When it rains…

Our adventure in Real Estate continues. We purchased a house in July 2019. It is 3/4th the size of our previous home. The house had to have 19 piers put in before we moved in. This caused cracks in the walls and unaligned doors to occur which also had to be repaired, then painted. The back door fell off frame and all, when we tried to open it. Robert had to replace the framing and insulate it properly.

Week negative 1- The previous owners set it up so that the septic tank would be replaced and installed- it took 3 weeks after move in to get it done, with false promises from the contractor. The septic contractor had the hole dug and left it open for a week and a half, before having the tank brought in. Their sub-contractor brought a smaller tank and was trying to get us to accept it- we didn’t. Finally, it is installed. But the contractor had placed the dirt on the fence and tore it down while digging the hole. They said they were not responsible for the fence damages. They haphazardly filled in the hole around the septic tank and left big clods of dirt and a big pile of dirt on the fence, they do not come back to finish the job of leveling the soil.

Week One- We did a final walk-thru but missed that the interior of the master bath had pieces of ceramic tile that had fallen down. Our contractor said there was black mold growing, so the entire wall would have to be replaced and treated. And the other bathroom had to have the sewage line replaced to the tub and toilet.

Week Two- The city cooperative water department visits us to repair a leak at the main water supply. They break our side of the main and shoddily fix it, as it is leaking the next day when we inspect it. We call them out again to repair it. it takes them another week to return to repair it.

Week Three the 18th day of home ownership. The water company said we have a leak somewhere on our side of the main. They are nice enough to help us look in the front and side yards. They detect a puddle by the front porch — it had rained allot since we moved in, and we thought it was rain water pooled.

We call American Home Shield out. Their contractor told them that it was a pre-existing condition. We contact AHS again and they send another plummer out. He could not find the leak, but accessed the area to be under our bedroom floor somewhere and the hallway. Their solution was to jack hammer up the floor. AHS decided that the problem was pre-existing and denied the claim.

So call our plummer out, the one who had worked on the sewage. They said we were losing 1 gallon per 2-3 minutes of water and showed us how to cut the water off and on at the main. They found the leaks- three under the bathroom, and bedroom and hallway by tunneling. It was decided to replace the entire line so they cut the line off at the bathroom and trenched around the house and installed two water cutoffs and reconnected everything, then filled it back in and leveled the soil. That was a $3,500.00 discounted project. Can we say Ca-Ching!

Week Four- The driveway had old asphalt roofing shingles laid down as a road bed, covered by grass and weeds. We had a contractor come out and removed the dirt mound from the septic tank and off the broken fence, and level it out and create a driveway with recycled asphalt. It is smooth and looks good.

Week Five- Robert had to shem the front door because air flow (sunlight) could be seen around the entire door, paper wood-board had been used in the beginning, so he ripped that out and put in solid wood framing. We built a new fence to replace the one destroyed by the contractors. It still has to be painted.

Our next project is to paint the exterior of the house. It is in peeling condition on the trim. We knew about this project in the beginning before we bought the house.

When it rains it really does pour, sometimes its a soft rain, and at other times its like batten down the hatches there she blows.

Home ownership this time around has been extremely stressful. But we are trying to calm down and find a bright side to it. The house has been practically rebuilt. We had to buy new kitchen appliances when we moved in — don’t ask! And things are starting to come together. We are going through the buildings and seeing what we can find for the inside of out house and what can be donated or sold in the future.

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