No, this is not a sermonette about callous “Haves” ignoring needy “Have-nots”: it’s about a house, specifically #11 on the more rural side of town.<\/p>
\nAside from the people we bought it from, I don’t know anything about the prior owners, except for what can be surmised by living with the consequences of their actions or, more frequently, inactions, in the area of home maintenance.
\nMy impression is that the first owner treated the house with care and respect, but that over time, the house got only minimal attention.
\nFor example, the yard: we’ve been working on the landscaping and hired professionals for the parts that were simply too dangerous for us to tackle ourselves, but there’s still a lot of overgrowth that could be removed, a sure sign of past neglect.
\nWe’ve made a few changes, like new windows and a new hot water heater, replacing the completely deteriorated front yard light fixture, adding counter tops to Peter’s office, painting, and fencing in the back yard.
\nThese were mostly lifestyle adjustments, since the prior owner was a single woman who could cope better than young kids with older window workings that could make the sash come smashing down on your hands or your head.
\nLast week, though, Peter noticed some seepage from the PVC pipe that leads from the house to the septic system. It was obvious from a clumsy patch around the pipe that someone had tried an amateur repair job in the past.
\nIt turned out that the pipe and\/or fitting had a crack, and nasty stuff had been oozing inside the foundation, probably for years.
\nThe plumber said he had to reset the pipe some 3\/4 inch, since it looked to him like the septic system had sunk – not uncommon, the Cape is basically a big sandbar, and something that probably happened within the first years that the house was built.
\nHaving the plumbers there provided an opportunity to fix another hack job in the basement and hook up P&B’s new gas dryer. Also, we’re hoping that the odor in the basement that we thought was from normal dampness but might have been caused by the seepage will dissipate.
\nSo, in a way, the “incident” provided an opportunity to take care of other business, and that’s good.
\nFurther, it was not an exhorbitant expense, especially for something so important, even with the additional cost of hiring a carpenter to prep the excavation area, which ran under the deck.
\nThis leads (at last) to my point: consistent with things like the overgrown landscaping and the amateur patch around the pipe, I’m guessing that this was a problem before we bought the house, and it irritates me that it wasn’t taken care of by prior owners.
\nOwning a home is a responsibility, but some people treat it as an entitlement. I’ve run into this before, and it still amazes me that people who will spend hours on grooming and shopping for clothes will be so neglectful of a house.
\nFurther, it annoys me that this wasn’t disclosed to us at the time of purchase, and that it would be a complete hassle to deal with at this point.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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