One morning last winter, after dropping my daughter off at middle school, I returned home to what sounded like a hissing river rushing through my basement. I dashed down the creaky stairs of our two-story Craftsman, built in 1925, to discover a water heater disgorging dirty liquid across the floor. I needed to think fast, but to do what, exactly?
My wife and I bought the house in summer 2024 after nearly a quarter-century of renting in New York City apartments. Landlords were always responsible for repairing housing calamities, be it cockroach infestations or a busted furnace. Amid the panic flooding my brain, a small thought bubbled up. We had a water-cutoff switch. Right there, in the corner. I sloshed over and ceased the deluge, solving the pressing problem. Now I just needed to clean up gallons of water and replace a water heater.
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Buying an older home is equal parts charming and exasperating. All that architecture! All those headaches! Over the decades, previous owners repaired and renovated properties to their best of their abilities and inabilities, leaving current owners to contend with the ghosts of renovation projects past and aging infrastructure. Nothing lasts forever, especially root-clogged sewer pipes. Homeowners in historic older neighborhoods such as German Village, Olde Towne East and Clintonville often face major home challenges, from upgrading knob-and-tube electrical wiring to contending with cat pee, fixing crumbling chimneys and remediating lead paint.
I canvassed Columbus for stories of fixer-upper housing woes and how homeowners overcame unforeseen obstacles. Let’s hope raw sewage never tsunamis across your basement.
The Case of the Unexpected Cat Pee
During the 2020 pandemic, Renee Woodtke and her husband, Troy, thought they’d found a deal on a circa-1916 Clintonville home with four bedrooms and two bathrooms. Each time the couple had toured the house, the air conditioner was off and the scent of Glade Plugins perfumed the air. “It always smelled nice,” says Renee, who teaches physical education at a local elementary school. “I thought we were fine.” The Woodtkes ordered a housing inspection and the basement seemed spic-and-span, though bleach lingered in the air. “The home inspector was like, ‘Well, I think they had their cat box down here, but if it smells, it’ll be easy to clean up,’ ” she recalls.
The couple closed and moved in. They turned on the air conditioner and the “smell of cat urine was so bad that we couldn’t stay,” Renee says. “The cat pee had permeated the wood.” Three days after moving in, the couple called Bio-One of Columbus, which focuses on biohazard decontamination and biohazard cleanup. Workers in hazmat suits pulled the basement walls down to the studs, ran an ozone machine for multiple days to mitigate the feline stench and sealed the floor.
“That was like an extra $5,000 right when we moved in,” says Renee, who added several more layers of sealant for good measure. Today, the family is settled into their home and a new headache: the bathroom renovation. “We still don’t have a bathroom sink hooked up, so we brush our teeth and wash our hands with the bathtub faucet,” Renee says. “I guess we’ll be doing that until the weather warms up.”
Cat Pee Fixer-Upper Advice
“Ammonia in cat urine is one of the most difficult odor abatements,” says Tim Lockard, owner of Bio-One of Columbus, which cleans up crime scenes, blood spills, rodent droppings and other hazards. “It’s so caustic.”
The challenge is reaching the odor’s source. Cat urine can soak through carpeting and into subflooring, sometimes contaminating baseboards and drywall. Spraying bleach and running an ozone generator isn’t enough. Biohazard workers must remove impacted areas, which could include porous concrete. “You can use gallons of enzyme and not reach soaked-in urine,” Lockard says.
After chemical treatment, the surface is encapsulated with sealant and repairs can proceed. “We do as little demolition as needed because we know on the other end, it costs money to put it back together,” Lockard says. To uncover issues prior to purchase, pay attention to odorous red flags. If a for-sale home smells strongly of Glade Plugins, windows are wide open or cookies are baking, “those are signs that you might want to dig a little deeper,” Lockard says. “That could mask a bigger problem.”
