Saturday, April 20, 2013

It's Been a Minute.... And a Half!

Wow! It has been quite a long while since I've updated my blog! I didn't just stop for no reason at all, I got busy with life! Right after my last post Chris and I found a house! We were going to do a year lease on the place and then do a rent to own! This house was beautiful! Two stories, front yard and huge fenced back yard with grape vines and a play set for the kids... Two living rooms, one gorgeous updated stainless steel kitchen, five bedrooms and three bathrooms.. This house was more than we could have dreamed for! We decided to still get married but cut a lot out of the wedding... I changed my dress and shoes last minute, the venue turned into our church, we made our cake, we never sent out the invitations, just invited a few close family... I mean we really cut down this wedding....We still got married on November 10th but it was not at all what I wanted. All so we could put money into moving and the house. Well, that's when our nightmare started! This house turned out to be not as updated as we had expected. The ONLY heating source downstairs was one small gas fire place and the two older girls slept down there and froze so we had to turn the fire place way up, all the time. And we had cracked one pane old windows in the basement! They promised to get them fixed and never did. The gas bill was through the roof! The electricity was horribly wired and went out in half of the house and took over a month to get fixed. That was hell, extension cords were everywhere, bathroom lights didn't work so we had to put extension cords and lamps in the bathrooms... It was bad. Well then water started backing up through the floor in the laundry room and the city couldn't figure out why, plumbers couldn't figure out why... Just water every few days, EVERYWHERE! They had done the remodeling themselves to save money and well.... They didn't do a good job AT ALL. The hardwood flooring the kitchen started coming undone, not one thing was fixed right in the house... The calking around all the sinks and tubs and what not went to hell... It was just BAD! I could go on forever the issues! Our rent was way higher than this house was worth and with our bills being high because of the water and gas issues well it just wasn't worth it. We decided to break our lease and move. Thankfully the landlord found new renters and we got most of our security deposit back and were able to break the lease with no penalties. Thank God we left when we did! Two days after we moved, we went to get our last load in the Uhaul and the basement was FLOODED! I mean inches of water through the WHOLE basement...... All coming from the window that would have been right over my computer desk and all of my Scentsy work stuff AND living room furniture and electronics! Thankfully all this stuff was gone by this time... Two days later and we would have lost thousand and thousands in furniture and electronics! Well it turns out that the landlords didn't get their sprinklers blown out even though they said they did and it was in the contract that we didn't have to do anything with the sprinklers until spring/summer. I guess they "thought" the previous tenants blew them out but they didn't make sure and of course they didn't. And with the pipes freezing and unfreezing and then snow melting and weather changing like crazy, well they blew and flooded right into those cracked single pane windows! It looks like God was definitely watching out for us! We did lose a few hundred dollars in some of my work stuff and some smaller furniture and baby stuff and we tried to get it out of the landlord since it was THEIR fault... Negligence on THEIR part... We decided $500 wasn't worth it to take them to court and so we cut our loses before things got ugly. Well now we are in our new place and doing great... Have been here since February 1st. It's a three bedroom basement apartment with two bathrooms. I like it but I wish we could move soon. There is no lease agreement because the house is for sale but the owner is asking too much for it (400K) and won't go lower so we sit here until we have to move. All of our utilities are included in the rent which is great! But it is small still..... Over 2,000sq feet but the rooms are tiny, except for our room which is actually a livingroom. The landlord didn't say that he was considering the livingroom a bedroom. And well at least I will try to relax for awhile! Photobucket