"Steve" wrote in message
...
My daughter has asked me to look at a house she's considering buying.
An older couple is selling and moving to a retirement home. asking around
$260,000
A couple of things I'm concerned about are the brick foundation with a
dirt floor in the basement.
Someone told her it would be around $5000 to pour cement.
Also two of the room have tin ceilings. anything I should check? I've
never even seen a tin ceiling.

I'll be seeing the house after work this week.

Thanks for any input.

Steve

My advice - don't pour a cement floor in the basement. Some moron poured a
floor in my 200 year old stack-stone, dirt floor basement about 75 years
ago, and all it did was settle, crack (so it's only a partial floor now),
and shift. Makes it much harder for the sump pump to do it's job, and it
made the ceiling even lower. In the cement parts, there's barely 6' of
clearance, so DH has to be very careful doing any work down there. My advice
with an old house - if it ain't broke, don't break it. In this instance,
"fixing" things, or upgrading them, really means breaking them. As always,
however, YMMV.