Taking a Home from Leaded to Unleaded
One day in late 2016, Lindsey Loman took her youngest son for his one-year checkup. A blood test uncovered elevated lead levels. This led the Columbus Public Health department to inspect her home, a 1922 Craftsman bungalow in Clintonville, discovering that the property’s soil contained 33,000 parts per million of lead. The Environmental Protection Agency recommends that a child’s outdoor play area shouldn’t exceed 400 parts per million.
“A neighbor said they recalled the previous owners scraping white paint off the siding and looking like snow on the ground,” Loman says, adding that drop cloths weren’t used. “Anywhere there’s chipping or peeling and cracking paint, there’s lead dust. And lead dust is one of the biggest culprits of childhood lead poisoning.”
The city placed the house under a lead hazard control order, preventing the family from moving or renting the house during remediation. The inspectors informed Loman that she must replace every window and door and the top eight inches of soil. “It was going to be $30,000 of work,” says Loman, a hair stylist and mother of three with her husband, Steven Keller. “Everything about our lives changed in one day.”
After spending sleepless nights researching solutions, Loman discovered Tamara Rubin, a.k.a. the activist Lead Safe Mama. Rubin pointed Loman to Ohio grant programs to eliminate lead-based paint hazards from pre-1978 homes. The family met grant guidelines and so began a multi-year odyssey of anxiety, unease and heightened safety. “My house became a nightmare,” Loman says. “I cleaned all the toys that touched the floor and mopped weekly.” The full lead abatement took more than two years, during which Loman tried to stay outside of her house and visit parks as much as possible. “We didn’t stay here and play much,” she says.
In the end, the grant funds led the family to prioritize new windows over removing the soil, which is now safely covered with a brick patio and grass. Loman is now on the board of trustees for the Ohio Healthy Homes Network nonprofit that focuses on preventing lead poisoning. The experience has left Loman’s family with lingering habits, including one that everyone should follow. Says Loman, “We all wash our hands before we eat.”
Leaded to Unleaded Fixer-Upper Advice
Prior to 1978, paint commonly contained lead, and the lingering “danger comes from paint chipping and producing dust that can be ingested or inhaled,” says Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff, director of the Ohio Department of Health. Lead dust is especially dangerous for pregnant women and children under the age of 6, as they absorb lead more readily.
He recommends a blood test for children at ages 1 and 2 to check lead levels; a heightened reading signals a likely need for remediation. The ODH can help with resources, andHealth ca the Ohio Lead Abatement Tax Credit Program provides up to $40,000 in state income tax credits. Many local health or housing agencies also offer income-based grants, too.
If an older home is well cared for, and the paint around the windows and doors remains intact and not peeling, adults can lively safely by taking basic precautions. They include wet-wiping surfaces and vacuuming with a HEPA filter. “The good news is that lead-based paint isn’t going to be automatically hazardous,” Vanderhoff says, cautioning homeowners to pay attention during drastic temperature swings when paint issues often appear. Head to the ODH website for resources. “That’s a good time to look into options for an EPA-certified renovator,” Vanderhoff says.
Oh, Sheet (Pan)
There’s typically a honeymoon with homeownership before the first unforeseen problem. Not so for Emily Whittaker, a middle-school drama teacher. The day she and her husband, Steve, moved into their two-story Clintonville home, built in 1938, their parents came over to unpack and rearrange furniture. Emily’s dad flushed the toilet in the upstairs bathroom, and it rained in the dining room.
“We had a home inspection, and they ran water in the tub and flushed the toilet to make sure that everything was fine,” Emily says. “My dad was also a home inspector for a long time, and he came and looked through and saw nothing weird.” The culprit was a cookie sheet. At some point, someone secreted a sheet pan inside the ceiling, beneath the toilet, to catch errant drips. One final flush started the indoor deluge. “Why would you put that there if you didn’t think something was going to happen?” Emily says. The sellers had no idea there was a cookie pan in the ceiling, and the insurance company refused to cover repairs for supposedly known issues. “We were supposed to have X-ray vision and know that there were baking items under the toilet,” Emily says.
