After enduring a series of unfortunate event, reference part 2 for details, we had a flooded basement on hands and a decision to make. There was so much discussion with the owners about who was going to fix what and who had what legal responsibility. At one point we had over four attorneys involved and two realtors. It was a mess. Remember, the couple selling the house were divorced or getting divorced, we weren’t sure which, so they would not talk to each other much and each had representation. Finally the agreements where on the table for myself and David to review, the owner(s) would put money in an escrow account and a contractor would fix the damage. This outcome was because the owner took responsibility for having knowledge of the basements capabilities of flooding and not disclosing it. We took responsibility for all personal property damaged and agreed not to hold them accountable for our stuff. We also agreed to allow the contractor to do the work after closing. All these decisions were made the morning of closing, we were cutting it close. As a friend of mine said, you’re going to eat a shit sandwiches either way so do you want it with ketchup or mustard. Hindsight we ate it with ketchup and mustard, more on that later.
There was so much back and forth communication and legal jargon that in reality David and I were totally confused. The day before closing we had a recommend contractor on the property to give us a quote. He went through everything offering solutions on how to fix it and how to make things work efficiently. I had to get over the fact that it may not be as pretty as it was but in order to prevent this from ever happening again we had to do some major work to reroute water. The contractor put together a quote the day before closing and all parties signed as part of the negations.
Which brings up back to closing day. David and I were sitting at the attorneys office. I had the weird gut feeling, like we should walk away from the entire thing. The Attorny explained our rights in detail. Our realitor tried to reassure us it was all going to be ok that the contractor was great and that he was confident his quote would cover everything. My husband signed everything and looked at me like I was crazy. I took a deep breath, much like I imagine a captain does when we realizes he’s officially going down with the ship, and I signed my name to all the documents. After closing on the house our Realtor took us out to lunch to celebrate.
That night around 9 pm our realtor called us, she let me know that we hadn’t closed on the house yet because the one of the two owners hadn’t signed the closing documents. I asked her if we should be worried and she said not yet. When I asked what the problem what she said all we knew was that the wife was not willing to sign until her attorney reviewed everything. At this point I was slightly irritated. Remind you, I’m a planner, so I would never wait until the last second to have my Attorny review anything so I can’t imagine why anyone else would. However, more importantly the money had already been sent to the closing Attorny from our lenders and our rate was locked in until closing day. So a delay jeopardized all our financials. The next business day we got word that her Attorny was not satisfied with the agreement of funds being put in escrow and us being responsible for our personal belonging. As to not get into the legal weeds here, let’s just summarize the next week by saying we went back in forth AGAIN pointing fingers at who was accountable for what. I’ve never been so close in my life to just cutting my losses and walking away, had it not been for my husband I would have been long gone. Ultimately, the delay caused our lenders to revoke the funding and for us to loose our loan and rate. We had to write a letter explaining how her not signing the closing document and her Attorny challenging the escrow agreement was out of our control in order for the lenders to expedite a re-review and get us an approval so we could close for the second time. The result of the back and forth with her Attorny was that she still had to put money in escrow but we had to sign away our buyers rights stating we wouldn’t sue them for any reason. Which made me assume there was more wrong then we were being told. Shout out to our lenders for eating the cost of getting our rate adjustment back to where it was when we closed the first time, otherwise it would have cost us $3200 to get the same low rate. Finally a week later we closed again. This time for real.
The work was underway on the basement and things were moving forward when the contractor just stopped showing up. He hired an outside plumber to do the drain work and then he came back to lay concrete. When he came to lay the concrete my husband and I were at the old property to clean it up and get it on the market. We had no idea he was coming and had already made plans or we would have stuck around. When we came home the contractor was gone but he left a massive mess. Our pool which was crystal clear when we left but was now cloudy and our frog pond was milky. The concrete work he did was terrible. It was obvious they mixed the concrete too close to our pool because they were too lazy to walk an extra 10 ft. To the grass. And they also admitted to rinsing out a bucket in the frog pond because he didn’t think it was a big deal. Mind you there was concrete dust and debris everywhere and splatters all over the railing and siding of the pool. I called him and I was on fire. I don’t think I’ve been that mad at someone in a very long time, possibly since my divorce in 2014. And as a result of that phone call he was full of excuses and snarky comments and basically told me I was ignorant and don’t know what I was talking about. I almost lost my cool, but not one time did I yell or use a curse word. I did use my mean mom voice and my snarky customer service voice though. Oddly I do know a thing or two about concrete which is why I was pissed. When he tried to tell me my pool being cloudy had nothing to do with him I almost lost it. I just simply said, when are you coming back to finish your work? To which he responded, I don’t know I am busy eating dinner with my family. Then he hung up on me. My husband and I were so done. My husband especially. I had brought pizza home for our family to eat dinner, but instead, we stayed outside cleaning because there was a storm rolling in and we didn’t want any more concrete dust in the pool than there already was.
After spending two hours in the heat cleaning concrete dust I called our realtor and told her what happened. I sent her pictures and she tried to contact him. She reminded him that he is in the customer service industry and if he wants to get paid I needed to be happy. His tone changed quickly. However, he refused to call me. He only would text me like a coward. I left him voicemails and asked him to just call me to work it out. He said he would be there the next day to make it right. Another lie. He sent a worker to clean it up and he also sent the previously contracted plumber. Made no sense. I thought I was mad the day before, I was “big mad” when these other guys showed up because he didn’t want to face his own mistake. Once the plumber saw the concrete work that the contractor did he made a few calls and referred to an expert. My husband and I confirmed that the job was crap. The plumber and a buddy of his came later that week to fix the concrete job. I forgot to mention, I didn’t let contractor off easy, I was trying to call him to see why he didn’t show up him self like he originally said he would. Once again, he wouldn’t answer my calls. So we communicated through the Realitor and at one point I asked her to excuse herself and that if he wanted to be get paid for the job he needed to communicate with me. He text me that he didn’t feel good and was certain he had COVID-19 and was unable to talk and show up at my house….
This was a going to be a three part series so I could finally move on to blogging about the farm and farm life, however this saga took an unexpected turn and this is not over.
Rye Family Farm 