All Forum Posts by: Jim K.

 I was not bright enough to even try to make half a million bucks at 25, so YOLO, baby, YOLO!

I have little to add, except a spin on this from a Pittsburgh perspective, the city with the oldest housing stock in America.

The older the property is, the more likely a fully-renovated/flipped property is likely to be hiding some kind of major flaw under its new interior/exterior.

 I do not remote manage. I buy houses and buildings from the droves of inexperienced investors who fail at remote managing. Just thought someone should mention here that there's ALWAYS good money in that.

@Luke Wendel

I too wish it was the kalikator. But the good news is, one way or another, change is on the way. Either one presidential candidate wins the election and does his damndest to drive interest rates down by any means necessary, or the other presidential candidate will win the election, interest rates will more or less stay where they are, and everyone in a variable rate mortgage will be forced to sell before their rate adjusts. Win-win for new investors!

@Steve Vaughan

Why, thank you.

@Vandana Sharma

So here's the first two points we've got to look at.

1. City of Pittsburgh or Allegheny County Health Department? The ACHD is the main plumbing authority county-wide.

2. Exactly what are these permit issues? Sometimes a molehill looks like a mountain with these folks.

If you're not comfortable having this discussion in public, please send me a message and connect.

Going a bit off-topic here, but I hope not much.

Since I am in this business with my wife (although I do all of the talking here on BP), I'd like to chime in and point out that we have seen a rather large number of married and unmarried couples in this business together crash and burn because they didn't wrap their heads around points like these before going into business together.

It's not going to work if you go into this together just because you're both close to broke and both just want a bit more money in your lives to make your life a bit more fun. You need a much more solid foundation to build on.

@Isaiah Williams

To break out floor tile, I use a hammer, cold chisel, a prybar, sometimes a stiff putty knife with a hammer back (the new Purdy stiff knives are great for this).

Break the tile with the chisel in the middle of the tile, chip out toward the edge. On a poorly-installed floor tile, and those are the ones that usually break, you can usually lever out pieces of the broken tile with the putty knife and hammer until you get to the edges of the tile. I then use an oscillating tool with a flat carbide rasp to grind out the existing mortar. Sometimes, when someone did a bad mortar job but a good grout job, you need to switch to the edge grinder attachment on the oscillating tool to get all the mortar. But usually not.

Clean it all out, vacuum it out, mix up just enough new mortar to backbutter a new tile and put in the mortar backing you need down on your substrate. Put your new tile into position and wiggle it in. Generally, on a poorly-installed tile floor, your correct mortar application will be too high: not using enough mortar is a hallmark of poor tile installation. Do your best to get it down to the level of the surrounding tile but don't be afraid to cheat and leave it a bit high, while short of being a toeknocker. Because you'll likely be using barely enough mortar for repair jobs like this, t's usually wise to use the most highly-modified and expensive thinset mortar you can afford for this sort of thing.

Let the installed tile set for a day and then apply premixed mortar with a putty knife and your finger (and perhaps a float) to fill in the gaps around the tile.

From Moderator: Personal insults add nothing to the discussion. If you have a differing opinion, share without the personal attacks.

@Chris Seveney

The first and only time I got a hundred upvotes was for "Hoo***s and Blo*," a three-word answer I have been strongly advised not to repeat on this site.

Some of the old McRib posts used to get a solid twenty votes, every single time. Well, a good sense of humor is a defense mechanism against abuse that develops in childhood and pays dividends for the rest of your life. We all know that.

But I have to agree with @JD Martin in that it's rare you fine someone with more than a 1:1 ratio who will routinely post off-base, baloney answers. I tend to believe there's a lot of value in that for new users. On technical handyman-type information-based threads, especially, it's common to find five or six people with fewer than a hundred votes overall who will give completely wrong or misleading answers. I think the most useful activity I perform on this site is when I come along at the end of a thread like that and I'm able to comment with some authority on what's real and what's not.@JD Martin