Well Maintained Home

In part of our awkwardness of dealing with the sellers of this house Alec got to talking with the husband about the home a bit.  The guy was saying that if their circumstances were different they wouldn't be leaving. And kept going on and on about how they made sure the house was well maintained, and how good of condition it is in.  And he also was telling Alec about some of the landscaping and said, "Well don't go hacking and tearing everything out!"  Ok.....it is NOT your house anymore, we will do as we please thank you and good bye!

We have been here now for 3 weeks, and both Alec and I will completely agree it is indeed NOT a well maintained home.  I wouldn't expect a perfect home, heavens knows the one we sold in Milwaukee certainly wasn't.  But this house is not well maintained, it isn't shabby and falling apart at the seams or anything like that but there are so many things that were not taken care of!  Maybe we just have different standards than them.....

All the gutters leak, and so upon further investigation many are on incorrectly and seams are not dealt with properly.  So whenever it rains it just streams down in the most random places!  In this picture it is post rain and you can see the 2 big puddles on the deck where it streamed from the gutters.

The roof is in terrible condition.  Now like most things, this came up on inspection so we were aware of it.  But it is in such bad shape and should have been replaced YEARS ago.  If it had been done years ago you could have put another layer of shingles on top, but now in its current condition it will need to be a tear off job.  

There are leaves, weeds, and over grown bushes everywhere.  The landscaping is in shabby condition, so we have been getting rid of leaves and I have been pruning back bushes and such like crazy!  Hack hack!

The dryer was so caked full of lint it was a major fire hazard.  Thank goodness I know a guy in the industry :)  Alec spent tons of time vacuuming out lint and cleaning out the ducts.  

Besides this light fixture being hideous (and there are 2 of them), they only function as fans.  Something is messed up with them where if you put light bulbs in both fans/lights short out!  So the wiring is ALL messed up there and the fans need to be replaced.  In the mean time though we are living with minimal light in the upstairs living and kitchen area.

The other major thing we had to fix (not pictured) was the garage door opener to the larger garage.  It would work about 30% of the time, the other times it wouldn't work no matter which button you pushed or how hard I pushed it or screamed at it!  So we decided to just have a new one installed.  My hubby is willing to try new projects and knows a lot about home repair, but fixing and installing a new garage door is not something he was willing to tackle.  So we hired someone (very different for us!) to come and fix it.  So thankfully it is now working flawlessly and we even had them install a keypad to get into the garage (if you are super lucky will give you the code :)).  

These are a few of the things that have popped up in the 3wks we have been here now.  I'm sure there will be more.  So since the previous owner kept saying what a 'well maintained' home this was, we always say that sarcastically now.  "Well maintained home Laurel, well maintained home!"  Alec will say to me, eye roll.  Oh well, that is just part of home ownership I guess!