In the misty UK, they call it "damp." Here, we call it something like "water seeping into your house." Whatever it is, it causes water damage.
Because we are naive, new homeowners, we have not previously seen the importance of installing rain gutters on hour house. Now we know that rain gutters keep a lot of water away from the sides and base of your house. Since we don't have any, the rain is coming down onto the back deck on either side of the french doors and it's staying there, seeping into the house siding and into the house itself. Our baseboards inside are swollen with water and the carpet is soaked, turning black with mold. It's kind of freaky. I wake up with a stuffy nose and wonder if it's because I'm coming down with something or if it's the fungus growing under the carpet. Heylove in her best Lassie impression scratched away all the house paint where the water was coming in to show us the clapboards covered in black mold.
It makes me wish that this rain would stop so we can do something about it. It also makes me wish we could just call the landlord and say, "hey dude, fix your house." But we can't. We're responsible for this mess. We haven't gotten anyone to look at it yet, but I know it's going to be a very expensive mistake we made.
4 comments:
or, you could take the previous owners to small claims court for not having gutters. that's essentially what the people who bought my mom's house are doing because a room in that house started to flood. bastards. i'm sorry about the carpet and the mold. this rain needs to stop RIGHT NOW. is there some kind of anti-rain dance that we could do?
that doesn't seem right, alice. i hope the judge sees it differently! i think the blame would be on the current home owner - or maybe even the person who originally did the home inspection prior to purchase...?
regardless of blame, i'm sorry niki!
- heather
I am not sure what our rights are because we knew about the lack of gutters when we had the house inspector check out the place before we bought it. I need to take a look at the report though and double check. It's pretty sad though. The carpet I don't care about, because we wanted to put wood floors in there anyway, but I am worried about potential damage done to our subfloors and foundation.
good job Heylove! way to go girl.
how did the last owners deal with the rain i wonder? i know this is such a very wet winter though...
maybe we could jerryrig some bucket/tube action on top of your roof just until the sun shines?
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