When Amber and I moved to Ohio, our goal was to be closer to family, to have our daughter be able to spend time with her cousin, and to be around people we knew and loved. When we first moved up here, we stayed with family, temporarily of course. This was March of 2013.
The first thing we did after we moved in with Amber’s parents was try to get financing to buy a new house. Unfortunately, as we had lived credit free in Houston, our credit score was not appealing to creditors. We were denied.
Through trials of living in a house with four other people (plus our three) and three cats (plus our one), with other people coming and going freely, we finally managed to get our credit to a point where banks would talk to us. Fortunately, since the only reason was a lack of credit history, our credit was AMAZING.
It was October in which we were able to start looking. After several days of looking, we found it: our dream home. It was a quaint tri-level on a big stretch of land. Most of the plot was wooded, and the street was the quiet kind of street you could amble down the middle of without worrying about being plowed over by a speeding car.
We initiated the purchase, got all the inspections, found no problems that weren’t cosmetic, and eventually purchased the house. We moved into our first home at the end of December. We had been homeless for almost eight months, living out of boxes and sleeping on floors and air mattresses in other peoples’ spare rooms. It was a breath of fresh air.
Until… less than 15 days later, it was raining. Amber looked at the ceiling of the kitchen and noticed a growing water mark. She pushed on it, and her thumb went through. The next day, my dad and I were on the roof, fixing the leak.
See, the seller had disclosed a leak in 2012. They didn’t really specify where, but they said they fixed it. Looking at the “fix” made me wish I had jumped up on the roof to check it out during the inspections. The corner where the lower roof met the outside wall was poorly patched with aluminum and roof cement, with nail holes and gaps admitting the water raining down.
My dad and I replaced this with a temporary solution, diverting the water away from the corner. However, the wood, our roof, was spongy to the touch. Winter was on us, so repairing the roof on a larger scale was out of the question at this time. Nevertheless, come spring, this corner would need to be replaced.
Returning to the kitchen, we opened up the water damaged wall. It crumbled away in our hands. Below it was rotten wood. Wood that had been exposed to water for years. It was likely that the leak was a problem for a while, and that their “repair” didn’t do anything to actually fix the problem (in fact, if you’ll allow an aside, we discovered several cans of recently used Kilz “stain sealing” ceiling paint in the kitchen pantry, kindly left by the previous owner). The studs and other wood in the wall was completely rotten, crumbling to the touch. Not only that, but it was infested with carpenter ants.
Since the wood that was damaged composed part of the floor structure to our top floor, we did our best to replace these pieces, again, a temporary work-around until we could get the roof repaired.
Our eyes were opened then, less than half a month into this new house experience, to all the flaws that the inspector missed. We noticed more poorly masked stains on the ceilings in other rooms. Trips to the attic revealed some of the most corroded wood making up much of the roof. Several roofing experts indicated that the roof was the original roof, making it 37 years old. Older than me.
The best part was, that when asked the age of the roof, emphasizing NOT the last time the shingles were replaced, we were told that the roof was new as of 1997. Yay! A complete lie!
The general consensus of the roofers was that the roof needed a complete replacement, including replacing several pieces of the roof structure that had been severely damaged by neglect. We scheduled a roofer to come by in the spring, and scraped our money together to pay for it.
Finally, spring came. Other problems with the house seemed to spring up without warning, and these required me to step out and tend to during the day while I worked for a company that claimed to provide “flexible hours.” This and other factors (e.g., my putting my family first) led to my unexpected dismissal from this company. The next day, our roofer came by. Well, sorry, roofer, we can’t get our roof done now. I’m unemployed, and we need that money to stop the gap between this and the next job.
And that buffer helped, even if our roof didn’t get repaired. Now I’m employed again, but making a significant amount less every year. Money is tight, and at the rate things are going, the roof might not get replaced any time soon.
Fortunately, Amber and I were finalists for a contest called “Roofing it Forward,” put on by C&C Roofing. If we get the highest number of votes, we’ll get a free, new roof. This is really great, as we were not sure how we would manage.
If you would like to help out, please click the link below and vote for Amber Silvia. If we get the most votes, we’ll get a new roof, and hopefully that will be enough to stop the unusual misfortune we’d had with this house since we got it (I only skimmed the surface here, the whole story is almost unbelievable).
I appreciate your getting this far. Please feel free to comment below and let me know you voted, and feel free to tell your friends so they can help too. Thank you.
-Jacob
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