After fixing the leak, the hole in the ceiling remained open for more than a year until Steve covered it. Says Emily, “It just became part of our landscape that you don’t realize until somebody else walks in your house and is like, ‘Whoa, what happened?’ ”
Water Damage Fixer-Upper Advice
“Water is so destructive,” says Chris Scott, a local Columbus plumber. “It goes places where it shouldn’t.” Preventative maintenance is paramount, both inside and out. A water heater should be flushed annually, “which hardly anybody does,” Scott says, while outdoor water spigots must be winterized by shutting off the water supply, draining the faucet and removing and emptying the hose.
Pay attention to leaky fixtures, a running toilet or listen for unexpected drips. Every so often, flush a toilet and wait a few minutes to ensure the tank empties and fills properly. Water issues are often ongoing, and the challenges can compound with delayed action. Homeowners should also make sure they know the location of their main water-shutoff valve. Should a watery emergency emerge, it’s imperative to turn off the water before investigating the issue and, ideally, calling a trusted plumber. “Not being aware of what’s going on in your house is one of the biggest issues that homeowners have,” Scott says.
The Basement Poop Flood
As a realtor, Heather Gott cautions clients about old homes and sewer lines. “You need to scope and clean them out every couple of years because mature trees want water,” Gott says. She regularly hired a septic service to clean the sewer lines for her 1923 Clintonville home overlooking the bucolic Walhalla Ravine; the only issue was that the equipment emerged somewhat dirty. “I thought it must’ve been mud,” says Gott, who purchased the home in 2015 with her husband, Jeremy.
Last spring, warning lights flashed brown. The finished basement’s toilet clogged, but Gott ignored the issue. “It was peak real estate chaos, so the last thing I wanted to do was spend 20 minutes trying to unclog the bathroom,” she says. Several days later, Gott was in the basement finishing multiple rounds of laundry when, instead of draining, water filled the laundry sink. Her husband flushed a toilet upstairs, or maybe the dishwasher emptied. Either way, water fast flowed over the toilet with “waves of toilet paper, poop and the grossest stuff,” Gott says.
Her husband came downstairs and they watched, horrified, as fetid sewage flowed toward them, reaching the drywall and covering the carpeted basement bedroom. The basement required toxic remediation, but repairs needed to wait until the clog was cleared. They called in Chuck’s Septic Tank Sewer & Drain Cleaning Inc., in Grove City, to investigate the blockage. In the meantime, Gott showered at a gym, while her husband took lightning-quick showers, plugging up the drain and slowly, over hours, trickling water down the drain. Basement biotoxins caused Gott to fall ill with a norovirus infection, leading the couple to perfect a two-bowl system. “I’d puke into a bowl and he’d give me a new bowl, then take the gross bowl outside to wash with the water hose,” Gott says.
After a week or so of investigating sewer lines, the septic company removed a congealed, permeable mass of shaving cream, hair and toilet paper, and more. In the end, fixing the line ran around $1,000, but the basement cleanup cost $30,000 that was covered by insurance. “We’re not going to ask for anything else from insurance for a long, long time,” Gott says.
Sewage Fixer-Upper Advice
Inspecting sewer lines before buying a home is a must, says Steven Besse, president of CST Utilities (the parent company of Chuck’s Septic). “You can tell the owners, ‘Let’s clean out the roots and then inspect the lines for breaks,’ ” Besse says, adding that repairs could cost more than $20,000.
He recommends a video inspection every five years or so, or anytime there’s slow draining. Problems regularly occur with strain on a home’s sewer system. The company’s call volume increases significantly over the holidays when people “have 13 people in their house,” Besse says. Blockage culprits accumulate over time, from disposable wipes to flushed diapers and grease dumped down a drain. Older Columbus homes also sometimes have combination sewers that mingle sewage and the storm water in the same underground pipes; heavy storms can cause water to flow into homes. Besse suggests installing a sewer backflow preventer, which is basically a one-way toilet flapper that prevents water from flowing into a home.
Whenever a sewer snarl occurs, call experts to clear the clog and assess damage before cleaning up with bleach or calling a restoration service for more substantial problems. “We’ve seen it where sewer backed up and filled an entire crawl space with waste,” Besse says.
