Just when you thought the people who built our house couldn't have been more incompetent some more things creep up and leave us here with equal parts disgust and plain incredulity. You wonder how someone can do such a half ass job, look at it and think "Yup, that looks good. My work here is done" It literally boggles the mind.
Funnily enough things had calmed down for a couple of months. After we fixed the under-stoop leaks we got a handle on what needs to happen in the sunroom. It turns out that they never caulked or sealed around the door to the outside, so beneath the sheetrock and hard insulation was just CMU blocks with a metal door wedged in. And since CMU isn't even there are gaps between the CMU walls and the door frame. And from those gaps water comes in all the time, rotting out the sheetrock and making the sunroom generally inhabitable. Once it gets warms we'll be ripped away all the sheetrock edges, sealing it up, patching the sheetrock and hopefully having much less water and much less cold in there. One can hope.
But after that discovery there were 3-4 blissful months where we found NO new mistakes around the house, just the same old ones we are living with or slowly tackling. I think at one point I even made the mistake of uttering "wow things really seemed to have calmed down with the house…I think we have a handle on it now" Well life came along and bitch-slapped me for saying that, of course, and in just the last couple of weeks two more issues revealed themselves. Awesomeness.
First off, we've always had an issue with our front load washer up on the platform the cellar making a lot of rattling noise during the spin cycle. It wasn't too big of a deal; we just always ran it on low spin and dealt with the noise. But I did some research and found these vibration dampener pads that seems up our alley so I bought a set. When we went about to install them we discovered something very disturbing. The platform the washer and dryer is on was buckling like crazy in the center and in the back corner behind the washer the top of the platform had completely separated from the leg holding it up and was simply hanging in mid-air supporting a couple of hundred pounds of washer/dryer weight. The top of the platform had been attached to the leg with…you guessed it…ONE SCREW. Of course we discovered this in the middle of a washer load so we had to lift the washer plus tons of water and wet clothing off the platform to get underneath there and beef the thing up. A trip to Home Depot and a couple of 2x4's later we had reinforced the platform and beefed up the legs. We also attached the legs to the back wall, which we honestly thought had been done but closer inspection revealed even yet more lack of common sense on the builder part. Sigh. You know you are in trouble when I can build it better than a "pro" can.
So the washer/dryer table still needs some cosmetic work but it's not going to collapse at any moment and the vibration pads seem to help a bit. In the future we are going to install a center leg to give the platform more support—there is just too much weight and vibration on it long term for the way it was built. Double Sigh.
The next weekend after near washing-machine disaster Brooklyn was blessed with freezing temperatures and winds up to 50 MPH. That Saturday night we were making dinner when we heard a loud "THUD!" outside. Eric and I looked at one another trying to think what it could be…upon further investigation it seems a small piece of our cement board siding on the façade was blown off by the wind. This piece was about 3'x 2' and it was (of course) from all the way up at the top of the house, 4 stories above the street and from right over the area where the front door of the house is. Further inspection of the video footage from our camera showed this piece of siding hitting the top step and shattering into a couple of pieces. Literally 30 seconds later one of our tenants comes out to put their trash out and walks right under where the cement board fell—and this stuff is HEAVY! Had it hit her, it might have cause irreparable damage…or even death. Yes, that's right; our house is now potentially DEADLY—watch out!
The next afternoon Eric was on his way out to an appointment when he noticed a HUGE piece of the cement board precariously dangling from the same area, 4 stories about the street and right above our front door. This piece measured about 6'x3' and appeared to hanging from just…you guessed it…ONE SCREW! Eric was on his way out so I spent the next couple of hours calling around to contractors that did roofing and siding…a special lift would be needed to get up that high. However since this was a Sunday and a holiday weekend it was a pretty fruitless search. I contemplated waiting until the next day but the winds were supposed to be super high the rest of that day and night and it seemed very to fall at any moment. Finally I decided to call 311 and tell them the story to see what I should do. They told me, of course, to call siding places even though I told them that was a dead end street. Then they told me to wait until Monday. When I said I was afraid it was going to fall and kill someone they decided to connect me to 911. I had the same conversation with the 911 operator and after expressing my fear of impending doom several times they finally agreed to send the cops over. About 10 minutes later the cops were here and I stood outside rehashing the whole tale to them. And they told me to call a contractor or wait until tomorrow, saying there was nothing they could do. Awesome. For the hundredth time I expressed IMPENDING DOOM and finally the cops decided to call the fire department. Five minutes later the FDNY was here with a big truck. I explained the story to them and they were the first ones to get it, to not make the same stupid suggestions that I said I already tried. They said they would take the ladder up there and get the piece down, as well as assessing the stability of the surrounding pieces. Maybe 10 minutes later they were down on the ground with the piece of siding (which they had plucked off the façade like it was held there with tape!), telling me that all the other pieces looked okay but that this one looked to have been installed incorrectly. They also said to not mess with 311, 911 or the cops if we thought this was happening again—just to call them directly and they would take care of it…FDNY rocks!
Oh and just so you know, that piece of siding probably weighed about 40-50 pounds and certainly would have done some serious damage if it fell. How exactly it was installed I'm not sure, but it LOOKS like maybe they pre-drilled 4 whole into the board to attach it to the framing and maybe the holes didn't line up so they drilled either large holes or another set of holes right next to that one…well the wind either allowed the screws to shake inside the large hole or it allowed the board to move enough to weaken the area between the two sets of holes, and once that happened the board was probably moving around all over and slowly starting detaching itself one screw at a time. I'm really not sure of the reasons, but it doesn't look good for them given the size of the holes up. Either way part of the front of our house is now naked and once it's warm again we'll need to bring someone in with a lift to figure out how to reattach this large piece. Luckily since the boards are shingled we might be able to cut off the top couple of inches and just have less of an overlap for this board. We'll see. We'll also be left with a ~2' x 2' area with no slate since the smaller piece shattered. I'm betting we can't get a small replacement piece of this material, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.
It's certainly been a wild ride…but it would be great if it ended sometime soon…I think I gotta get off and throw up!
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