allowed to grow: Depending on the length of exposure and volume of spores inhaled or ingested, symptoms can manifest as chronic fatigue or headaches, fever, irritation to the eyes, mucous membranes of the mouth, nose and throat, sneezing, rashes, and chronic coughing. In severe cases of exposure or cases exacerbated by allergic reaction, symptoms can be extreme including nausea, vomiting, and bleeding in the lungs and nose. That does not sound nice at all! Another site warns, “Then you'll need to remove all porous items that are wet and cannot be cleaned or dried. Porous items may include wallpaper, carpeting, drywall, insulation, paper, wood and fabrics.” You can clearly see that none of the wood or wall material in this basement has been replaced. If you tour the house located at 401 4th Ave West, Mobridge, SD, be sure to look at the underside of the kitchen floor. This is located directly over the furnace in the basement. The new floor covering in the kitchen hides the fact that the kitchen floor has been subjected to long term moisture damage. This is clearly visible from the basement. Another concern is the furnace. This furnace is one of the oldest I have ever seen and it runs on fuel oil (diesel fuel) which is stored in a big dirty tank right beside the washer and dryer. The smell is almost overwhelming and I would not enjoy doing my laundry and smelling diesel fumes all the time. The heating system is an old, outdated hot water system. This causes me to have concerns about air flow in the home. With a forced air system you at least have air circulating from one floor to the next. With a hot water system you do not. This makes maintaining a consistent temperature from one floor to the next almost impossible. One room of the house, the smallest bedroom, does not even have a radiator installed so I can only imagine how cold it must be in that room in the winter. Couple the lack of a heat source with the old leaky windows and this room might double as a refrigerator, if not a freezer. The upstairs is another example of cutting corners and saving money. The floors are a total joke. They are pine tongue and groove and have been refinished, perhaps by the same amateur do-it-yourselfer that has left his or her fingerprints on every other room of this house. Walking around on the 2nd floor is like a trip to a Fun House. With each step, you never know exactly which direction the floor will cant or lean. Every inch of flooring in the upstairs rooms will have to be replaced. In fact, the entire 2nd story needs a major facelift. The wood paneling needs to be replaced with dry wall. The bedroom doors are old and worn. Outdated wood cabinets in one bedroom are a poor substitute for a closet. The “master bedroom” is built under the slope of the roof which makes half of the room useless unless you are under 5 feet 3 inches tall. The master has only one small closet that is set back in the wall to the point of being mostly useless. On a scale of 1 to 10, I give the bedrooms a 3 for function. The closet space in the two larger rooms is unacceptable. The smaller room has a medium sized closet, but I do not want to spend a South Dakota winter in a bedroom with no heat. The odd slope of the ceiling makes a large portion of the master unusable. The walls, doors, flooring, and windows all need replacing. There is absolutely no cooling system in this house. I can only imagine how one might go about cooling all 3 levels with window unit air conditioners and I shudder to think of how expensive that might be. Not to mention, who wants tacky air conditioners hanging out of every window of their home? In closing, the previous owners of the property located at 401 4th Ave West, Mobridge, SD 57601, should have spent a little more time “improving” their home and a little less time painting over the imperfections. This “paint it and forget it” strategy makes me fearful of the dirty secrets that are likely hiding behind the faux finishes and band-aid repairs. Obviously I cannot recommend this property, but if you are masochistic or you love a challenging project, be sure to get a highly qualified home inspector to go over this property from top to bottom. The investment of a little extra time before you buy will very likely save you tens of thousands of dollars and years of heartache after you buy. Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com Allen Berens is a life-long resident of Walworth County South Dakota and enjoys hunting and fishing in the rich Lake Oahe area. He regularly comments on areas of interest to residents of Mobridge, Selby and Glenham, SD. You can read more of his writing by following this link: Allen Berens DUI, of by a Google search for "Allen Berens DUI". |
|