The Case of the Collapsing Chimney
As the owner of a 1902 house in Old North Columbus, Wendy Everett has no shortage of old-home horror stories. A flea infestation broke out soon after she bought the house in 2001, and sewage twice backed up into the too-damp basement. “The people that sold us the house realized it was a money pit and were just trying to get the out of there,” says Everett, a massage therapist.
About three years ago, Everett heard a sound in the basement and went down to investigate. The chimney’s bottom part disintegrated, leaving the rest hanging with no support except for the house’s frame. “I didn’t know if that would collapse too,” Everett says. The chimney ran through the center of the house, part of a series of different heating systems throughout, including a coal room and a secondary chimney off the kitchen might’ve been attached to a pot belly stove. “At some point, there must have been a radiator, too,” Everett says.
The chimney’s fall pointed toward another source of heat: the furnace. Installers vented it through the chimney, and heating and cooling cycles likely caused structural degradation. “The bricks became powder,” Everett says. Plaster encased the rest of the chimney, leaving its integrity a mystery. Everett called the insurance agent, and the situation left him flummoxed. “He was just like, ‘Well, this has never happened,’” Everett says.
Several fingernail-biting months later, a structural engineer arrived. If the chimney fell, he said, it would likely just cave in on itself and fall down the shaft. And yes, it was safe to live inside the house. “That was at least some comfort,” Everett says. The next step was hiring someone to remove the chimney, but no one wanted to take the job due to her house’s slate roofing, which can be slippery and fragile. A friend recommended an unlicensed contractor, whom she hired from Facebook Marketplace to remove her chimney.
She lowered all the sketchy red flags and hired him, desperation leading to bad decisions. He removed the roof chimney, “but he’s just hitting me up for more and more money,” Everett says, hiring men off the streets to assist with tearing walls and ceiling to studs. Brick dust, plaster dust, and greasy soot stained every surface because nothing was covered. “It cost $2,000 to do soot removal for one room, and insurance didn’t cover that,” Everett says. “This was a nightmare on so many levels.”
The contractor covered the roof hole with a tarp, but it didn’t hold. Rain poured inside. And then the contractor disappeared. Everett cleared out much of the debris. That left a house with no walls, ceiling or heating. “For two years, we don’t have heat,” she says. Eventually, a friend connected Everett to a contractor who did the drywall and brought in a roofer. Her bedroom and the living room need to be finished, but the homestretch is here. “The project’s not done, but at least we have walls and heat,” Everett says.
Chimney Fixer-Upper Advice
If a homeowner rarely uses a fireplace, a chimney is often out of sight, out of mind. And that’s when problems can stack up like firewood. During the winter, condensation inside a chimney can freeze, causing leaks and compromising the structural integrity. “That can cause the chimney to collapse,” says Jason Charles, who owns the Honest Chimney & Masonry Company in Grove City with his wife, Karianne Boden-Charles.
Knowledge is the best defense against disaster. “You should have a yearly chimney inspection,” Charles says, adding that venting furnace exhaust through a chimney also can create corrosion issues. (Carbon monoxide also can be present.) A specialist can seal a chimney to keep out moisture, including replacing bricks and repairing mortar. Resist the urge to DIY mortar with household adhesives such as Liquid Nails or silicone, which can create additional repair headaches.
A slate roof also can make repairs pricier and more challenging. “Even on a 90-degree day with no rain, it’s like ice up there,” Charles says. “You’ll fly right off and fall. It’s very dangerous.” To reach the chimney, you can use special ladders or build scaffolding, but oftentimes a homeowner must rent a boom lift that can cost more than $1,000 a day. Most chimney problems can be solved, but “it all comes down to budget and cost,” Charles says. Always check if workers are certified, ideally by the Chimney Safety Institute of America. “They will verify workers right over the phone,” Boden-Charles says.
