Expert Eye: Welcome Home    

When you’re finally able to buy a house, you might be on a high! Until you ask a contractor if he thinks you’ll be able to be settled there within two months, and he laughs at you. Here’s a quick guide on some things to look at before buying a house:

Floors

Pull up a loose corner of wall-to-wall carpet. Hardwood below? Great! Just a subfloor underneath it? It will be relatively inexpensive to install vinyl flooring or a new carpet, but expensive to install wood or tile floors.

Check below oddly placed carpets for damaged flooring.

Feel how soft the floors seem as you walk around. If a floor feels spongey, you may need to install both new flooring and subflooring.

Replacing tiles is not an easy fix. Every built-in item in the room first must be uninstalled. Doing a mud job over the old floor and installing new tiles without removing the old will lead to more problems down the line.