Hellhole House

The BBQ Pit
1

Today it’s the heater.

Yes, got up today and it was rather less than toasty in the house. I turned up the heat and headed to school. An hour later Mr. E made breakfast and noticed that his hands were cold. He put them over the heater vent and there was nothing coming out.

He turned the thermostat up to 80 degrees and went to the basement to monitor the heater’s progress. Yes, the pilot light was on. The fan wasn’t. He said it made a couple of clunking sounds but never actually started.

So now we have to have someone come out and fix it. ARRRGGH.

Here is a list of things that we have already fixed in this shitty house:

• The roof (re-shingled, but it still leaks!)
• The bathroom (was growing mushrooms, so we tiled the floor and walls and replaced the shower)
• The air conditioner (three treatments later, still isn’t working well)
• The pipes (pinhole leak inside of a wall? WTF?)
• The sump pump (replaced during one rainy day)
• The water heater (ever see a fountain in your basement?)
• The chimney (said it hadn’t been cleaned since it was built)
• The fence (still falling down, needs more than quick fixes)
• Window screens

What still needs fixed?

• The outside door moldings (they are rotting)
• The ceiling in the living room (due to leak in roof)
• The fence (needs replaced or done away with altogether)
• The closet (has hole in the drywall)
• THE HEATER

We haven’t been here that long, just over two years. We have replaced nearly every major appliance except the stove and refrigerator, and we are looking at new stoves. We have spent so many weekends working on the house that Lowe’s needs to reserve us a parking space.

Fuck this fucking house. Fuck the fucking builder, fuck the real estate agent, fuck the owners we bought it from. Fuck them with a jackhammer. Fuck them with a half-rotten, putrid, maggot-filled donkey dick. Fuck them with a scythe. Then dry their carcasses and staple them to our roof, so maybe they will fix that damned leak.

Bastards said that the leak in the roof was due to the bathtub overfilling one day. Riiiight and I’m the Queen of Sheba. Maybe if they were taking a bath on the fucking ROOF.

Not one day of maintenance, not one day of care. How did they not notice that the sump pump was dead? How did they not know that the chimney needed cleaned, or the fence was coming down, or the window screens were hanging in tatters??? How did they overlook the carpet in the bathroom rotting?

Fucking motherswiving cocksmoking syphilis-infected JACKHOLES.

2

Er … You bought sight unseen?

3

No. Have you ever seen the movie The Money Pit? Well, the owner shows the prospective buyers around the house. It’s candlelit, and everything seems really wonderful. When they come back during the daytime after purchasing the house, they see the real house. Stairways falling apart, handles falling off, the electricity frying in short order, that kind of thing. Worth a watch, because you’ll see exactly what I’m in.

The house was lovely during the daytime, when it was dry. As soon as it started raining we noticed: sump pump dead, leak in roof not from bathtub as told, bathroom carpet very damp and moldy. Then we mowed the lawn and noticed the fence. Then we used the air conditioner and noticed it was persnickety. Then we used the fireplace and had it cleaned. Then…you get the idea.

This is our first place. Rest assured that the next place we buy will be inspected with a microscope and blasted with a firehose to find leaks.

4

Note to self…

Get a thorough inspection before buying a house!

5

You must think you live in my house!

Seriously though, my situation is (save a few of the details) nearly identical to yours. Because misery loves company, here’s our little precious first home:

  • had new roof put on
  • replaced all the windows
  • the freon in the A/C was supposed to be refilled before the sellers left, well it was, just the cap was not put back on and it leaked
  • we just got a year-end electricity bill (we’re on a budget plan) and somehow our total due for the year is $1600. How does that happen??? With two people??? So obviously something is broken, haven’t figured out what yet . . .
  • we have mold and some wet corners in our basement
  • our sump pump was doing some strange things and flooded a little last spring
  • our water heater broke, we fixed it temporarily
  • the carpet is almost 30 years old (gross!)
  • the kitchen cabinets are literally falling off of the hinges
  • we have to replace the kitchen ceiling from a bathroom leak
  • we found a huge hole in the wall in the master bathroom, which was oh so elegently covered with wallpaper
  • they left a roomful of junk for us to clean up, scattered in various places in and around the house, they didn’t take any of their trash to the junkyard, just left it in a huge pile on the side of our house for us to bag up and get rid of
  • the day we moved in, they still had a lot of their stuff there (as noted above, some of it never left with them)
  • for 6 months after they left, we let them store their kids’ playset in our backyard, for free, then bitched when we gave them a deadline to get rid of it
  • 95% of the items that’s on the “to fix list” after the inspectors go through and note before you buy the house, we were told all were fixed and did not find out until after we got there on move-in day. Mysteriously all the receipts to prove they had all the work done had disappeared, they told us they would send them to us. Then when we called them to get reimbursed for the items we had to fix on that list, they basically told us to “screw off, it’s been done to us before”. How does that make what you did to us right???

