A Tale of Two Houses
Preparing for tomorrow's re-appraisal of this house we've been working on the past year and 2 days (but who's counting?), we're finishing up work on the basement bathroom. The original intent, way back in December, had been simply to replace the toilet, a job the Lowe's book estimated to take 2 hours. Sam figured 4, and I figured a generous 8. Neither of us even came close to the actual time of 8 weeks.
As it turned out, the old toilet was not bolted to the floor. Why? Because there were no bolts. It was simply sitting over the hole to the waste line, like slightly-more-comfortable-than-usual outhouse seat. The floor needed to be ripped up, the concrete drilled into, a new subfloor surface prepared, a flange set to allow the new toilet to be installed, properly this time. In this process, it was discovered not only that the wall behind the toilet had rotted, but also that there was no studding to support that wall--the wall was sort of leaned into place, nailed to light strips of wood, and covered with (hideous) wallpaper. Nice.
So, new bathroom from the ground up, literally. This weekend Sam has re-drywalled, and I have sanded. I'm going to paint in about an hour and then Sam will get the remaining work done on the floor, the new vanity set in place, and hopefully a new light fixture mounted.
The kicker is that the reason a lot of this stuff appears to have been done this way--even serious safety issues, like the furnace vent not being attached, just set into place (so that if it came loose, the CO2 would flow into the house instead of out the vent)--is that the former owner of the house is the code inspector for our town! Guess nobody watches the watcher.
In other news, at my old house this week, the gas line to the main out in the road apparently broke, so that no gas was being delivered to my house. Since no one was living there to notice the rapid onset of the cold, a pipe froze and burst (luckily, it appears to have sprayed just into the unfinished basement drain, so no damage . . . just a big scare, plenty of stress, lots of phone calls, a bill to pay--and some thankfulness for the providence of another realtor happening to show up at the house just as the problem occurred). Drama, drama.
And at this point, may I just offer my deepest and most astonished thanks to State Farm, who said that they don't usually cover the repair of the pipe but would against their policy in our case because it wasn't our fault? And then they told us that they'd give us the benefit of the doubt if it looked like anything other than wear and tear could have caused the break to the gas line, and cover that too. It's unlikely--we'll probably still have to pay it, and it will hurt--but whew, how nice.
One house, I think, would be enough!
As it turned out, the old toilet was not bolted to the floor. Why? Because there were no bolts. It was simply sitting over the hole to the waste line, like slightly-more-comfortable-than-usual outhouse seat. The floor needed to be ripped up, the concrete drilled into, a new subfloor surface prepared, a flange set to allow the new toilet to be installed, properly this time. In this process, it was discovered not only that the wall behind the toilet had rotted, but also that there was no studding to support that wall--the wall was sort of leaned into place, nailed to light strips of wood, and covered with (hideous) wallpaper. Nice.
So, new bathroom from the ground up, literally. This weekend Sam has re-drywalled, and I have sanded. I'm going to paint in about an hour and then Sam will get the remaining work done on the floor, the new vanity set in place, and hopefully a new light fixture mounted.
The kicker is that the reason a lot of this stuff appears to have been done this way--even serious safety issues, like the furnace vent not being attached, just set into place (so that if it came loose, the CO2 would flow into the house instead of out the vent)--is that the former owner of the house is the code inspector for our town! Guess nobody watches the watcher.
In other news, at my old house this week, the gas line to the main out in the road apparently broke, so that no gas was being delivered to my house. Since no one was living there to notice the rapid onset of the cold, a pipe froze and burst (luckily, it appears to have sprayed just into the unfinished basement drain, so no damage . . . just a big scare, plenty of stress, lots of phone calls, a bill to pay--and some thankfulness for the providence of another realtor happening to show up at the house just as the problem occurred). Drama, drama.
And at this point, may I just offer my deepest and most astonished thanks to State Farm, who said that they don't usually cover the repair of the pipe but would against their policy in our case because it wasn't our fault? And then they told us that they'd give us the benefit of the doubt if it looked like anything other than wear and tear could have caused the break to the gas line, and cover that too. It's unlikely--we'll probably still have to pay it, and it will hurt--but whew, how nice.
One house, I think, would be enough!
posted by Tara | 6:29 PM
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