We are happy to be back in Augusta, and this time in a home that we own and truly love! The family is still living out of boxes. I would say we have probably opened a little over half of them, perhaps more. I’m trying to work on one room at a time to keep myself motivated to continue. I like to see the completion of something versus only skimming the surface of the entire house…if that makes any sense.
Of course with home ownership comes some craziness, which we knew to expect (this is coming from the person who, on her 30th birthday, purchased a brand new HVAC for $3,500 for the townhome we sold two weeks later – yeah). Roughly 4 days after moving into our home, the termite guy was checking out the crawl space in order to set up a termite bond for us. Much to our surprise, he told us that we have ACTIVE termites on one of the walls of the crawl space, not causing any structural damage, but just there…alive and well. Of course this is precisely what we found out during the inspection we had done prior to closing on the home. And thus one of our stipulations prior to closing was that the active termites needed to be dealt with appropriately or else we would walk.
After a few phone calls (where Jake learned of some severe shadiness, to say the least), we found out that the “receipt” given to us before closing, supposedly detailing the clean up of the infestation, was actually an estimate. Per the pest control company, baits were hurriedly put back down again (they had been taken up for nonpayment in years prior), but after receiving no payment for this portion (merely step 1 of a 2 step process to eliminating the termites) nothing else was done to stop the active infestation. I would say I was shocked, but based on prior interactions, this seemed par for the course.
Our amazing realtor managed to, yet again, save the day. We are now officially covered with a termite bond, something everyone in the CSRA should have…but don’t get me started there. Termites are the state bird here in Georgia, but apparently they won’t infest your home if you just ignore them long enough…?
Back to the inspection – so the termite guy was in the crawl space and noticed water slowly draining from somewhere on the first floor down into the subfloor. Fast forward to Jake and I finding out that the icemaker in the living room has been leaking into the floor for an unknown period of time. Pile on top of that the fact that an idiot installed a separate water line for said icemaker (which literally dumps water into the crawl space) DIRECTLY next to the actual line created by the builder (you know, the one left there precisely for that appliance). Cray.
Now to the damage – there is a smallish area of flooring that is moderately to severely bowed. I was slightly panicking about it until God sent us the original contractor who installed/finished the floor to look at it today. I was ecstatic when he said he thought the boards would indeed lay back down! It will most likely take 3-4 months, but they should get significantly better. If at that point the wood doesn’t lay all the way back down, flush with the other planks, he said he is easily able to sand the affected area down and re-finish it for a whopping $400. SOLD! Great guy. I mean between the appliance repair guy and the plumber having to re-do the line, it sounds like the floor may end up being the cheapest fix. Bullet dodged!
Despite a few setbacks, our actual move was by far the BEST move yet (shout out to Sixth Man Movers in Nashville for being AMAZING!) We are so grateful to be here and excited to see what the future brings…
…we’re back!
