Hell week part two

There has been so much going on since I last updated that I hardly even know where to start. The trip over to Kansas was not too bad except for the one car rollover that happened right in front of me. We stopped to help but there was not much to do, both people were trapped in the SUV and were talking. Luckily it was not far from a town so the firefighters were quick to get there. We got into town later than we had wanted thanks to that and the time zone change. We discovered that there was some car thingamajig in town which meant that if we did not want to spend the night sleeping in our cars we had to drive out a ways and stay in a casino. Normally I avoid giving my money to places like that, but we were tried and glad to have a place to sleep.

Tuesday was the day that we closed on the house. It was pretty exciting and also very scary. When we got to the house we noticed that the wood paneling in the basement was warped which seemed odd to us. We called our real estate agent to have a look and he thought it might be structural because the carpets were dry so he assumed that no water had entered the basement during a bad storm that had come through a few days earlier. We also noted that a bunch of random junk had been left behind by the previous owners. They even left ancient food in the refrigerator. I was pissed.

Wednesday our stuff came. We found out that our washer had not been properly secured during the move and it leaked out the front. We also discovered a few more random broken things but all in all the washer was the biggest thing that had been damaged.

Thursday we madly unpacked our stuff trying to get as much done as possible to help speed our return to normalcy. While I was cooking dinner we heard an eerie siren and realized that this was the tornado siren and that we should be heading to our basement asap. I quickly finished dinner and we ate downstairs. While we were eating I heard the sound of water hitting concrete. That sound was coming from the unfinished half of our basement. Water had filled the window well making it look like a fish tank. It was leaking into our house from the window. Luckily I had never followed through on my thought that I should move more of our boxes to that are of the room. We also discovered that water was slowly leaking into the finished part of the basement from a window on the same side. The same side that had the warped wood paneling. *cue eerie music* It was obvious to us that the basement indeed had leaked during that earlier storm and not been taken care of.

In the disclosures we were told that there had been some flooding during the previous summer, but that dirt had been piled against the house to help prevent further flooding. When we got there it was pretty obvious that nothing like that had even been attempted. Some rocks had been shoved up against the back part of the house where the leaking was happening, but that made things worse since the rocks created low spots and let the water run right through them. It frustrates me to no end that the former owners could have had compacted dirt piled up against the foundation for about $200 (which is what we ended up paying to have a handy man do it for us). Now they are facing some ticked off people (my husband and I) who are going after them to pay for the damage that was done while the house was still in their possession. We sent them a letter through our real estate agent and if they do not pay up we will have to take them to small claims court.

This week since becoming home owners has been full of so many frustrations. I am so ready for stuff to be working already and for us to be able to concentrate on fun house projects instead of fixing all the screwups of the former owners who seemed to care more about appearances rather than doing a project right. I must say though that in general the people here in Kansas are very friendly and we seem to have very nice neighbors (who seem pretty glad that the former owners are no longer living in the neighborhood).

I have been counting my blessings and trying not to be frustrated that I can't do any laundry and I can't find random things that I know are hiding in boxes that have yet to be unpacked. I have to be happy, because we finally have internet again and I can catch up on my blog reading.