Rain Rain Go Away

When I arrived into my home with moving boxes on Monday morning I experienced one of the most helpless moments of my life. I entered the front door and immediately had flash backs from my childhood of a waterpark called Wyandot Lake. This time however there was no laughing or sounds of kids enjoying their adolescent worry free life’s, just the echoes of free falling water as it saturated the 100 year old wood floors.

As I sit on a plane right now returning from a business trip in San Diego I can’t get the house out of my head. With recent storms that blew in again yesterday, saying I’m anxious to get home would be a colossal understatement. It has been a tough and emotional week as the roofers botched the tearoff and replacement of the flat roof when they didn’t cover it before the storm on Monday. It’s ironic that I write this post after my previous one on Angie’s list as this contractor was not an Angie’s list contractor. Since I can’t write a nasty complaint on Angie’s website, I’ll use my blog as both a sounding board about this company and a therapeutic release of frustration. To the owner of the construction companies credit he has accepted fault and created a plan to remedy all damages under his insurance policy. Nonetheless I’m now moved into the first floor unit while living under a huge tarp and and my time schedule for getting my second floor unit rentable is set back by at least 2 weeks. With a projected rent of around $1,400/mon for the unit this setback will cost me personally around $700.

A water restoration company entered the scene on Tuesday and have been working hard to remove moisture from the building. Over seven fans have been setup creating a hurricane effect on my second floor while turning my electric meter into a ferociously spinning top. Our hope is the original wood floors will not need replaced. The total cost for the roof replacement was budgeted around $11,000, an additional $2,000 was spent to replace the insulation, and $3,500 to replace all the decking with new plywood. In addition a mold company is to be paid around $4,000 for treatment and preventive spray in the attic while the roof was open. Needless to say this will all be ripped up and redone. The only portion of the project that will remain was the $6,000 of masonry work that was done to rebuild my north parapet wall and spot tuck the inner parapet walls for the new roof.

It has been an early lesson that investment properties are not a cake walk or for the light hearted. Tears will be shed, but the long term potential will hopefully outweigh the short term set backs. I look forward to getting back into town and regaining some sort of stability in my home life.

Original plaster ceiling will need torn down and redone