Some of you may remember our tales of woe concerning our previous home. After we’d made an offer on the house, the general inspector found nothing amiss. The roof inspector said the roof was just fine. The termite inspector found no evidence of any termite infestation, past or present. We bought the house and, two days later, it rained inside in the living room. We had to buy a new roof. Cha-ching.

The back of the house had a dozen large windows. When the first big storm came through, we learned they were all very loose and several were leaking. We had to replace all of them. Cha-ching. Cha-ching.

A few weeks later, we found termite droppings. A call to the bug guy revealed very noticeable evidence of a termite colony that had been chewing on the house for years. There was rotten wood all along the tops of the windows in the back of the house. We eventually had to pay someone to demolish the entire back wall of the house, and rebuild it. Oh, and that’s where the new windows were so we had to pay once again to have them reinstalled after the tear-down. Cha-ching. Cha-ching. Cha-ching.

There was a plumbing problem that required numerous service calls from the plumber. The air conditioner was undersized for the house, and had to be repaired, with the help from https://www.mytrustedcontractor.com/ we were able to fix it as good as new. After seeing some “creative” wiring done by the previous owner, who fancied himself an amateur everything, we had to pay an electrician to rewire the entire house. (One example: The previous owner had buried a plastic Folgers coffee container in the front yard for use as a junction box.) The pool had a leak, requiring daily refilling, and so did the pool pump, which would spew water out each time it ran.

And, that’s just a small example of everything that was wrong with our house, which we not-so-warmly called The Money Pit.

Then, a small crack on the seawall turned into a very large one and we were facing a $45K-$55K seawall replacement. That’s when we put the house on the market. We’d already spent thousands and thousands on the house. If we dumped another $50K into it, we knew we’d never see a return on our investment, no matter how long we lived there.

We did disclose the seawall issue to potential buyers, and had to reduce the price of the house. We lost SO much money in the end but we were very happy to get out. The new owners immediately went to work making even more repairs to the house, including replacing the brand new front door and windows that we’d very recently added. Neighbors reported that there was a large dumpster in the driveway for weeks and construction workers were there full-time. Our old next-door-neighbor has a drone and he sent us pictures of the new seawall going in. That was cool.

And one recent afternoon, an old neighbor sent me several pictures of the front of the house, showing heavy smoke damage, melted metal grating from the roof overhang, and more. She said she’d been driving home from work, and saw tons of smoke. Another neighbor also noticed, and called 9-1-1 just before he turned on a hose and tried to douse the fire himself. The fire department arrived, and put it out. The front entry way and the attic were heavily damaged because the fire got into the walls.

The house was still vacant at the time. I am glad everybody was safe and I am SO GLAD that we no longer owned The Money Pit!

I have a Maxism for you this week:

Max is in his intermediate sailing class this week and next. After that, he’ll be in the racing class. He was telling me about two of his classmates who are brothers. One of them is “nice” and one of them is a comedic trouble-maker. Max likes the nice one, who is 13.

I said, “How old is his brother?”

Max said, “Thirteen.”

I asked, “Oh, so they’re twins?”

Max replied, “No, they’re just brothers.”

Hugs to all!
Angela

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Angela Hoy lives on a mountain in North Georgia. She is the publisher of WritersWeekly.com, the President and CEO of BookLocker.com and AbuzzPress, and the author of 24 books.

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