this is unrelated to that massive windstorm we got?? all good with yall on that front, at least?
The windstorm blew a deck chair over. All the tall trees on the property are in an area where they would have fallen on the neighbor. Fortunately the neighbor is awesome... and fortunately several other storms caused all the fellable trees to fall on his house in years previous. In fact, one of the trees that fell sat there so long that the neighbor told the guys I bought the house from that he'd put a lien against it if they didn't do something about it prior to sale. I called him prior to the storm and said "I think we're good, and if we're not, I'll get to it in a hurry" and he said "yeah dude everything that could fall has fallen." 72 hours after taking possession of the house I put together a dossier on the family, gave all our contact info and bribed the four closest neighbors with $100 gift certificates to a beloved local restaurant. I'm in regular text convos with one family, another has two kids my kid's age and a third is a collector and conoisseur of wierd-shit deep-cut exotics. I walked over there and won his heart by not freaking out about the Ferrari Mondial but oohing and aaahing over a Benelli 750 Sei and engaging him in a half-hour conversation about his impending Marcos GT. At the house we currently live in the storm was good for three green bins worth of fallen branches and 30 seconds of power outage.
that's a fuck around and find out move, that is hilarious. not the tree falling part, but... good to hear! wasn't sure how bad it got further north. eastside got in a pretty bad state, had some friends without power for a week, minus the one who ended up using his tesla to power certain things in his apartment.In fact, one of the trees that fell sat there so long that the neighbor told the guys I bought the house from that he'd put a lien against it if they didn't do something about it prior to sale.
This is the new place? So was the water actually coming from guttering / piping / leaks etc or was it surface runoff getting trapped under the house?
Bloody hell. Sounds expensive. Hope the damage wasn't too extensive.
HVAC - $70k Plumbing - $110k & counting Electrical - $80k & counting Remodel - $25k & counting My perspective was that I stole this house. it's potentially worth multiple millions more than I paid for it. My perspective is that I'm earning this house. Nobody else found the heritage. Nobody else recognized the potential. Nobody else had any ideas to fix the problems. Nobody else has any insight into realizing what this house should be. The builder is a presence in that house. I've come to regard him as a friendly ghost, and I try to keep him in mind when I change things. What would he think of the changes? It's pretty much my version of feng shui and honoring the architectural legacy of the property. And the happiest perspective is that my friendly ghost went "hey, so long as you're completely rebuilding that non-room into the centerpiece of the house, maybe you should do something about the galvanized pipe you didn't know about." There's foundation on four sides of that room. There's no access to it. It's non-pressure-treated lumber on top of partially-demolished concrete patio, no vapor barrier, no insulation. I'm having to go up'n'over with electrical, plumbing and data (and maybe central vac; still undecided) because we had no access to that space; since it's all gotta come out anyway I'm totally revising that. The question is how to build in access in the future. That lack of access turned out to be a blessing, really. That pipe started leaking Friday or Saturday. The water seeped into the ground and flowed downhill, under the garage, under one patio, under a sequoia, down a foundation and into the shop where I spent the week mopping it out with towels. By the time my impromptu pond had filled up enough for the scrap wood to bonk and bump against the joists in the current from the very impressive leak I, had started to rationalize that it wasn't an uncapped clean-out flowing with rainwater and it wasn't a cracked spout drain. But the lack of moisture anywhere in the house also allowed the leak to go for six days because I thought it was a quirk of the house. If it had sprung anywhere but there it would have destroyed subfloors throughout the house. As it is I've got a single room's worth of floor to redo, and it's the floor that I should do anyway because it isn't legal, it isn't energy-efficient and it isn't convenient to all the other shit I need to do.
