u/Ancient_Tower3283

Hey all,

We’re buying a house we’ve been renting to own through family, pretty much due to a combo of “it’s what we can afford right now” and a few other things. Suffice to say, it’s our best option. That being, we do love the house.

It’s an old semi-row home Victorian (attached on one side, entryway on the other) sitting south facing on a westward sloping hill. I believe its build year is 1900, north eastern PA.

So, due to us deciding to buy, I want to shore up a few of the issues I’ve found. I was hoping for your help on this.

The most pressing ones are the ceilings on the second floor. The first two are the hallway stairway corner. Ignoring the paint, the ceiling is sunken pretty well. It’s hard to the press and doesn’t give much, so I’m not sure what the repair is. Tear the plaster down and tack a new sheet up?
I’m positive it won’t be that easy, nothing is easy in this house lol.

Secondly, the last two photos are from the master bedroom, this had been like this for a few years, and has been as long as we’d been renting it, though I’m noticing some hairline cracks coming off of it. Any advice?

I feel like we’re biting off more than we can chew, but there aren’t much better options in our range, so it’s very much Devil you know.

I do have some moderate home repair experience, we’ve renovated a few Victorians growing up, so I’m not totally helpless, but I’ve never done ceiling work and want to do it right.

Thanks in advance!

Had to run downstairs to get saline spray for my toddler, found these two in the medicine basket in our living room. I looked around but haven’t found any signs yet. I did see a similar one a month ago in the kitchen and put out roach traps, but hadn’t seen any other signs on that or the few glue traps.

I’m afraid these are German roaches. I live in a 100+ year old house in central PA, surrounded by abandoned houses and a house that just got cleaned out. We try and be clean as can be,but toddler and all means inevitably food will find its way in nooks and crannies. I feel such shame right now and obviously I’m up late obsessively cleaning

Do I need to call pest control? Or is there some at home procedure I can do? Money tends to be tight, but obviously we will do what needs to be done.

Re: the image, ignore the green. All I had was wintergreen alcohol to end them in a way that I could get a good pic

Thanks so much!