It's been a long summer, mostly the threat of court looming large on my horizon. The deadbeat contractor did not show up to the first meeting, nor did he show up to the second. I was granted the ability to have him arrested and dragged to court, but the local sheriff doesn't have the manpower to make that happen.
In the meantime, I'm tired. Tired of this bathroom, tired of the looming threat it hangs over me, tired of the stress of it all, tired of debris blowing down through the wall and ceiling into the bathtub, tired of living with a curtain for a door.
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| This is how it's been the last two years or so. |
A tension rod and a heavy curtain was fine when I thought this little action was going to be 6 months. Recently I decided that I'm a proper adult, and even if I can't have a proper bathroom yet, I can at least have a sorta-door. I bought a vinyl accordion doors on Amazon and threw it up. It's not great, but it's very accommodating to the wonky size of the opening.
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| Hey look! a (sorta) door! |
These last few weeks, I've set about calling and trying to get contractors to come out and quote this mess again.
#1 - came out and looked at it, never contacted me back, despite my contacting him.
#2 - came out, looked around a little, asked my budget, said "oh yea, we can do that", gave me a quote for about 4K over my budget, never addressed a bunch of issues.
#3 - came out, looked around hard, made a lot of dismayed noises, did not ask budget, did not offer a quote, needs to come back with his partner so they can agree on how to approach it, if they even want to touch it. Have a follow up with them this Wednesday.
#4 - Came out, made similar dismayed noises, are going home to think about it, and will be in touch.
#5 - Has not called me back, but it a pseudo-holiday today.
I've found out a few things:
• The toilet is pitched wrong, likely because the floor is pitched as if it's still a porch, not a bathroom.
• Ripping the porch/bathroom off the house isn't really feasible, because if I do that, it will trigger my need to replace the septic system.
• The cost to replace a 4 bedroom septic is around $25k.
• The shallow roof over the porch should have rolled roofing or metal, not architectural shingle.
• The better respected the concern, the higher the likelihood of them telling me I've got a very, very challenging problem on my hands and being super cagey about how to solve it and navigate my local building inspector in the process.
#4 came right out and said my best bet might be to go to the building inspector and plead my case (that my house predates a lot of codes, and so naturally will fail), and have them come out and tell me, in writing, exactly what I would need to do to make this suck less, and what maybe I don't have to touch. I don't know if I'm quite there yet, but I'm close.
I know I can not afford to take out a second mortgage to deal with this, and it's going to be another winter of space heaters.
Joy.
But at least I have a roof.
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| I did get a decent amount of potatoes from the garden though, so that's nice. |