So 2400 miles and many hours later we arrived at the promised house of 1129 adams Street. I should preface this saying I was road tired, hungry, exhausted, disoriented, sad, fearful and need I say it again, tired when we arrived, and I walked into the house. The house that had been described to me in so many positive ways, with such descriptions as perfect, and huge and the best I had seen, was not all it was promised to be. The hardest part to stomach was that the house had not been cleaned. And when I say it had not been cleaned I mean the master bathroom reeked of urine, there was grime on every surface, crumbs in every drawer in the kitchen - we'll get to the kitchen later - and there were dead roaches on the floor. The previous tenants were everywhere - scuff marks on every wall, old window covering hardware left behind, holes in the walls from pictures being hung, nails, hooks and various other hardware left in the walls. Unlike my home in Los Angeles, in which I had removed everything form the walls, had them patched and painted by a professional, this house was basically "as was" meaning it was exactly as it was when the last tenants left. absolutley nothing had been done to it. The pain on all the doors, door jams, window sills and trim was painted on so think and so many times that it was peeling off in sheets. There was so much paint in fact that at some point it had stopped curing and now was thick and gummy, sticky to the touch. The pantyr was covering in 20 year old contact paper, and had never been cleaned or painted. In three or four places the cieling had suffered damage due to a leak and had never been repaired. The kitchen had been redopne but in such a cheap manner that the counters were laminate and the floors linoleum. A pattern and color that didn't match any part of the house or the corresponding cabinetry. There was so little storage in the kitchen I had to unpack and repack almost 2/3 of my things and put them in the garage for another day, and another house. And when we confronted out landlord he made hs stance clear. He bought the house to tear it down and the economy had gone south and as a result he didn't want to spend a dime. The master bathroom - the pee scented master bathroom - was missing most of the grout on the floor - and more than half the tiles were broken. and that doesn't even address the storage situtaion. In both bathrooms the homeowner had chose pedastal sinks. Lovely, but entire.y useless in the storage department. What exactly does one do with their tampons when presented with a pedastal sink? Well you put stuff in the cabinets or colsets or drawers or what have you - but neither bathroom had any of these - literally no storage and - NO ELCTRICITY! I have to blow dry my hair in the hallway.
4 blocks from here are about a half dozen houses for sale all under 450k all redone and all gorgeous.
I am going to make due with this house. I am going to smile and be happy. I am going to unpack and repack and when October rolls around I am going to look hard for a new house that requires NO work at all and unpack EVERTHING I own and not be ashamed.
I can do this - this is temporary.
