Mike Holmes Special in Cali

I watched a bit of the 2 hour Mike Holmes special in California last night. It was an old show which I had not seen before and the program info says that it was sponsored by the Ellen show and the DIY network.

In any event these home owners had been taken by a contractor for $204,000 and had been left with what looked to be a wooden shack. Mike Holmes came down to California to fix this home and we all learned a bit about the local building code, designed to handle earthquakes.

Holmes Inspection - Roof Issues

I watched another Holmes Inspection show. It's amazing to see what a home inspector can miss but what a home builder like Mike Holmes can find just by looking at the home.

In this case the big issues start with the front of the house with 4 layers of shingles rotting out the front roof. While in the back of the house there was a large flat roof that didn't have the proper finishing coat.

Interesting enough, it seems that the prior home owners rushed the home inspection because they were having a dinner party thus cutting the inspection down from 2.5 hours to 1.

If I ever hear that line I'm going to look twice as long and be ready to run away from the house.

Holmes Inspection - Leaky House

I caught an eposide of Holmes Inspection late last night on HGTV it is always an amazing show to watch since it shows how poorly made some homes are.

In this show Mike was dealing with a 7 year old home that leaked. The problem was that the home owners had one heck of a time finding the source of the leaks since it wasn't coming in from the roof. Now the home owners had insurance and the insurance company was willing to pay to replace all the damage that occured from the water but it seems it wasn't there responsibility to get the original problem fixed and that is where Mike Holmes came in.

Mike quickly determined that that the bricks where not properly set and the flashing and sealing around the window sills was not properly sealed. So as a result water was getting into the bricks, freezing since the home was located in Toronto Canada and further damaging the bricks to allow more water into the house.

Of course this was just the first problem Mike found, other were improperly support stairs and not enough insulation to other improper seals that allows fumes from the garage to get into the house.

It was big dollars to fix theses problems thankfully for the home owners Holmes Inspection was on the job so the TV show would have picked up a lot of these costs.

Holmes Inspection - New Season

I saw an commercial this week on HGTV for Holmes Inspection. It seems that a new season is starting shortly and it's going to be opening with a 2 part Holmes Inspection special.

The commercial made it look like this home seem extra bad will pulling open walls to show an infestation of insects hidden behind a wall.

This show is looking good. I can hardly wait for it to start.

Holmes Inspection - What More Can I Say?

I was watching another show fo Holmes Inspection on HGTV this morning. It was another really interesting show with Mike finding a lot of things wrong with a home as he rips it apart.

Now of course what my problem is, is that I really have nothing new to blog about this show about. I've really enjoyed it, but the format is the same and nothing really stood out to me with this house.

If you haven't watched Holmes Inspection well you should but I'm really running out of blog topics for it.

Holmes Inspection - Outside Brick

I found a Holmes Inspection on HGTV last night. It's the first time I've seen Mike Holmes on TV in awhile.

In any event this show followed the normal format. With home buyers being concerned about their home shortly after buying it and Mike rushing in to fix up the real estate in very short order.

What impressed me most about the show is that Mike shows up and without going inside this 5 year old 2 storey home he gets the home owners to come outside the house and shows them how they have all this sloppy brick work.

Now I'm impressed with this, poor brick work on the outside of a house is not something that I world normally be able to pick out. And if people had been able to pick this out then I doubt this house would have ever been able to be sold by the builder!

Holmes Inspection - Part 2

Part 2 of last weeks Holmes Inspection was on Thursday evening. Clearly it was one way of helping to pay for that housing disaster with all of it's structual problems was to turn it into a 2 part show. I had forgot that it was going to be part 2 this week and was a few minutes late turning on this show. I did not instantly recognize the home from last week, I think that this was because they where doing a lot of foundation work on the front porch.

If you recall from last week this was an old home that with various renovations and expansions over the year had a lot of structural supports removed and it was amazing that it was still standing. In this weeks show they dealt with the area that had initially been the front porch of the home but had later been encorportated into the main house without improving the foundation structure below it.

Holmes on Homes - Bad Kitchen Reno

I saw an eposide of Holmes on Homes yesterday that I had never seen before. In this show the home owner had saved up to get a quality, kitchen reno done, asked for the entire kitchen to be gutted down to the studs, got multiple quote on the project and did not go with the least expensive quote but rather picked the big name company that was doing a lot of advertising in his area.

Well it seems that 80 to 90% of the way into the job the home owner realized that this firm was not doing the job that they had been asked to so he kicked them out but of course they had 30,000 of his money at this point.

So since this is a Mike Holmes show you know that it was the correct choice to kick these contractors out Mike ends up doing a review of the house pointing out all of the area of poor construction then proceeds to rip out the original work and gut the kitchen the way it should have been done in first place.

Once again, it was amazing to see what was uncovered, lots of live wires and issues buried behind the nice outside.

Holmes Inspection with Mike Holmes!

Mike Holmes must the be Oprah of real estate tv. As a person in the construction trades getting him to use your company on one of his tv shows must be worth a lot of new business to you!

Homes inspection is Mike's new show. I'm not certain what happened to Homes on Homes but Mike is still on TV so all is good in the world.

In last nights show Mike inspects a house in TO that has an open concept main floor. Well right away as a view you know that this is going to be trouble if Mike Holmes is their somebody has probably pulled out a structural wall.

Which is exactly what happened. The 2nd floor was sagging, loss of structural walls in the basement and the structures that did exist where not properly grounded in the basement. I am surprised that the house did not collopse.

Anyways with a quote of $300,000 to fix the house work got under way only to keep uncovering more problems.