So this is where I was supposed to tell you all about how awesome, amazing and fabulous our new home is. And it is. Despite a bunch of “make work” projects for the next 25 years, the house is great. We have already improved the kitchen a bit, by removing not one but TWO layers of wallpaper, patched and repainted those areas, and added a new, exquisite kitchen tables and chairs (and a bench, which I love). We repainted our family room our favourite colour from the previous house (Cracked Wheat), and it looks 100 times better. Catriona’s room got a wonderful spruce up where we took down some awful wallpaper, and a bizarre green shelf, and painted the whole thing a wonderful buttery yellow. All this activity was not without it’s setbacks (to paraphrase my brother-in-law, Dave “Ah the joys of owning a home”). The room that will be the new baby’s room, had lots of wallpaper. And when Jenn took the uppermost wallpaper off, we found that the drywall had never been primed, so the wallpaper took the old paint straight off the wall, in big chunks. We called our drywall guy (ya we actually have a drywall guy. Good one too), who came in and patched and got the thing ready to be decorated again. Currently it remains ready for priming. This hasn’t happened yet and here’s why.
Approximately 3 weeks into owning this house, we had a ton of rain. Rain enough that when I came home with Catriona on a Friday, part of the basement had flooded. Here’s where it gets good: it was not the fault of the sump pump, as many floods can be, so right there, insurance won’t cover it. We had hoped that the drain in our floor had backed up. Nope. Not the city’s problem either. Best as we could/can tell, there was a leak in our floor, below a footing on a support wall. And with the buildup of water, and the frost leaving the ground, the hydrostatic pressure under our floor forced the water to follow the path of least resistance, which essentially was into our basement, thus soaking our carpet and underpad, and threatening our furniture. My Dad came down, Jenn came home, my in-laws came, left and then returned. We slowly got things under “control”. But as more and more people came into our house, we suddenly we being told that this basement has “definitely had a flood before”, based on the common response to a flooded basement of replacing drywall approx. 2 ft up off the floor with new, along with a few other signs. Essentially we felt that we had been fooled by the previous owners, as they never made any mention of this to us (would we have BOUGHT the place if we knew about this problem? Hard to say now). This is an ongoing situation (everything is dry now and most of our stuff seems OK), and I don’t want to talk on here too much about it, but bottom line is this for anyone reading: make sure you ask questions of your home inspector. Ask the questions again and again if you must. If you don’t believe/trust what the person is telling you, get another one. Yes you will have to pay for 2 inspections, but believe me it is cheaper than having to waterproof your basement (assuming they even can). We asked the right question. We just were too willing to accept the now ridiculous answer we received. Most importantly, find your own inspector (if someone reading this is in the Belleville, Ontario area, I have a suggestion for you of a totally independent, objective home inspector….now!). We asked our real estate agent, who swears that our first inspector is “the one in the area”, which I would debate heavily, especially now that I have a direct comparison. Home inspectors have a vested interest in keeping real estate agents happy and not screwing up sales for them. THIS IS NOT HOW IT SHOULD BE, BUT IT IS!. Find someone who is competent, enthusiastic about showing you what needs attention (ie: takes you around the house VS standing in your kitchen telling you everything), and open to your questions and able to provide answers that are appropriate. It’s your money, and it’s a lot of money at that. So get your money’s worth from these guys.
As you can tell, it’s been a tough couple of weeks lately, and our basement likely won’t be “livable” again maybe until next year, so we can source the true origins of this past flood. Luckily as the saying goes we have our health, and the rest of the house that is above ground, is still wonderful and amazing and we have plenty of space. It has taken the better part of the past 2 weeks for me to regain that optimism, but I again am stoked about our new home, and if nothing else, maybe now we will be able to “design” the basement in a way that WE want. I’ll keep you posted on the events.
