House Horribles

***This was from mid-November. I'm just going to post as is. Don't even remember my point or what, think I was just documenting the horrible process I was dealing with (still somewhat am)***

It started with the decision to move... let me preface this with I don't want to move to Wichita, that's a known fact. No matter how positive I try to swing it and how upbeat I try to be, the simple fact remains. One positive piece of this was Kyle's company would buy our house from us. We did not want to list the house before moving and deal with showing it with four kids and a dog the last month we have living here. So we were excited to hear that perk. Well all perks come at a cost... we still have to list the house eventually, but only for 60 days and then they will take it from us. We also have to go through inspections and such to make sure the house is up to their policy standards before they purchase from us... that's where it started.

Actually let me back up one day. It was a Monday and we had the inspection done on our FUTURE house. I was looking forward to it, I love inspections because you get to learn all about the house you're about to take responsibility of. Unfortunately we were 650 miles away and unable to physically be there but our two agents were and we facetimed with them to talk to the inspector and get the report and ask questions. We looked through the report, glad that we had a few pages with photos to read through... but then we quickly realized we had way too high of expectations for this guy. We had an amazing inspection company for our current house and while we weren't expected THAT great we were hoping for more than we got... but at this point we're kinda stuck. So who knows what he missed, but we don't want to drop another $500 to get it done again, so once we move in I'll do my own inspection - paying close attention to the relocation policy we're going off on for this home.

So the FOLLOWING day after this disappointing Monday, I got a call to review the inspection done on our CURRENT home by the relocation company. And boy oh boy did that inspector rip us a new one. I swear he was getting paid for each item he could write up... this has consumed my days, hours, and minutes since happening October 29th. Let me see here, I'll just lay this out there, for documentation purposes. This isn't counting all the phone calls, emails back and forth, and time NOT having to wait around to meet someone at the house for various things.

Tue Oct 29th Had to leave a BSF fellowship early to take the phone call on the drive home
---Oct 29th Energy people here to lift electrical line and cut branches which was really no concern but on the report to fix so it's done
Wed Oct 30th Garage door estimate guy came
---Oct 30th moved wood that was complained about leaning up against wall in garage
---Oct 30th photos sent showing we are not trimming our neighbor's tree and that the branches don't even touch our house
Fri Nov 1st Mold inspector here to take samples in the attic
---Nov 1st also inspection of fireplace done at Kansas house and we learn that it's a mess, unsafe to burn and basically need to be rebuilt
Sat Nov 2nd Painter stopped by for estimate
---Nov 2nd also trip to home depot to get insulation line to replace, return trip because I got the wrong size
Mon Nov 4th Another garage door guy for estimate
---Nov 4th Stucco Specialist by to evaluate BRAND NEW stucco in the rain!
Tues Nov 5th Chimney Inspection (Chimney Deemed Unsafe to use)
---Nov 5th stucco specialist back needing to prove there is mesh under the stucco, drills hole in house
Wed Nov 6th Roofer here
Tues Nov 12th Electrician suppose to come, had to reschedule
---Nov 12 Window trim repaired (halfway, too cold for the caulking they'll be back)
---Nov 12 asbestos person here for testing
Wed Nov 13th Basement person came, but wasn't the right person to get... (see Friday)
---Nov 13 Electrical guys finally came 1.5 hours late
---Nov 13 Moisture testing guy here drilling holes into our brand new stucco
Thurs Nov 14th Water meter install (completely unrelated to any of this haha)
---Nov 14th SECOND chimney inspected at Kansas house, was suppose to be done the first, we learned this one also isn't working and needs the ventless gas logs replaced.
Fri Nov 15th Structural Engineer here
Oh Kyle is out of town the past week but arrives home and we chat with our agent about how we want to precede with negotiations about the now two NON working fireplaces in the Kansas house.
Sun Nov 17th Communication with Kansas agent about how the sellers are not willing to fix anything because "We don't want to fix something we aren't going to use" are you kidding me?!?!?! That is part of selling a home. Our previous house we had to put in a new furnace and replace the garage roof... this house we have to (see above). It's part of selling a house!

New Front Steps

Our front steps needed a face lift. Shortly after we moved in we sealed up a bunch of the cracks, then one winter in the thaw - freeze - thaw stage of weather it really cracked and popped up. We let it go for a year, got some bids last fall then left it for the winter and knew we'd need to tackle it this spring. Actually last fall I reached out to 3 or 4 companies and only ONE got back to me with a bid!!! I had better luck this spring and got three solid bids before choosing who we'd use. Got them scheduled in April and they got us on their calendar as soon as was available which happened to be end of June. It was suppose to get demo'd on Thursday and poured on Friday. But the rain kept them away so they weren't able to demo the stairs until Friday, June 28th. 