The New Family Home in Olde Towne East
Parents with growing families often walk a well-trod path to the suburbs for more square footage. Brandon Turner and Katherine Swank, who lived in Whitehall with their young daughter, instead headed to Olde Towne East for a sprawling 4,500-square-foot brick mansion built circa 1909. “We fell in love with the character and the woodwork,” says Turner, a professor in the psychology department at Ohio State University.
Turner and Swank, an orthopedic surgery specialist, purchased their home in fall 2023 and enlisted Columbus design firm Urbanorder Architecture to help orchestrate a drastic overhaul. Take a deep breath and read the list of renovations: Knob-and-tube wiring needed to be replaced, some of the 17 pieces of stained glass repaired, the bathrooms redone, the woodwork and doors restored and new floors installed. “This is our third home renovation, but not quite this magnitude,” Turner says, laughing. The couple requested quotes from general contractors, ranging from $700,000 to $1.2 million. “General contractors take the scope of the work and then add their fee,” Turner says. That could be anywhere from 10 to 20 percent of the total cost. To stretch their dollars, Turner decided to take on general contracting duties, allowing them to finish the raw third floor attic with office space.
In between teaching classes, he picked up a sledgehammer and spent the first three or four months doing demo work and taking down walls. “He personally removed 60,000 pounds of plaster from this house, which we know because you pay for dumpsters by weight,” Swank says. While a previous owner had lived in the house for three decades, a more recent flip job left the property with improperly waterproofed and unpermitted bathrooms. Moreover, windows were painted shut, and “everything was covered in lead paint under some layer of something.”
Safety hazards with children were a paramount concern as Swank became pregnant with her second child during renovations. “Being pregnant during your remodel timeline adds a certain element of pressure,” she says. Her husband removed and refinished all the wood trim, in addition to the towering doors that weigh around 90 pounds each. The 13 radiators were functional and kept the house warm, but “then we started getting the bills,” Turner says. “It was like, ‘Wow, we can’t keep this.’ ” They turned to Craigslist to find someone from Indiana to buy and remove the radiators.
To keep costs low, Turner laid much of the bathroom tilework, while craftspeople laid wood floors and added new stairs with ornamental woodwork. Franklin Art Glass repaired the stained glass of Juno, the Roman goddess of marriage who protected women, and created a companion piece with a peacock, which Juno considered a sacred animal. By December 2024, the repairs were far enough along for the family to move in—soon before their second daughter was born. A final few items remained on the checklist, including a planned basement speakeasy, the mudroom and backyard landscaping, but renovating an historic home is a marathon, not a sprint. Says Turner, “I don’t know if we’ll actually ever be done.”
Remodeling Fixer-Upper Advice
Anyone looking to remodel a historic home must first balance the purchase price with the renovation cost. “You need to talk to people who have done this and be realistic about what to expect,” says Steve Hurtt, the principal partner at Urbanorder Architecture in the Short North. His firm approaches client projects by focusing on big-picture goals and scope. Want four bedrooms and three bathrooms? Great! Here’s what’s feasible.
Hurtt’s team typically will provide three different options for reconfiguring spaces that might range from major modifications to a more affordable plan to accomplish the stated goals.
“We’re going to make it work,” Hurtt says. Kitchens and bathrooms are often showpieces, and cost can be limitless. Instead of focusing on pricey tiles and tubs, Hurtt recommends shoring up a home’s bones and the mechanical systems. “Then you spend the money on the finishes,” he says.
Avoid fluorescent-pink paint, baroque chandeliers and that koi pond if a resale looms in the near future. One person’s treasure is another person’s episode of Zillow Gone Wild. “We try to advise people not to do highly specific things unless they’re living there long term,” Hurtt says.
Flipping for a Kitchen in German Village
Kitchens are a home’s social hub, equally fun and functional. At Sandy Miller and Jon Tafel’s German Village home, built in 1920, guests beelined to the back of the house’s cramped kitchen. “I could be at the stove, open the refrigerator, and touch the sink in one sweeping move,” says Miller, now retired from an early childhood education career. The kitchen, though, was starting to show its wear and tear, leading the retired couple to take on another renovation in the home Tafel bought in 1991.
