It Looks Like We May Be Moving Again

HI - Nice to see you again. Have you sent any greeting cards recently?

Have you ever seen the movie the Money Pit? It’s an 80’s comedy with Tom Hanks and Shelley Long. They buy what appears to be a beautiful house that is perfect for them. Until they move in, that is. Then everything begins to fall apart – including their marriage.

I fear we’ve moved into such a house. Thank goodness we are only renting and can move relatively easy enough.

We were told that we could have the place September 1. This was August 18th. We asked if we would be able to begin moving in a few days before the first. The landlord said we could move in over the course of the following week. She just needed to finish painting one room.

Well…she called the end of the week of the 18th and told me that she had a family emergency and had not gotten the painting done. I said that’s fine. We can wait until the 1st to move in. We got the keys on August 29. We gave her the first month’s rent and majority of the security deposit. The day we went to get the keys, she was supposedly “finishing up the painting” and we could begin moving in on the 31st.

The 31st rolls around and we bring over the first load. I look into the room that is supposed to be our bedroom and here is the lovely paint job that I see.

Bedroom Wall 1
Notice the big GAP in the wall in this one. This is where the cutsey spiders come in to visit.

Bedroom Wall 2
This is the lovely paint job around the windows.

Bedroom Wall 3
If you magnify this photo, you will see that there is a BUG that crawled through the crack where the walls don’t come together. EEEWWWW…

I am sick of vacuuming up bugs.

The landlord called the day we moved in (Tuesday) to say that she would be over Thursday or Friday to finish the painting and put up the trim in the corners. I told her that I would be happy to finish the painting and put up the trim if she would like. She said “I’m very particular about my painting, Roxanne. I’ve had tenants tell me they could paint before and there was paint all over everything”. I explained that my husband and I owned a construction company in NY and sometimes I would do the finish painting. She didn’t care. She insisted on doing it. She didn’t show up on Thursday or Friday or all of the rest of the month.

So here we are a whole month later and my bedroom still is not painted. That means we still have not completely settled into our new home. I called her October 1 to tell her that the toilet was running and I couldn’t shut off the water because someone put a piece of door trim flush with the shut off valve and I couldn’t get in there. She never called or sent her husband over. The toilet ran all day until my husband came home from work and pried the piece of trim off and shut off valve. The landlord then called on the 4th acting like she had not gotten the message from the 1st and said she would be here on Monday or Tuesday to finish painting the bedroom. This is now OVER A MONTH AFTER we moved in. Today is October 12 and she still has not shown up to finish painting our bedroom!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The walls in the whole house are stucco. I thought she meant they were faux stucco (which is kind of neat), however, I think they stuccoed with cement. See Living Room Wall Here They are so hard that I can’t even put push pins in them and if I attempt to hammer in a small nail, it cracks the wall. Therefore, I can’t hang any pictures. So I’ve resorted to peel and stick wall art that I can just stick on and take off.

Wall Art 1
Wall Art 2
Wall Art 3

Every floor in the house is CROOKED. We are constantly walking uphill or downhill. It wasn’t real noticeable until we started putting our stuff in and everything LEANED. (As shown here). You will notice that there is a much larger gap at the top of the fridge than at the bottom because the floor is not level. It leans.

Then we have the front door. The landlord told us when we looked at the house that the previous tenant lost the key to the front door. It’s a very old house with a very old door. The lock takes a skeleton key. I told her not to worry. My daughter collects skeleton keys and she probably has one that will fit it. So we move in and find a key that fits. We unlock the front door and THE LOCK FALLS TO THE FLOOR!!!! The landlord’s husband stopped by day 3 that we were here and I told him that the previous tenant must have conveniently lost the key to the front door because she broke the lock and he shook his head as if to say “oh my goodness”. No solution was offered though. We still have a front door that does not lock.

Did I mention the mice? We haven’t actually seen any, but the 2nd day we were here, I noticed an area at the top of the stairs that had fresh scratches and drywall dust on the floor. It looked like something had CHEWED ON THE WALL down near the floor. I told the landlord this and she says “OH – we put poison under the house and in the walls of the garage but forgot to put any in the crawl spaces upstairs”. She then proceeds to tell me that when she comes over to finish the painting, she will bring poison. HHHMMM…..I wonder when that may be.

Stairs – well, we didn’t realize this either, but a couple of the steps had been broken and nailed back on. See the cracked stair step here. There are actually two of them. One is up further. My daughter has to be VERY careful coming down the stairs. If she steps wrong, the front of the step comes loose. OH – and this must be one reason why the landlord doesn’t like anyone else painting. The spots on the stairs are ground in filth and paint splatters that will not come off.

Then we have the dogs. When we looked at the house, we asked if we could fence in the backyard for the dogs. She said yes. The day we picked up the keys (ONE DAY BEFORE MOVING IN) she says that her husband doesn’t want a fenced in backyard. So the dogs are tied up out back. Brutus is tied to the big doghouse and Sandy is tied to the deck. I can’t stand having them tied.

So this is where we stand. We have an unpainted bedroom that bugs are crawling into constantly. Needless to say, it smells like bug spray because I spray the open cracks in the wall constantly. We have a front door that doesn’t lock. We have a CROOKED house. We have a mouse (or mice) chewing on our walls. We have dogs tied up out back.

I’m at my wits end and just want to go somewhere safe and LEVEL.

Roxanne

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