No, I have not died. Yes, I live on still.
It has been crazy super busy and as in the style that I am accustomed to, it is always one thing after another. Always. The drama literally never ends and sometimes it is of my doing, however, most of the time it is just what fate has bestowed upon me.
Before I continue on to my other blog (which I will be writing right after this one regarding something I am quite peeved with as of late) I want to finish out the story of my last house. I actually started to write this blog and had it saved as a draft since President’s Day, so like two weeks ago.
I have not been online too much or up to par with my regular routine as of late because, well, I moved. About a month ago. I spent a ton of time looking and looking and examining crime maps and city maps and school systems and daycare options. You name it. And then I saw a posting on the Craigslist, called on it 4 times.
Yep, 4 times. I saw it literally half an hour after the previous tenant’s moving truck had left, filled out the application then and there, because when you are searching for a particular criteria regarding your home, when you meet it, even 90%, you have to hop on it. The biggest issue with my new place is that I have a basement. I wanted first floor in-suite laundry. But other than that it is perfect! Perfect price, perfect location, perfect pet policy. We are right around the corner from our new church and Marilyn’s school. We are five seconds away from the highway. Five minutes away from a shopping mall, ten minutes away from an even bigger and fancier shopping mall. Five minutes away from the most beautiful of metroparks within Cuyahoga County! And there is the river and the beach and the boat marina!
We are going to be here for awhile. I love it.
In the meantime, before I continue on with the series of events since then, here is a detailed pictoral list of all of the reasons behind WHY I had to move.
Firstly we made a verbal agreement that these upgrades would occur to the house prior to my moving in and/or living there more than one or two months. By four months I had had enough. I did not agree to do the work on the house myself (and I am NOT a handyman!) He also pushed two shut-off bills (meaning if I did not pay his bills on the house, I would have to go without the service and deal with the hassle of getting it turned back on. Which it is also illegal for the electric company to threaten or turn off your service in the middle of winter. And then all of the stuff that got stolen... All within four months.
I'll start with the petty stuff and move forward from there.
This is all of the junk he had outside that he refused to just put into the garage. Nevermind the fact that I was supposed to have a small portion of the garage available to me for my outside things, such as the girls' toys and my lawnchairs and whatnot and I never ever got one opportunity to stick anything in there. I would tell him every single time I saw him about if he could just pick up his junk and it was always, "later" or "in a few days" or "this afternoon". Needless to say, it was never picked up.
This is the spot in the kitchen where my brand new dishwasher was supposed to go. Firstly, the dishwasher was definitely promised, that in and of itself would have been a deal breaker. However, even if he had brought in the dishwasher, it wouldn't have properly worked because of the major clog (which I have spoken of but you will see, you will see- without the clog being fixed the dishwasher could never have properly operated.) So in the kitchen was this giant hole and I still had to use my portable dishwasher which took up a huge amount of room that wasn't truly necessary if the kitchen had been built properly from the get-go.
You can also see the stain that was all over the floor which he never fiished cleaning up. I had to stain the cabinets myself (with all of my skills of a handyman) and he came over the night I was having a party and started to clean it up, however, because paint thinner is highly odorous and not in a good way, he had to stop. He never finished either so it always looked like I had chocolate all over the floor under the cabinets. 
This is the underside of the kitchen sink. The BRAND NEW kitchen sink (that only took him a month and a half to put it) that was put in improperly and therefore it leaked. Leaked right into and all over the brand new cabinet. When I addressed this situation he "forgot" and when he did randomly show up one day (ten minutes before I was about to leave the house after I had just gotten home from work with my children and was scrambling to get them and myself ready) he didn't do anything to fix it he just made it worse. Supposedly the store had sold him the wrong part to fix it and he would be back Sunday. He never came back.
This is the spot where the hood range needed to go. Firstly, when they were installing the cabinets, they first put the cabinet on the wrong wall (because they didn't apparently notice the wiring poking out of the wall where the f#&$*% hood range is supposed to be hoooked up to) and then when they put it on the right wall they put it up super high. I bought the hood range, it actually was in the box sitting right next to the stove. I even bought the wood needed to connect the hoodrange to the cabinet, it just never happened. I had a friend come over and he did some magic in the basement (well, kind of) but he didn't have the time to get the hood range installed. So I have these beautiful brand new cabinets, I have this freshly painted kitchen, and every single time I boiled water or cooked anything, the smoke or steam or whatever afterproduct that was developed as a result of my cooking would float right up to condense on the bottom of new cabinet or would float up to condense and begin to ruin the paint in the corner. Awesome.
This is the improperly anchored shower rod in the bathroom. This was pointed out as an issue when I looked at the house because the shower curtain would be hanging from this rod and what do small children do? They pull on shower curtains. Thankfully it never got to the point where the shower curtain rod came off of the wall, but it did get close. And my children, of course, aren't going to listen to anything that I have to say regarding not playing with the shower curtain.
This is the grout on the side of the tub, which was improperly done, and when water gets into it, as happens when little girls have splash parties in the tub and water gets on the floor, it will leak down and leak through the living room ceiling. This is something that is easier to fix than anyone would ever think and should not have been an issue in the first place, however, as it was improperly done, as everything else in the house, it was an issue and would have only have gotten much worse.
And last but not least. The basement.
Now I didn't have a working kitchen sink for about a month and a half. I had to use the upstairs bathroom in order to get any water to use for cooking or washing or what-have-you. I also could not do any dishes or hook up my portable dishwasher because of the water situation. So when he finally got the sink installed, I was so excited, I went to use it and the water didn't want to drain. Didn't want to drain? Okay. So I did the draino thing. Twice. He said it just needed to be snaked, but he never ever ever brought a snake over. They figured that the clog was within a pipe in the basement because it would backflow at the source of the clog and then come out of the tube that was supposed to be used to hook up the dishwasher (see waterfall picture below). To remedy this situation, they brought in a pipe cutting saw and put a big slice of a cut in the pipe in the basement. This left it open for water to seep out, all over the floor. I eventually had a friend who came over and finished cutting it and put the plastic splitter thing on, but even that didn't help. Anytime we used the kitchen sink at all, I would have water all over the basement floor that I would have to sweep up. It was really yucky.
This picture shows the pipe, the yucky leaky water trail that was made as the yucky water seeped out of the pipe. This was all kind of situated next to and behind the washing machine, so the full effect was really realized once the washing machine was moved out.
Yucky, icky, orange black water seeping out of a pipe that I had to sweep up every single time I went into the basement. And he was always about to show up with a snake just as soon as he had the $50 to rent the machine. Tomorrow. Next week. Tomorrow. How about, never?
And this is the waterfall system that I had set up for the rest of the water that wasn't seeping out of the sawed up pipe. It would backflow up from the clog, flow out of the tube that was meant for the dishwasher (upstairs) and eventually would go into the pipe, down the sink, to the drain on the floor. Which would also drain very slowly and overflow, leaving lots of water all over the floor for me to sweep up. Until we got the pipe I would have to bend the tube so that the water would cascade into the sink. When I discovered the issue the tube was actually tucked up into the wiring close to the ceiling next to the wall and the water was going everywhere.
So that is why I moved. I don't miss it at all.
1 comment:
holy cow... I would have moved to! yuck!
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