OMG It’s Wednesday!

Yes, I literally just realized that.
In my defense the last two weeks have been…. searching for a house, finding one states away, putting in an offer and having the whole deal fall apart.

I think today’s mold and mildew report was the final straw. We simply cannot afford it. Now with all the various “remediation.”

But reports have been arriving all through the day, and well… It’s taken us a while to get through them.

Also we just returned from a trip to inspect it.

However, if this was the cursed novel’s way to stop itself being finished, it lost the battle. Another Rhodes is done.

It should go to betas this week. (It’s with alphas right now)

And then it’s on to Dyce and the next shifters, which are almost done.

And…. other stuff.

Of course, I’m going to try to get this house in a state to go up for sale in the next month and a half, and then we’ll probably rent something where we wish to move. And go on from there.

Wish me luck.

20 thoughts on “OMG It’s Wednesday!”

  1. I’m sorry That house wasn’t up to par.

    Take care.

  4. if break a leg is supposed to be good luck for an actor, what’s the equivalent for a writer? Maybe break a finger? How about a whole hand?

  6. Better to find out the house has problems before buying it than after. Bullet (maybe artillery shell), dodged.

  7. Mold and mildew plus other majors means probable rot in the frame and/or floor joists, up inside where inspection can’t see it (voice of experience). Yeah, walking away is the wiser choice.

    And it’s the other way round: this was the cursed novel’s way of getting your more-or-less exclusive attention for a few days enroute so it could exorcise itself of the burden of remaining unfinished.

  11. Well, you know folks pray, “May God grant you the [X] that He wants you to have”, where X = transport, housing, health, etc.

    I’m sorry that He said No House for Now, but tickled pink that we all get a new book from it. Huzzah!

  12. You got lucky. Once you’ve got serious mold and mildew you can safely assume it’s everywhere the inspector CANNOT see.

    Want a bad sign that we didn’t pay enough attention to (and our inspector didn’t seem to notice either)? The previous owners put everything in the unfinished basement on skids. Plus their extensive collection of towels. And yes, the basement was crammed to the gunwales with crap, hiding the underlying damage.

    Those skids. Those towels. The fact that an underground drainage system seemed to exist for the house gutters yet there was no easily found outflow. In 21 years of gardening, I have never discovered where that roof runoff was supposed to go. Drying out the basement was a major pain, expensive, troublesome, and could have been easily avoided by buying a different house.

    Your next house will be better.

    1. I look for dehumidifiers in the basement. If the place is so jammed that I can’t check the walls for lime, walk away.

      Rubble wall basement? Dirt floor? Walk away. That’s a $30-$50K renovation project. You have to dig out the foundation and waterproof the outside with concrete and plastic, then form and pour concrete on the inside if you want it to stay watertight. Nightmare. Hard pass.

      Ball-and-tube electrical? Walk faster. Uninsurable fire trap.

      Joists cut to retrofit ducting and pipes? 30 year old PVC water pipes? Asbestos? Run away! Danger, Will Robinson! Danger! ~:D

        1. Not the drains, the old style white PVC hot and cold water pipes. Those did not age well at all, particularly in Arizona. They have a habit of spontaneously bursting. Double-plus ungood.

          If you get a house with that stuff in it, you will have to replace it. Hopefully before it breaks, or after.

      2. I don’t remember the previous owners having a dehumidifier but I never saw the house until I moved in. We were under some time pressure. I was selling our old house in South Carolina while Bill was working and house-hunting in Hershey. Yep, I was paying rent AND a mortgage. This was the best we could do. I just didn’t expect as many problems but then we avoided plenty of others like the house with caulk like cake frosting all around all the bathtub and mysterious stains on walls and ceilings.

        You’re right about the basement floor. I vividly remember looking at a house in Norfolk. Supposedly, it had a view of the Elizabeth River. It did and in two places: up on the roof with field glasses and in the basement where you could see it under the pallets that covered the dirt floor!

        This house has concrete floors in the basement.

    2. Ah, yes, house horror stories…they make renting look good 🙂
      When I was living in Spain, our rental was really neat, with features like:
      — Real tile roof
      — Sunken living room with real telephone poles on the ceiling for accents and built in book shelves
      — For burglary protection, real jail bars over the lower floor windows
      — A real working well (which we used for watering the yard, but could be used for the house in an emergency)
      — Radiator heating, with the hot water pipes running under the floor (the cats knew the hot spots!)
      — Real antique tile flooring

      BUT the house was very poorly built (basically the builder was a crook), so the downside included:
      — Anytime you had to go onto the roof to fix anything, you WOULD break some tiles (fortunately there was a real roof underneath)
      — Those telephone poles had to be removed because they were just hung up by some piano wire, and so were in danger of falling down at any time
      — The well used a three-phase motor, and occasionally would quite working when the power company decided to drop a phase.
      — Those antique tiles had to waxed periodically (not too bad). Of course, if you dropped a dish, it was toast 95% of the time.
      — Mysterious and hard to find water leaks, leading to wet walls, and an extensive search for the problem, leading to the kitchen floor being torn up for months

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