Home buying is a nightmare. Have a good realtor to help you and a good inspector (or two, you may need it). I never thought I would hate my first house within the first year of living there. Major money-pit.

6

Thanks for reminding me.

Our first electricity bill was for $6,000. We didn’t have to pay it, of course, because they had made a mistake. They read the meter wrong. Maybe you should call and talk to them.

Part of our kitchen cabinet keeps falling off whenever I brush it. It was attached with two tiny screws, which just pull right out. I want to replace it with something better, but now we have these holes in our cabinets which I have to cover. Might as well just replace all the cabinets.

They left a lot of stuff when we moved in, too, even though part of the contract said they were to move everything out. We are childless and there was a huge rusty swingset in the backyard. It was attached to the ground with stakes driven deep into pits filled with sand. Talk about a bitch of a time digging those out. Plus, it was so rusty we couldn’t just unscrew it and take it apart. We had to borrow my dad’s sawzall and cut it up. It made Mr. E happy to do that much damage, but the swingset was mentioned specifically in our contract as something to be removed, so I wasn’t at all thrilled.

There was also a kitty pan and a used mattress. There was more but those were the grossest things to remove.

My realtor kept saying that the owners were going through a divorce, like that was supposed to make me feel like giving allowances. Tough shit they were going through a divorce. There are things you take care of, responsibilities you just can’t dismiss out of hand.

Listening to my mom and the week of cleaning she did to her house before the new owners moved in, and the thousands she spent replacing old appliances the new owners wanted replaced, well, I feel taken advantage of.

7

Unfortunately, we did call the company to check the meter. They said since it was a major red flag to them, they had already sent someone out to check it. No luck. How does a young couple just starting out spend one amount one summer, then the following summer spend 300% more in electricity . . . without doing anything different? The hubby thinks it might be the heat pump (yes, we have one of those ancient monsters, we even have an attic fan that sounds like a jet taking off from our roof everytime we turn it on!), so we’re trying to get someone out to look at it.

Wow, the similarities in our houses are spooky.

We have this drawer in our kitchen that the face fell off of it and took hunks of wood off with it so we can’t reattach it. Well, without the face, it falls off the track easily, so we have to keep the drawer half open all the time or we run the risk of the drawer falling backwards and dumping all the silverware in the cabinet underneath. Thankfully, this is all temporary (I hope).

We had two desks in the basement remain. One is a cheapo one and my husband got immense joy out of crushing it, the other is like 50 years old and weighs over 200 lbs. It hasn’t moved yet.

You know, I try to be honest and I tend to be wracked with guilt quite a bit. Even over things that I may not even have anything to do with. I can’t see leaving a house in such bad shape for someone else. Especially if I KNEW they were young and it was their first house.

They had an excuse like yours, they were actually getting married and would be gone for two weeks before closing. Some people would say that they were stressed and running around and we should cut them some slack, but no. I got married ONE MONTH before closing and WE had no problem getting our affairs in order before the big move, they are twice my age and they couldn’t do that? And they were in a similar situation? Please.

We have wasted so much energy, time, and emotion over all this it’s just to the point where we’re calloused and cynical about the whole thing. We’re just biding our time for another 3-5 years, doing what we can, then getting the hell out.

And on top of it all, our next door neighbor allows their dog to come and shit in our yard every single day. We have talked to them repeatedly about it to no avail. They won’t keep their dog on a leash in their yard. Luckily for us, we live in a county with strict leash laws, so come next spring the first pile of steaming crap I find I’m calling animal control.

I am just so fed up with all of it. Are you sure you’re not us in a parallel universe?? :wink:

8

Wow, I feel so much better after reading this. I’ve bought four houses in my life, and there was a problem with just one – a porch roof that leaked, but only in a real monsoon, so no biggie.

When I sold the second house, the new owners insisted on a walk-through the day before closing. At the time I was sorta taken aback (did they think I was going to tear up the carpet or something?) but after reading your horror stories, now I know why they wanted it.

9

PinkMarabou, I think we must be soul sisters or something. We, too, are just biding out time until we move out.

As for that little dog that poops on your lawn, you could shoot it with bbs or pepper spray or something similar. It won’t hurt the dog and it will keep it from going into your yard. These are things my dad did in the country when he wanted to keep the large pack of semi-feral dogs away from our chickens.

Or you could get your own dog. Make it big and mean and you will have no more problems.

We still have no heat, by the way. I have an electric blanket but it’s unusable, having been purchased in England without the normal three prong plug we have over here. So we’re going to have to sleep in awfully cold sheets. I’m going to call the HVAC people first thing tomorrow, by god.

10

Getting into a cold bed means being miserable all night long. So be resourceful. If you have a clothes dryer you can “dry” your blankets right before going to bed. Or put a heating pad in between the sheets for a few minutes. Or microwave bags of dry beans and place in strategic places.

