Growing Snowflowers

The notorious 'STAIRS OF DEATH' and other gruesome tales....

I really should rename them the 'stairs of doom', death seems to be just a little harsh, but our neighbors coined the phrase, and it's stuck.



This photo was taken on the day we had our home inspection, the color of the house has since changed, not by choice mind you, we had to have all the siding replaced after a horrible hail storm six weeks after we moved in...but, to this day the stairs remain the same.

When Mike and I looked at this house we knew the stairs to the back yard needed replacing, they were clearly not to code, were shoddily attached and there was only one makeshift wobbly handrail on one side of the steps which swayed back and forth if you dared to use it! In fact, we knew that as soon as we bought the house we'd have the stairs torn out and replace it with a nice medium sized deck...sounds good right?

Well, as it happens, this house had WAY WAY WAY more things wrong with it that we could have even imagined, horrible things, things that made me cry, made us furious, and made us empty our bank accounts of every last penny! I'm talking true deception, non disclosure stuff...yep, and I'll post photos of that at the end...

Well, it's been two years and we still haven't replaced the stairs, we almost never venture into the back yard these days, we only open the door to let our dog Olive in and out of her very own dog park! It's a nice yard, we'd love to use it but Piper almost fell down the stairs last week and that in itself has sealed it's fate, and the back door for now!



This photo was taken last fall, at which point we KNEW we needed to replace the entire back door...again it seemed that we had not been told that all the seals on the door were broken and that the hinges would freeze shut in the winter! The previous owners had failed to mention this, along with the fact that they had done a wee 'cowboy' job on the step sill, which was in fact rotting away underneath from all the moisture from the broken seals...we know they knew because there was crappy foam sprayed under the sill to 'pack it up'. This little ditty of info was discovered when we had to replace all the aluminum siding because of a hail storm! Funny, we also discovered no tyvek under the existing siding, no sealant weather proof around the windows and no drip caps?...now tyvek was available in 1995 when this house was built, so I wonder why there wasn't any? Curious and curiouser!

Well, among other things we learnt that the sellers had lied about the basement flooding...in just under 8 months we experienced four floods of varying degree...hmmm, seems funny that we just got unlucky huh (yes, there is a hint of bitterness in my voice). So, being good and contentious homeowners we fixed the problems, regraded the yard on the side of the house, added gutters, put in back up sumps....y'know, that pesky kind of homeowner stuff you need to do to maintain a home. We had one flood so severe that our newly laid carpet needed to be ripped up...I wont go into it...but here are a few pics...




This is fun, because we'd just finished the basement and had to replace all the baseboards and some of the drywall because the idiot who finished the basement put the drywall all the way to the floor...duh! Mike truly summed it up in this one!

The best one, was when the bathroom plumbing sheared off inside the wall....turns out the homeowners never had 'final' inspection on their home-job basement remodel. Do you want to know what that took to fix...about $5000! We'd just had the adjoining bedroom re-skimmed and painted (sellers applied wallpaper to skim coat without sizing the walls, so when we took off the paper half the wall came along for the ride), we then had to turn around and get the plumbers to come and crack open the wall and replace the leaking & broken pipes with new ones, get the drywallers in, the painters back...you get the picture right? If not, here's one you might enjoy.....



We also had to replace EVERY appliance within a year, oh, the dishwasher still works - touch wood! We replaced every stitch of carpet too...seems 'febreeze' can't cover up pet urine after the carpet cleaners come. $7500 and 5 gallons of oil based primer for the sub floor later we actually have clean, soft carpet underfoot (thanks to a great discounted/discontinued piece we found at our local carpet warehouse)

So, I know I whine, I complain and I get disillusioned at times...but we've been in this house for two years and it seems we've had our fair share of disasters. That is why we are trying to raise the funds for our next adoption, we cleaned out our bank accounts on this 'money pit' and we need to get creative.

Maybe after Paisley comes home we'll fix the steps? If anyone knows a great builder who would like to trade his services for my doula/nanny services let me know...I think it's unlikely...but it's worth asking!

..and the all live happily ever after...we hope!