Part 1 covered our pursuit of our dream of homeownership and Part 2 touched on the horrors of mold. Okay, so listen what happened next…
The water damage was along our common wall so we notified our neighbors. They were not having any leak problems. We thought the water must be coming from the roof since there wasn’t any other places it could have come from. We’d had over a month straight of rainy days. With everything that had happened so far, we were not excited about going into the attic. We thought either we’d find a body, drugs or satanic stuff up there.
Ha! Wouldn’t you know it, as my husband ventured up into the attic, he found a box full of satanic garbage. No, I’m really not kidding. We burned the stuff. We also found there was a leak indeed from the roof. In fact the path of the leak helped us solve the mystery mushy caulking! It was a roof leak that had caused the initial tile damage. It took us a year and a half to figure it all out.
Apparently when the siding was put on the home, the siders neglected to use flashing. It had caused damage in the past, but it was a slower leak. With all the rain we’d had, it just didn’t have time to dry. Our walls, insulation and firewall had to all be replaced!
Peace at last. A couple months down the road as my husband was at work, the dog had been freaking out around the heater vents. I thought it must be emitting a smell from the previous owners. The next night, upstairs, I hear little scratching. I asked my husband if the dog was with him and he said yes, which meant I had a visitor in my heater ducts.
We called our exterminator friends out again. Upon inspection of our heater ducts and crawl space, it was discovered we had a rat living with us. He tore down the ductwork under our home! He then had to crawl up through the furnace missing the fan blades as he ventured upstairs to our room. We caught the rat. Thankfully it was just one.
The duct work was old. As my dear husband braved underneath our home to repair the ductwork, more ducts came down as a result of the tape adhesive being over 20 years old. Bless his heart; he wired it all back up.
The moral of this story is, make sure you get a home inspection and that you are the one hiring the home inspector rather than the seller. My husband and I grew closer over the experience, one we can finally look back at and laugh.
We moved 5 months later leaving our buyer with a much safer home than we purchased. We bought her a home warranty for her future security and peace of mind as well.
(Melissa is a Families.com Christian Blogger. Read her blogs at: http://members.families.com/mj7/blog)