Home Inspection Review

We scheduled inspections for the home on Jan 23rd with Chilmark Home Inspections. Matt Brown was the inspector and we spoke at length during the appointment. He was thorough, efficient, and honest. I recommend him highly and would work with them again.

The outside temperature was 27°F, so it made for a good stress test for the windows, doors, and heating system. Overall the inspection went well aside from the age/condition of the electrical. Below is an overview of important aspects of the inspection.

HVAC

System is a natural gas hot air blower that is ~ 40 years old. It's working, but highly inefficient and is ripe for replacement. No air conditioning. I'll be looking into the EnergyWorks program to obtain a loan for an efficient replacement. I'll update when I research new units.
Current condition: 2/5

Water Heater

The current one is a 55-gal natural gas heated standard tank that's 10 years old. This is towards the end of it's life cycle but it in good working condition. I will look into replacing this as well with a tank less or more efficient system with the EnergryWorks loan.
Current condition: 3/5

Electrical

Electrical is the largest issue that turned up during the inspection. The 100amp service, while adequate for the past 30 years, will need to upgraded to 200amp. The electrical panel is full and unorganized, as well as unlabeled. The electrical also consists of a lot of knob and tube wiring and poor junction boxes. After speaking with the inspector, he strongly recommended replacing everything.
Current condition: 1/5

I need to look around for a quote to do a full-replacement. While I expected a handful of old systems in a home of this age, a full replacement warranted me going back to the seller and asking for a concession to assist with this upgrade.

Basement

The basement runs the full length of the home. The ceiling height is 7' in the unfinished area of the front of the home where the mechanicals are. Behind that, below the dining room and kitchen, there's a semi-finished section with 6' ceilings. This will work for well for storage but now much else.
Current condition: 4/5

Kitchen

The kitchen currently sits in a small room in the rear of the first floor and consists of little more than a stove and refrigerator.  I plan to move the kitchen forward into the extra large dining room. This proposed layout is how homes with similar layouts in the area position their kitchens. It also will open up the back room to laundry and a half-bath.
Current Condition: 2/5

Bedrooms

There are three bedrooms upstairs, two of which are spacious. The hallway bedroom will either make a nice office or large walk-in closet to the front bedroom. The rear bedroom has a very nice bay-style wall and extra windows on the south side. But, being an older home there is no closet space. One cool thing is the large built-in storage unit in the front bedroom. Unfortunately it's very shallow and I may disassemble and donate it in order to put in practical storage.
Current Condition 4/5

Bathroom

The home has one decent sized bathroom on the second floor. The door opens right into the toilet which is a bit weird. The tub has a cheap shower surround. It also has a small, single cabinet vanity in between two windows. It's going to need to be renovated, but it's livable for now and will be on hold until after the downstairs is completed and a half bath is added in the rear.
Current Condition 3/5

Living/Dining Room

Entering the home, the current living room is enclosed and separated from the dining room. This wall can be removed to really open the space. I was able to find the next door building's listing from when it went on sale in 2011 and the layout has been opened up and updated. This is a very promising find because it shows that there are no beams that need to be added to span the living room.

Rear Patio

The rear patio is one of the highlights of the home. It's the largest of any home that we saw, and gets a decent amount of sunlight being on the west side of the home. Currently it has a busted up concrete surface, but there is a lot of potential for some seating, a garden, and BBQ.
Current Condition 2/5

Summary

Overall, the home is solid condition for it's age. Of all the things that turned up in the inspection report, we only requested some help from the sellers on the electrical updates. Our request was put in as soon as we got the inspection report and it took the seller two weeks (!) to come back to us with a response.