The House that Monkeys Built
Even before we saw the house that we ended up buying (back in 2005) we knew it was going to be a fixer-upper. The description portion of the MLS listing included a count of the rooms with the simple addition of, "Freshly painted. View lot. Potential plus."
Yeah, "potential plus." For those who don't know, that's Realtor code for, "you're going to be fixing up this house for a long, long time."
Once we saw it, we could see it needed a lot of work just on a cosmetic level. The house didn't seem to have been updated much at all since the 70s. Popcorn ceilings, deeply scratched Pergo floors, nasty carpets, bad wallpaper, a depressing bank of recessed fluorescent lights, tacky light fixtures, a fireplace that seemed to have been designed by Mike Brady himself...all of this demanded attention. Just the painting, flooring, and ceiling work was going to delay our move-in a month. But the house had some unique features and we thought it was worth it, so we went for it. Even after learning about some non-cosmetic problems during the inspection process, we stayed under the impression that we were making an informed decision.
That's because we didn't know that the house was built by monkeys. I'm guessing not just any monkeys, but the kind that sling poo at people from trees. Lazy, mischievous monkeys who had, in fact, never built a house before.
Had we known what a long windy road these monkeys would lead us down, our faith might have faltered early on. But we didn't know until the situation unfolded, step by step:
1. When we had our flooring contractor replace the baseboards and door trim, she discovered that the doorframes had never been attached to the framing of the house. Yikes! She asked us to please be careful when walking through the doorways that weekend, so that we didn't bump into them and send them toppling over. I guess a doorway isn't always the most structurally sound spot in the event of an earthquake, eh? (She fixed them all the following week.)
2. Investigations into why an appliance wouldn't stay on revealed that the electrical panel was wired against code, with the furnace sharing a circuit with a bunch of other stuff. We had to lighten the electrical load by bringing in gas piping for the dryer, stove, and water heaters ($$ ow!).
3. Our questions about unevenness in the dining room floor were answered as the carpet was replaced, revealing that the subfloor was never installed properly. Even I could see that the seams on the plywood should be positioned over floor joists.
4. While installing garage storage solutions, I discovered that we were missing half the required ceiling joists. Apparently they thought that every four feet was close enough.
After a while, you come to expect the moment when your contractor pauses during a project and says, "On most houses, it takes fifteen minutes to do this. But on your house, see how they built it like that? Not sure why they did that, but it will take me two more hours to work around it." And you laugh. A little bit crazily.
It wouldn't be quite so bad if the previous owner (who was also the original owner) had actually given a damn. Apparently, though, she thought monkey labor was a fine idea and building codes were unnecessary bureaucracy. Thus we encountered things like:
- Illegal PVC piping leading from a water heater junction in the garage, all the way outside to a flimsy hose hookup (copper pipe is required by code).
- An electrical cord running from the bottom of a wall outlet, behind the cabinets, to a garbage disposal under the sink. Um, dangerous!
- The cord from an electric water heater (installed in a crawlspace) extending through a rude hole punched in the wall so that it could plug into the outlet in an adjacent room.
- Cabinets with shelves that routinely collapsed or that leaned precariously away from the wall. It lends a bit of excitement to kitchen storage that so many homes lack.
- A stove that kept popping a circuit simply because it had never been properly installed...years before.
You can see why, when a crack formed in the corner of the wall between the art studio and bedroom, I was a bit doubtful that it would be quick to fix. I was sure the house was coming apart at the seams, which was pretty sad because two years into this, having spent so much quality time together, the house and I had become pretty fond of each other. I tried to ignore the light sliding in from the bedroom to the studio (fine through a doorway, but not a wall!) until the recent makeover made it so obvious.
My handyman is more optimistic than I and assured me that it would be no big deal. All he needed to do was open the corner up at three points (on each side) and insert metal plates that would screw the studs from the perpendicular walls together. He wasn't going to be available for a couple of weeks to do this, so I held off on finishing the second paint job on the room, because why paint it a third time?
Last week, when he came over to do the repairs, I wasn't at all surprised to hear him call, "Miss Alix?" about 45 minutes in. I came out to talk to him and he explained what I somehow already knew, deep in the pit of my stomach: there was no exterior stud to use to secure the interior wall.
Apparently, when the previous owner had the wall added, she pointed and said, "Put it right here." Then Frank the Monkey, or whomever she hired, put it RIGHT THERE. Yep, perpendicular to the exterior wall, right up against the drywall, and not against a stud. Uh-huh. Let's just say this is not exactly...secure. No wonder the wall started pulling away!
My choice was to leave it be and ignore the crack or have them fix it. To fix it, they would open up the wall further, add a couple of studs, screw them securely together, put the wall board back on, and re-texture it. Of course, this was far more work than we had budgeted for. However, because we now knew about the problem, legally we would be obligated to disclose it if we ever sold the house, assuming we didn't fix it. Now, the previous owner didn't let such ethical issue bother her; she just resorted to her patented method of bald-faced lies. But we are not her and we tend to tell the truth.
As a result, two days later we were a bit poorer and our handyman was done. But, gosh darn it, is that corner ever secure. You can pound on it and it's not going anywhere.
Glamour, I tell ya. The life of a homeowner is sheer glamour.
Oh, well, time to break out more blue tape...I'm going to finish this stupid makeover if it is the last thing I do.
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