11

Have you talked to a lawyer about hidden vices? Here in Canada if there is a major defect that previous owner didn’t tell you about he is liable for it, no time limit. I’d contact a lawyer and inquire about hidden vices and what you can do. And you should have had house inspected, and if the inspector gave it a thumbs up then you can (once again) contact a lawyer and see what you can do about the obviously erroneous report. BUT PLEASE look into “hidden vices” you don’t have to get stuck with a lemon.

12

Well, at least it’s not Tiny.

13

OMG. Not only is that completely wrong - you get hit with a bb or sprayed with pepper spray and then tell me it doesn’t hurt - I’m quite sure it’s highly illegal. Besides, the dog has no idea that what it is doing is wrong. It is the owner’s responsibility to look after it - not the dog’s responsibility to know where it can and cannot poop.

14

I’d’a never thought of that. I’m keeping that one, for when I move up north. (Just FYI, it’s midnight with my windows open and the HVAC off: ~79 degrees in my house)

15

I did all of those when the thermocouple in my heater died last winter. Some proprietary piece that was carried by just 3 of the more than a dozen parts and service places I called. Two wouldn’t sell to me without a horrendously expensive service call to, “Diagnose the problem, because we can’t be responsible if you blow yourself up.” Heh. It’s just a thermocouple, guys. (That’s a rant, in and of itself. Don’t call yourself a “Parts Store” if you won’t sell me the parts.) The third shop was just closing when I called. My bed was toastier than before the heater went kaput.

16

For all house purchases, the best two ways to protect yourself are:

(1) A really, really good independent inspection, and

(2) A home warranty.

The inspection, even the most thorough, shouldn’t cost more than $300. The home warranty, which normally covers problems with major systems for a specified period of time (I think either 5 or 10 years, but I’d have to doublecheck our paperwork), costs less than $500. Total.

It doesn’t matter what your realtor says. It doesn’t matter what the seller tells you. Insist on those two. The inspection is actually required in some states; I know in Maryland the guy took nearly four hours to inspect our 1200 square foot condo, and since all major systems have to be in good working order, to the seller’s great displeasure he was required to replace the furnace before he could sell the house.

Well worth the aggravation, let me tell you. If the seller tries to prevent an inspection? Run, don’t walk, away from the deal!

  • The Voice of Experience
17

$340 later and it’s fixed. Now I’m just waiting for the electricity to go kaput, or the entire house to spontaneously combust.

I’m glad I wrote this rant. Now when something goes wrong with my house I’ll be able to come back here and add it to the growing list of problems.

I think I’m out of luck in holding the prior owners accountable for anything. Besides the fact that I just don’t want the hassle right now. I have a lot of things going on and trying to to make people pay for their lies (for instance, the leaky roof) is just too much.

18

How could YOU overlook the carpet in the bathroom rotting? How could YOU overlook the torn window screens? I just don’t get it. You invest tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars into a place and you don’t, at the bare minimum, go over it with a fine tooth comb? Did you even try to flip on the air conditioner to see if it worked before you put a bid in? Hell, you could have used all these defects to knock a few grand off the purchase price.

I understand that not everyone can afford a structural engineer to come out but a basic inspection, one that would have caught the torn screens, the rickety fence and the leaky roof, only costs a couple hundred bucks.

People lie. People cheat. Protect yourself.

19

What is this?

20

Dear Lisa, I respect you for your intellect, but this is pure blame-the-victim crap. I thought twice before posting in the Pit, but I didn’t want to put it in MPSIMS because I wanted to cuss. A lot. So I know before posting that people on the SDMB would inevitably point their finger and me and tell me that I was a chump who deserved everything I got. I don’t think I deserve it, especially from you.

The air conditioner worked – for a while. The carpet – well, it looked and felt fine. What was I supposed to do, pull it up in the bathroom and inspect the bottom? I did notice the window screen in the breakfast area was gone, but didn’t see the flaws in others. Did I expect that the leak in the roof was from rain and not a bathtub overflow? Yes, but they swore in writing that it was from the bathtub. I thought that was enough to CMA. But not.

When you, Lisa, move from Arizona to Ohio and spend five weeks in a company-supplied apartment, when you spend another week in a hotel room on your own dollar because you can’t find a house, when you have to deal with a husband who is FREAKING OUT and two cats who hate hotels, when you have all of your stuff arriving on a truck with NOWHERE to put it, when you have to deal with living in a little fridge and microwave kitchen and you can’t eat out because all of your money is going toward the hotel, and AT THE SAME TIME you are desperately seeking employment, dealing with shitty real estate agents and sellers who are divorcing and shady mortgage brokers and people YELLING AT YOU THE ENTIRE TIME, well, then you can tell me that it was my fault and I should have been better at picking out a home.

Until then, shut the fuck up.