I don’t know if other Carnival of the Vanities hosts have bumped into major problems while hosting COV or not, but my experience has been memorable. Let me give you some background.
This summer I finished up a four-year project. Upon its completion, I accepted a new job in another state. My wife and I bought a house built in 1949 from a sweet old couple who were the original owners. We moved in about 2 months ago. After I sold our old house, I resumed blogging again. With all of that paperwork behind me, I also decided now would be a good time to switch blogging software. After all, COV was two weeks off, I had plenty of time. My wife and I had even managed to renovate the basement in our “new” house. We laid tile in the great room and in a nice office for me. We had finished painting it and I just moved my PC and all my files and books downstairs.
Two days later, we had the first significant rainfall since we moved into our house. The sweet old couple had lied through their teeth about the condition of the house. When my wife and I went downstairs the next day, we found several inches of rainwater and sewage backed up in the basement. We frantically moved as much stuff as possible out of the basement.
Using my trusty shop-vac, I literally hauled about 50 gallons of contaminated water out of the basement before I gave up and called a plumber. We managed to get a plumber there fairly quickly. He reported that the house had some drainage problems, but he could fix it. He said the entire problem was easily preventable with yearly maintenance and didn’t understand why the previous owners hadn’t warned us – he had been there before…
We also hired a cleaning service to help us haul stuff upstairs and clean what could be salvaged. Since the water was contaminated, all wet books and such had to be tossed. I’ll confess that my wife and I were in a bit depressed for a day or two of the magnitude of our loss – since we had been assured the basement would stay dry, we kept all of our unpacked moving boxes down there. We also like wood furniture and had quite a bit of wooden shelving down there. Most of it was a total loss, as well as all the tile we had so painstakingly laid.
I called my insurance agent who said that we were not covered, but for an extra $50 a year he could sell us a rider for next time. (Warning: If you have Shelter Insurance, their base policy does not cover many types of water damage). I thanked him for this timely information and went back to our mess.
All of the tile, drywall, paneling, and wood frames in the basement had to be removed. In a nutshell, we had to strip the basement to concrete. I rented a truck and have been spending the last few days ripping out decaying wood and driving it to the dump. On the way back from my second trip to the dump yesterday, a tire blew out on the interstate. I’ll give the Chevy designers due credit, the Silverado was easy to control even with a blown tire.
The good folks at Enterprise Rental took the Silverado back for a few hours and got it back to me with a new tire on it. It is good to see an organization handle hiccups with competence – they said it was the first blown tire they had seen in over 10 years since they change their tires frequently. I just laughed and said it went with the week.
I hired a plumber to help me remove the downstairs sinks. Not a single sink, toilet, or tub in the house had a cut-off valve and I had to remove the vanities downstairs as they were ruined. While he was there and I was removing drywall, he noticed that the upstairs bathrooms both had minor leaks that had caused the wood beneath them to rot (my home inspector missed that as well as the drainage problems). Fortunately, I could still see some humor in the situation and put it on my list to fix. This is our fourth house, but this may be our first severe money pit.
I stayed home today during working hours and tore out our stairwell and made several more trips to the dump. This evening, I went into work and knocked out a few things that had to be ready in the morning. When I returned home, I had the email fiasco where about 15 or so COV submissions were lost. Hopefully the authors will see my message and resubmit before I go to work in the morning. As of this writing, at least one person has resubmitted, so I'll count that as a partial victory.
So there is my long tale about my challenges in hosting COV. For their sakes, I hope no one can top it. At least my host server is working flawlessly. (Famous last words…). My spirits are still high and I shall persevere. However, I think my blogging pseudonym has never been more appropriate.
Luckily, here in Florida we don't have
(many) basements. I will commiserate
with you because:
Last House - 1 week after we moved in, we lost the power cable to the pumphouse. I ended up trenching and laying cable about 200 feet. Then the septic holding tank had to be pumped. Of course the in-laws were down to see the new house at the time.
Over the 7 or so years we lived there I replaced:
The refrigerator
The dishwasher
The water heater
the main pump
around 300 feet of PVC pipe
remodeled:
The front porch/entry
the living room (twice)
the lighting fixtures in 2 of three bathrooms
and painted the entire interior (2200 sq ft). I won't detail the outside work that was done.
Of course that's nothing compared to what I did to the house before that:
Completely gutted and remodeled the entire interior (1400 sq ft)
layed new tile in the kitchen and bathroom, (including a 5 X 8 foot mosiac
tile dragon I made in the tub surround)
repaired/refurbished the hardwood floors
moved walls, put in ceilings (popcorn over drywall), re-roofed the house
replaced the outside siding, replaced about half of the inside panelling, re-wired and re-plumbed the entire house, put in a Franklin stove for heating, then put in electric baseboard heaters (involved crawling UNDER the house), landscaped the outside, put in a pumphouse and a greehouse and took out 6 trees!
So, when I say "I know what you're going through", I really do. (I realise that doesn't make it any easier, but misery loves company)
All I can say is "Good Luck" - and just think, Sparrow gets back tomorrow!
You just like to add all this suspense, emotion, thrills and narrative to the CoV.
Had you heard that houses always cry when they first receive owners they like? It is sort of a welcome.
