eastowners

Current Mood: On Ice

I know Char’s posted some grand emotions about our little corner of paradise turning out to be a little less than ideal. I, of course, have my own take on the issue; one that may not jive with that of my darling wife (whom I love very very much). I’m not trying to suga-coat it. It sucks, but it’s not as bad as it could be. We’ve lived in this house for 5 years without having to do anything. That’s pretty good in my book, and probably better than you’d even do in a new home.

We knew our basement leaked when we bought it and when I looked at it last year, it looked like the water was coming in from the clean-out, but I have yet to find a time when it actually was (even though there’s water-stain evidence that at some point, IT WAS). It’s a little difficult to catch something that doesn’t even happen every time it rains. We’ve been aware that something had to happen with the east side of the house, but all along, we’ve assumed that it was leaking through the wall because of the poor grade along the east side of the house. This was also the inspector’s take on it when the disclosure stated a leaky basement, which is common in Eastown.

Today, we found something that makes me think that perhaps it has something to do with how the chimney is flashed/sealed/something. We found water damage (and fresh, with a good mold colony) in the former-office-soon-to-be-Clare’s-room. This part of the wall has seen damage before. It’s one of the rare places in the house where there is drywall where there should be plaster.

Given the previous owners inability to discover roof-related leaks causing internal damage (I’ll get to that in a moment), my guess is that he replaced the inside wall, but never fixed the root of the problem. The mold only appears to go about 1/3 down the wall, so the damage might not be extensive. We need someone (anyone but one of us) to go up and inspect and repair the chimney and surrounding components so they don’t leak. I’m not comfortable risking my wife’s well-being or my ability to provide for my family to go up three stories on a rickety ladder to fix it. Therefor, we must hire a professional.

That’s life. End of story. Nothing else to see here.

Here’s the back-story to my comment about the previous owner. He is a super nice guy who did a top-notch job rewiring and re-plumbing the inside. The work inside the house is beautiful and no corners were cut to update the house to a usable state for the 21st Century. Remember… the house was built in ‘22… they didn’t even have TV’s then. I’m severely impressed with the inside. The painting job has latest the five years we’ve been here; only now is it becoming a problem in some areas.

The outside, however, is something else entirely. When we bought the house, we were told that when it rained heavy, there was a drip from the light bulb on the porch. Apparently, he had searched and searched and couldn’t find the source of the leak. The lightbulb is on the west side of the porch. The leak was found a couple of summers ago when we replaced the porch roof; almost 1/3 of the east side of the porch had gone to compost. The rest of the porch had a layer of dirt that used to be the first layer of shingles. I’m surprised he didn’t find it because lifting one shingle was all it took for me to know that it needed to be replaced.

So the plan is to get someone in to assess just how bad it is and to get an estimate on getting the roof-leak fixed so we can replace the wall in the office/Clare’s bedroom. I’m comfortable doing the inside work and don’t need a contractor for that, but getting up on the roof is just too much risk for either of us to take.

While we’re at it, Char wants certain things done in the bathroom and we’ll get that quoted while we’re at it. No worries. Yeah… I’m finally going to have the bite the bullet and take out some kind of home equity loan, but maybe we’ll get a few other things consolidated along with it and it’ll come out with a zero cost increase in monthly payments (at least that’s the prevailing plan).

This only delays our moving of Clare, which is a little frustrating, but nothing ever works out quite how you planned it. Again… no big deal. We just change our direction, fix the problem and move on.

Anyway… we’ll keep everyone updated on the progress of working out the kinks in This Ol’ Domicile. Stay tuned.