My brother recently rented a house that in my opinion was far below par considering the shape it was in. The owner of said house said she thought the house was fine and she wasn't going to put anymore money into it. Had it been me, I would have found another house but my brother took on the challenge and as a family we gathered up the troops and started work.

Problem #1- gutters on the roof had not been cleaned out in years so they were full of pine needles, sticks and other debris and were sagging as well as causing rot.

Solution: Had the owners bothered to clean out the gutters at least once a year, they would have saved the couple of thousand dollars they are now going to have to spend on new Facia and Soffits. IT took me 15 minutes to clean out all of the gutters. Now I ask, isn't 15 minutes of your time worth it to save $2000 or more or are you just so rich you don't mind throwing away money?

Problem #2- every sink in the house had been allowed to leak under the sinks and over the years the water leak rotted the cabinet bottoms.

Solution: Ever so often you should check under your sinks for moisture. If you see moisture...do something about it! IF you aren't a do it yourselfer then hire a plumber. It would have been cheaper to have fixed these issues a long time ago rather than replacing all of the cabinet bottoms now.

Problem #3- Grease covering all of the walls in the kitchen.

Solution- Install a hood vent that vents outside and make sure you clean the filter in it at least monthly(this house originally had one but someone put a microwave over the stove and left no hood vent so the stove had nowhere to vent to except the walls and surrounding cabinets)

Problem #4- Wallpaper that was old, peeling and attracting roaches

Solution- forget installing wallpaper to begin with! Wallpaper has a glue substance on the back which attracts roaches and ants which can be a big problem in the south. When you combine the moisture from the kitchen (steam from the stove with nowhere to go), the bugs eating the sweet glue and the fact that a year from now that style will be outdated, it just is not worth it to install wallpaper. For those who already did, buy a wallpaper scorer at a home improvement store, score the paper, use a warm water and liquid fabric softener spray mix to spray the wall down, one 3 foot area at a time and use a wallpaper scraper to gently scrape the paper off. It took me 6 hours to remove all of the paper from this kitchen and dining room but the end result was a new modern looking kitchen without fruit baskets that most people would not like.

Problem #5- No grass on the front lawn.

Solution- grass can't grow under layers of leaves and pine needles. In order to grow, grass needs water and sun. At the very least you should rake up the leaves and pine needles twice a year. In this case, we are having to bring in some dirt and sow some grass seed since it had obviously been years since a rake was used on the yard. I found interesting things under those leaves such as several garden tools, hundreds of Corona lids and even a hammer.

Problem #6- Shoddy repair work throughout the house ensuring cracked floor tiles, cracked showers and tubs, lights that short out the house when you turned them on, etc.

Solution- You get what you pay for. Sure it's nice that so and so's cousin is "in the business" and can do the work for cheap but if they do a bad job, you pay more trying to fix their mistakes. Check references, ask for pictures of other work they have completed, check licensing and if all else fails take a class on how to do it yourself. They are FREE at most major home improvement stores.

Long story short, it will take my brother 2-4 years of living in that rental to recoup what he spent on repairing and updating and cleaning this house so it was livable (although it only cost him some pizzas to "pay" my husband and I to help). The home owner now has a home that might actually sell if she ever decides to. Why she thought the house was "Fine" is beyond me. I hate to see what she does to her new house! Least I forget, paint the whole house with one neutral color. You may like red, blue and mint green but most buyers/renters aren't going to like having a red living room, blue master bedroom and mint green kitchen. Try to stay neutral!

Don't let this become your house.