Thanks all; and Khobrah if you want a working vacation, just let me know :-)
My gosh man, that's awful :/
I wish we all lived in the same town, so we could all come over and help you clean things up and get things back in order.
Hang in there.
"Working Vacation"
Is there any other kind??? <BG>
The "joys" of home ownership. I have the pleasure of living across the road from a pig farm - this unusually wet year has been.....aromatic. I believe I can say I know the greeting that your noses met when you decended the stairs.
I too have had wet basements, and am now living in one that has gotten several inches deep in the past - on more than one occasion....it seems that the entire hillside drains thorugh my backyard and the contours run it through my house - of course before my house was there - the lot had stabilized (my Mother in law had buil the house in 1976) but while my Sister in law and her husband were living there, he "improved" the lot by clearing 90% of the trees out.....they were the sponge holding the place together....then they moved out and we moved in and bought from Mom.....mind you he didn't ask her (owner at the time) about the improvments....and he managed to remove eachand every tree with any landscaping value to the place....they got in his way while mowing....and to put on the icing, mom had put in a french drain at one point - which was not working proper due to sink .... ever see what happens when 20 yards of sand turn to liquid and go someplace else? a full length of drain tile bent 90 degrees DOWN....still having sink issues, going to excavate and fiill with crushed stone...should only take about 20 tons of stone to stabilize driveway....have woken up to foot sized holes behind the tires of parked cars, held in place only by frozen earth....moved cars and then broken threw and gone in up to my waste....
parents own a house bulit in 1st third of 1800's and grandparents renovated (gutted after a fire) another built before that - the roof was in excess of 37 square when i redid it, and the eves are about 35 feet off the ground....shingles are heavy.
I can say good things about UGL DryLock products....apply easily and so far are working well....the constant seep and rising damp are gone....but I check the sump pump almost daily.
Glad you survived the tire...word to all about rental vehicles. I have yet to pick one up with propper or even tire pressures. Make it a habbit to always check those when you get a car/truck anything...a good tire gauge is less than $5.00 and will fit in your pocket - not saying that this was a cause, but tires don't blow out like that without something major wrong in them, I suspect was low, or got low, and then got hot and POW. Glad you are OK (I once got a Dodge Ram pickup with 80 PSI on one front tire and 35 PSI on the other....it pulled badly...both rear tires had only in the 20's for PSI, was from Enterprise as well actually...or was it National....the truck had Michelin LT tires on them rated high (I forget what the specific rating is) so that the 80 was not thrreatening to explode, but you drive onthe highway with a 60 PSI difference in your front tires and...well....it's interesting....turns out there was a leak in the tire...but still.
Good Luck with the rest...makes me wish I were still unemployed so that I could drive out and help you recover.
Thanks all. Maybe we need a site for horror stories and those people who contributed to the mess (as a warning for others to never buy homes where these people had lived...)
Egads! Fortunately for me the flooding problem I experienced last week didn't involve sewage. However it was caused by a plugged septic tank so I may yet experience this disaster, as the first disaster was caused by my roomie/tenant refusing to listen to me when I said 'Whatever you do, don't use the toilet until I get a plumber here', after previosly saying on more than a few occasions 'Dude, please don't use half a role of Charmin Ultra 3-ply each time you need to shed a pound, you're going to plug the septic system if you keep it up'. Both times I was ignored it seems. So I'm worried that my new statement of 'Um, I'm a bit pissed off, you need to leave, the back rent you owe me won't begin to cover the damage you've done, and while you're still here don't use the toilet at all under any circumstances ever again.'
Woops... didn't paste the whole message above. the following should continue the message:
will be ignored. In any event, I lost my puter as a result, hopefully the harddrive is recoverable, but that's doubtful. :-( I'll try it out later this week when I have more time to take apart computers. For the time being I'm a host and player without a puter, so it'll be a couple days at a time sometimes until I get back to everyone who writes me. Gotta love Roommates, their the next best thing to family. :-) Anyone want to rent or buy a house in upstate new york?
Also, a funny thing about Enterprise: I once rented from them for a week between cars after my own auto was totalled. The first car I rented was a truck (it was all they had), I think it was a Chevy Blazer if I recall correctly, anyways the truck's power steering went after the frist day as they didn't bother to put any power steering fluid in it. They aplogized of course and gave me a new vehicle (some random sedan), stating that their mechanics regularly service all of their vehicles so they couldn't understand how the truck could have experienced the problem it did. The next vehilce lasted a day as well, the situation there was the breaks went, completely. Drifted nicely into oncoming traffic I did, and there was nothing I was able to do about it, even the emergency break was kaputt. :-) Fortunately for me they went when I was only going about 5 MPH upon pulling away from a friend's house and up to a corner after dropping him off so the potentially killer autos were able to drive around me and just madly honk their horns. The 3rd auto was the charm.
Be aware...
One day I appear at the USA and help you to build up this desaster...;-)
Best regards,
Ralph
Hey Quixote; I can tell you that if the former owners didn't disclose this on the discloser form, you can probably sue them for damages.
Oh my god.
I hope for the "sweet old couple" that they moved to somewhere >>really<< far away...
At least you escaped the tire incident intact.