Before shots:

The arrived JUST as I got Thomas down for a nap. Luckily Thomas can sleep through anything and slept the entire time they were banging, sledge hammering, and jack hammering. The kids were very entertained. Free entertainment.... but not really free cuz we were paying a pretty penny for this. 

Thomas eventually woke up. It took them a good 4-5 hours to get it all broken up. Thomas enjoyed watching them. 

Then this is what we were left with for the weekend. 

The plan was to pour on Monday but again the rain kept them away. They did however show up later on Monday and framed up the steps. 

Tuesday was the day. They arrived about 3:30ish and the cement truck arrived at 4:00. 

Quite the show for the kids. They loved watching the cement pour out of the hose. They called it poop.

They finished it that evening. I left for my swim class and Kyle took the kids to drop off Isaac for Piano. This was where it was when I got home from swim about 7:15.

It lightened up as it dried. The railing will get put in, in a couple of weeks. And it's our responsibility to get the pavers in. A little over half of them went back in no problem... but the spot to the right is a little narrower so we're having to chisel some of the brick to get it to fit. Can't be easy.

We just have about four bricks left and will get to them eventually. 

Hole in the Wall

**I really have to laugh at how long this took us to get repaired... but that's life.**

Sometime in Mid-October 2018:

We had some little spots here and there I wanted to take care of, ya know the little nicks and scratches and paint chips from 3M hooks. I decided to finally take care of a handful of them all at one time. Feeling pretty proud to be on top of something. 

Then I went to look for a missing book and pulled out the kids bookshelf to discover this!!!

I left the room for a second to come back to discover Mary had touched the wall on the bubble:

It was all crumbling and soft around the bubble.

So I ended up getting all the soft spots out and cleaned up around and it kinda sat this way for a few months. 

We had our stucco guy come out and take a look to make sure it wasn't an external water intrusion issue that we would want to fix before patching the hole. We concluded that due to the vent being under the book shelf, over time with the cool from the AC and the heat from the furnace that it created moisture build up in that spot. There was no water damage to the slats in the wall so we knew it wasn't from outside. With that information it was time to call in for a repair. We are not familiar with plaster so I wasn't sure what to do. After watching the guy, realized we could have done it ourselves.... but with four kids and our schedules it was just easier to pay someone and finally get it done (four months later, haha!) he patched it up and I got it painted, not a perfect job painting but I didn't want to deal with getting tape out so it'll do for now. 

Just realized I didn't get a photo of the after but here's one with Thomas :-)

House Stucco

Wow! I started this blog months ago and hoped to finish before now. But this past week it finally was completed. They came back in mid-March to put up the scaffolding. The hope was to get it in place so once the weather was good they could get in and out and be done.

They did do some patching back in March to get the walls ready. There was this lovely bunch of mess that has a shotty patch job over it. There was just a board coving it instead of proper sheath and stucco. So they ended up tearing it all out, replacing the rotted boards and stuccoing over it properly.

There was also this randomness that was probably the cause of a draft behind our living room cabinets. They took that out and patched it up.

Holes from where the scaffolding was put in place.

And here are the before pictures

The garage roof was not flashed properly so they tore up the stucco there and pieces apart the roofing to get it flashed right.

The patches were all done before we left for our Florida vacation. Then we waited... we returned home and had a massive snow storm which pushed them back. He had taken his guys off unemployment then had to put them back on due to the snow storm, then take them off again and they were pushed way back for time. 

But they came back June 7th and were done in four days! Looks like a whole new house now!

They started on the south side and finished that whole side in one day. Took the scaffolding down that day too. We were so used to the scaffolding it was just nice to see it gone, lol.

That Friday they did the front of the house.

We also had them remove that rotting railing on top of the front door landing. Looks so much better without it.

 You can see the difference here!

 (Now we need to get our front steps redone, blugh)

 Before and After!

Last summer when my brother was visiting we installed a new front light and took down our house numbers. I had made some white numbers on my silhouette cameo to serve as temporary numbers, cuz I knew we'd put new ones up once the stucco was done. So we ordered a plate and got it put up... except the darn screws broke off!!! It's in there good and solid but now has these screws sticking out on both side. BOTH screws broke! Oh well!