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Welcome to home ownership.

I’ve mentioned this before – on Jan 4th, I ended up closing on my first house. The primary driving force of course being my now nearly seven month old daughter, the secondary driving force is well – owning a house.

Both my wife and I were excited, ecstatic even. I mean, it’s not a palatial mansion by any stretch – but it was ours.

Then, things went sideways. After closing, after we start painting – we find a problem. A big, glaring problem. That problem happens to be a leaking toilet – that has apparently been leaking for some time (measured in potentially years) into the sub flooring. This means all the wood beneath the tile floor under the toilet it rotten and moldy, and that dampness and mold may have spread to the rest of the flooring and areas.

We found this pulling the toilet to put in a new one – now, instead of a cheap plop-in-a-new-toilet, we’re staring down the barrel of a much larger “strip to the walls due to rot and mold” deal. We can’t move in, and we didn’t even imagine this would happen.

Rotten wood, mold. The works. And no, it’s not covered, and it is no ones responsibility (or rather, no one is liable). Nope, we just get left holding the bag. The inspector found a tangental issue: but not the primary issue, so no one was technically the wiser.

Stupid toilets. From now on I’m only buying houses without running water, in non-flood plains in areas with no termites. Also the house will be made of stone.

  • Count0
    So, moving to Scotland?
  • I should, but I'd probably end up buying a castle with a flooded basement.
  • Longabow
    Three weeks ago I wrote a comment to a post in which you spoke about your home. I said:

    """
    As my thirteen year old put it:

    Owning a home has its highs and has its Lowes.
    """

    For our friends living outside the US Lowes is a home improvement store that one visits quite frequently.

    Today I checked that post and I was most surprised to see that you said:

    """
    That's awful
    """

    Now I don't really know how to read this ... do you really think so? By the way, I'd say he was right, no?

    Anyway sorry to hear about the problem. Buying a home is indeed a risk, home inspectors are worthless, the most useless $600 I ever spent, for our home the first big rain got water in the basement.

    It is very depressing to get such a nasty surprise, but lok at the bright side, this is how experience grows, twenty years from now this will be story passed down to the next generations.


  • I meant more "that's awful" in the ironic sense - it's so very true. Since buying the house I've spent more time at Lowes than I have at any other retail store, ever. I never though lightbulbs/fixtures and home appliances could be so fascinating.

    I don't think our inspector was useless - he did catch some things we did have the owners fix - it's just rough dealing with something like this when it comes from left field. When my wife and I started looking I insisted on new construction, but given this is the Boston area, and new construction is still smoking the high price pipe, we went for a house built sometimes in the last 100 years, hoping we'd avoid a certain amount of "creative engineering" you get with older homes.

    Yeah. We didn't avoid any of it.
  • Sorry to hear about the troubles, Jesse. Both my parents have done extensive work on their respective houses and had surprises hit them in the process, so I can relate. Hopefully the costs won't get out of line and the place will be better for it.

    And yes, an outhouse is much simpler. =)
  • I was thinking something more akin to a fort. A big stone fort.
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