Waste of money and effort

Yesterday I visited a home that was vacated and under foreclosure.  The realtor tells me that the homeowner tried to fix up this home  to add value to it and sell it on his own.  He failed.  He failed because he did not have a clue what he was doing.  I spent over 3 hours at the home putting together a list of things that needed to be fixed, changed, finished and CORRECTED.  What I saw was very disturbing.

The homeowner installed a few new windows to replace the poorly built and leaking old ones.  While this would normally add value to a home and be appreciated by future buyers he did it completely wrong.  Take a look at this picture.

Notice the upper left corner of the picture.  What you see here is the original header and part of the trimmer stud that supported the left end of the header for the original window.  The homeowner went to the local box store, bought a stock size window, tore out the old one and attempted to put the LARGER stock size window in without reframing the opening.  The roof load is now pushing down on the header and transfering the load to the window.  The header should have been removed and a LONGER header installed with proper bearing from header to the floor.  He thought he could just close this up with some trim and sell his home with "new windows".

Besides the structural issues here, the window was not installed properly with Tyvek wrap and tape at the perimeter, caulking, foam perimeter insulation or proper fasteners.  It will now cost hundreds of dollars per window to correct this and even more if the windows can not be salvaged.  The home can not be sold in this condition.

Bottom line, if you don't know what you are doing please stop before it gets worse.  Hire me as a consultant if anything and get the job done right. 

There are many more photos like this to post.  Stay tuned.