Really? A-f*cking-gain?

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So, I don’t know what it is. Something about our luck. And I’m trying not to ascribe it to the whole of the US, because I know that’s unfair, but the crappyness of the buildings we’ve seen, and the utterly appaulling quality of renovations we’re seeing does make me wonder if this is a cultural thing. That just throwing up a building, then doing shoddy work on it for a while, until it falls down, that might be a thing? I don’t know.

And maybe it’s just that the all but one of the very oldest houses we’ve looked at here to buy are the same age as the newest houses I’ve worked on or looked at in the UK? I know new houses are f’kin shonky in the UK, so maybe it’s just that we’re looking at the equivalent of UK modern houses here? Whatever it is, it’s beginning to make me feel very fed up.

Maybe it’s just that we naturally attract shonky-ass crap houses.

So, the house inspection showed up that there had been water in the crawl space (void) under the house. He suggested that the slope of the ground around the house, and a failure to have a gap between the foundation and the grass was at fault. That run-off was pooling in the space. That had then encouraged wood-boring-animals into the wood, so some of the support pillars for the building would need replacing. He recommended getting a wood-boring knowledgable person in to identify what needed doing.

The pest guy identify a couple of pillars that he knew would need replacing, and the beetle treatment would not be terribly expensive. But he said we needed to sort out the water ingress problem. And he recommended getting a contractor in to check the pillars to identify which ones needed replacing.

Today we had possibly the worst matched contractor we’ve ever had quote on work come and quote for repair work because. He was also meant to be discussing ballpark figures for the addition (extension) that we want to do; but… that didn’t happen.

Anyhow, he says that the is of the opinion that there’s around 1′ of water sitting in the crawlspace through the winter, because of a “low water table”. I’m assuming he means “high water table”. Anyhow, that would require modifications to the foundations to enable the water to drain.

And that would not be cheap.

As this is the n’th house we’ve seen with some hideous problem that the owner really should have had fixed years ago. Like 39 years ago, when it was first f’kin built, I’m beginning to want to scream.

Also, being mansplained to for an hour, by someone completely unwilling to actually listen to what we wanted done, that didn’t really help my mood. But I’m going right off the idea of buying a house here*.

So yay.

* To be honest, the urge to flee has been around. But hey. It comes and goes.

KateWE

Kate's a human mostly built out of spite and overcoming transphobia-racism-and-other-bullshit. Although increasingly right-wing bigots would say otherwise. So she's either a human or a lizard in disguise sent to destroy all of humanity. Either way, it's all good.