“We love living in the German Village,” says Tafel, formerly the vice chancellor of the Ohio Board of Regents, ticking off the walkability, restaurants and sense of community. They considered an addition to create a guest room with a full bath, but the costs and strict rules of the German Village Commission, which protects and preserves the German Village Historic District, made more square footage a nonstarter. Seeking solutions, the couple called a local realtor who took note of the two living rooms, back-to-back, leading to the kitchen. Why not flip the kitchen and living room? “And that’s how it started,” Miller says. They hired J.S. Brown & Co., a design and build remodeling company experienced in navigating the historical requirements of German Village.
Work began in July, and Tafel and Miller embraced sitting on the front porch and cooking workarounds. The basement held the only microwave, and a crockpot sat upstairs. “The only way we could wash dishes was the shower,” Miller says. Turning the living room into a kitchen with floor-to-ceiling cabinetry required covering a chimney wall and installing shallow cabinets ideal for spices. “It’s one of my favorite pieces in the kitchen,” Miller says. “Now I don’t dig for spices.” Kitchen appliances were covered with panels to create a symmetrical flow, and a central island added ample space for sunny entertaining.
Miller made her first meal in the new space on Christmas Eve, and cooking now helps up her daily step count. “I’ve been getting exercise working around the island,” she says, laughing. The couple is back to hosting to friends and neighbors. “When they walk in, they can’t believe the difference in the space,” Miller says. And yes, everyone still gathers in the kitchen.
Construction Fixer-Upper Advice
Remodeling older homes requires patience and a great working relationship with the construction team, counsels Samantha Ferris, who works in sales and design at J.S. Brown & Co., a design and build remodeling company in Columbus. “It will take longer than you think with inspections and unknown challenges,” she says. For this remodel in the German Village, hurdles included remediating asbestos and the lack of insulation in the former kitchen.
“There was moisture coming through the wood siding that caused staining on the wall,” she says. Adding insulation required waiting for a dry spell. “So many things come up that you don’t expect,” Ferris says. Living in a construction zone can be the ultimate stress test for relationships. “I always tell my clients, if you can get through the renovation without getting divorced, you’ll be fine,” Ferris says. “You’ll never get divorced.”
When Lightning Strikes Your House
One rainy day around a decade ago, Sara Klips and Ryan Thomas experienced the shock of their lives. The couple was at home in their single-story Cape Cod in Beechwold when lightning struck the ground outside. Nothing happened to the neighbor’s house, but inside the couple’s home, “there was a giant bang and a flash, and then half the house wasn’t working,” says Klips, a metal worker. Light bulbs blew out, and the electrical guts of the furnace, air conditioner and other appliances “crispified in an instant,” Klips says. It was a hard lesson to learn that their house wasn’t grounded.
Their home was equipped with ground fault circuit interrupters, or GFCIs, that safeguard people from electrical shocks. That made their house code compliant, but “if you get hit by lightning, GFCIs don’t do a damn thing. They shut off but don’t prevent things from getting blown.” In the darkened aftermath, Klips and Thomas frantically Googled. What do you do when lightning strikes your house?
They called Buckeye Electric and found out no fires started inside the walls, which is apparently a possibility. Phew. The couple then replaced their electrical panel and installed actual grounding, which consists of hammering copper rods into the ground and attaching them to copper wire connected to said panel. Bit by bit, they replaced the wrecked appliances, though that wasn’t the end of their electrical woes.
A contractor nearly electrocuted himself when, upon cutting through a door frame to replace a part, he ran into a live wire. “He was like, ‘Why wasn’t this disclosed? And we’re like, we had no idea. We’re figuring it out with you,” Klips says. “Owning a house is slowly getting a grudge against the person who lived there before you for very, very specific things.”
This story appeared in the April 2026 issue of Columbus Monthly. Subscribe here.
This article originally appeared on Columbus Monthly: So You Bought a Historic Home. Here’s How to Deal With the Challenges
Reporting by Joshua M. Bernstein, Columbus Monthly / Columbus Monthly
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