Worry about the ink while you're watching the house, and worry about the house while you're under the needle. That way they'll cancel each other out.
This tattoo guy is extremely nonexistent on the bedside manner side of things. I have not seen him since I booked the appointment, back in 2015. My immediate fear is that I'm going to show up and he's going to lackadaisacally tell me something is wrong or un-doable with my entire plan.
I'm sure the sweater kittens will be just fine.
The guy must be good if there's a two-year waiting list.
It's a 15 month waiting list - I had to reschedule last February when it became clear that my scars weren't going to be healed enough in time for my first scheduled appt.
oh my god my body what the hell am I doing. See you later!
The Flickr pool awaits impatiently.
6 sounds like something I've said about chicken wings and beer.
For those who don't click through: Canadian dollars.
I had to stop reading when she mentioned the real estate agent was handling both the buyer's and the seller's sides. I felt bad for the kid.
I realize that lots of people do it, but spending over half a million dollars on a house that is basically junk still boggles my mind. My "If money was no object house" is probably not much more than that.
Unless the Canadian dollar has dropped to ten cents regular, I still have trouble with it.
That family has lots of issues. A comically expensive house, years of renovations, kids with blurry faces, etc.
Buying a fixer-upper for $500k does not shock me. Doing so in full knowledge that you can't afford to do the work, and then attempting to cut costs by hiring some jackass who wandered up to you on the street as your general contractor for a four-story gut-renovation does.
Hiring random jackasses was how my former neighbor did his home renovation. It worked, unless you count how he got sued by the guy who bought the house after he moved.
I mean I want to come out of a story like this feeling happy for them that it (more or less) worked out in the end. But they were so reckless, at every turn! When her husband started having panic attacks I felt zero sympathy, because everything he was stressed about was 100% his fault and 100% predictable.
Buying a fixer-upper for $500k does not shock me.
For example, here's a story from the Seattle Times last year.
Four years ago, the average house in Seattle cost a little under $427,000. Today, that'll buy you a house so dangerous that you can't go inside.
With crumbling floors and ceilings that could collapse at any moment, about five feet of standing water and toxic air not safe to breathe, a West Seattle house was listed recently with the condition that only licensed contractors who sign a legal waiver could enter it.
Photos of the interior show it resembles more of a Halloween haunted house than a dream home.
Nonetheless, it got 41 offers -- and sold in May for more than double the asking price after just 10 days on the market.
The whole story sounds incredibly stressful but, by the end it sounded like everything worked out for them, and they ended up in a good spot.
Before the housing crash, there was a TV show were a helpful guy named Mike used to wander around fixing houses (apparently free of charge) for obviously well-off Canadians. Probably gave rise to unreasonable expectations.
When her husband started having panic attacks I felt zero sympathy, because everything he was stressed about was 100% his fault and 100% predictable.
I assumed that was the reason he was having panic attacks -- because he recognized that it was both his fault and that the errors were predictable.
Was he afraid his wife would win the marriage forever because he did this one thing so poorly?
Twitter loved that story, but the stupidity was so extreme that there was no "but for the grace of God" element, and the rich dues ex machina at the end, well, there's just nothing to say.
"I have problems that are outside of my control and that I don't know how to fix" is sufficient to give rise to panic attacks, IMO. Or, like, mental illness -- there doesn't even always have to be a reason that looks reasonable from the outside, for a person to be deserving of sympathy.
"I'm a moron who's brought my family to the brink of ruin through my own horrific lack of judgment" strikes me differently, for some reason.
Was he afraid his wife would winleave the marriage forever because he did this one thing so poorly?
If this dude had the capacity for reason and reflection, at any rate.
Right. Win and then leave so there's no rematch.
the stupidity was so extreme that there was no "but for the grace of God" element, and the rich dues ex machina at the end, well, there's just nothing to say.
There's also an odd tonal shift in the piece itself. It starts out with a tone of, "we were young and foolish, and learn from our mistakes." And then, after the rich relative shows up, the last fifth is fairly chipper, "and then it all worked out."
There have been some great parodies of the article. I was amazed that they were willing to tell the story in public, given that they come out like the stupidest people in the universe.
Good luck, Heebie!
One of the "benefits" of living in condo/co-op apartment building in NYC is that when you want to renovate, you have to use contractors that are licensed/bonded and submit all sorts of insurance information.
During the process, it's a giant pain in the ass to get all the paperwork done and submit the application to the building's board, but then I read stories like this and think "they're really saving all of us from our potentially stupidest decisions".
Hiring a random toothless guy off the street? WTF?
How do a part-time teacher and a web editor afford two houses, one of which costs $1 million?!?!?!? I don't care if they're Loonies, it's still at least $1 million American
I'm not saying it's as bad as "You said we were still leaving early enough to get to California and now we're eating people." But it's too close.
29: Because they buy things they can't afford, and then get bailed out by their fairy god-uncle! This is part of why I feel like they should've gotten some comeuppance.
I don't think the tattoo guy has looked at any of the files I sent him.
I don't think the tattoo guy has looked at any of the files I sent him.
The "sight unseen" part seems like the absolute biggest own-goal, no? That's exactly why you take at least a quick look, even if you expect it to be a risk.
33, 34: That sounds bad. This is the guy who's the miraculously-accurate-copyist? I guess it might turn out good anyway.
36: yep, human xerox etc. He's printing things out.
Before the housing crash, there were new stories about people buying houses in this area for next to nothing and still losing money. They were too naive to do things like check of liens or ghosts or not having a roof at all.
Nat/han He/ber/t if you all want to look at his instagram feed and then tell me reassuring confident things.
There's a guy at his shop with Bunter's first name. I don't think I've ever seen that name in the wild.
Looking at that instragram really did make him look impressive in his field.
What's the plan -- one cat at a time, or an outliny version all over?
There's more than one way to skin a cat.
Every Torontonian I know wants to kill those people and hang their bodies from the Gardiner Expressway way as a warning to other gentifiers. Toronto real estate is bonkers, affordable housing is at a crisis point, and in addition to the house they sold to buy their own personal crackhouse, they owned a downtown condo, *and* a cottage (for rich Ontarians, that means "place on a lake way nicer than your house"), *and* a vacation spot in Mexico.
Useful background
Canadians want to kill lots of people, but they hardly ever do anything about it. Less than 2 of 100,000 Canadians murder somebody in a given year.
It's like they have a fundamental respect for the sanctity of human life or something weird like that.
I'm finally getting ready to sell the condo I bought in 2004 at an (acceptable) loss. Managing the place from half way across the country is a pain, and there's no way it's ever going to get back up to what I paid for it.
If anyone ever again tries to tell me that owning a home is a good investment and renting is for suckers, I'm going to kick them in the balls.
Anyway, the way things have worked out so far, the mortgage payment is quite a bit less than the cost of an equivalent rental. Unless the value of the house drops below our down payment, we haven't really lost money.
Not happening today...he's really uncomfortable with all the negative space. He super regrets not looking at them earlier.
He's calling a friend of his to set up a consultation. I'm actually not particularly upset. I'd rather discuss w an artist and exhaust all my resources.
he's really uncomfortable with all the negative space
He needs to stay away from the news. It's not going to get any better for years.
He super regrets
This phrase is as unpleasant to me as say chewing tinfoil or that syrupy-ass autotune that's pretty much made reggaeton unlistenable anymore.
The new Mountain Goats album (thematically unified, to my ear full of nice songwriting, successful full-on Steely Dan redux with the lush studio arrangements) is really nice though.
You were also bothered by all the negative space?
I can't remember the last time I was calm while awake and sober.
55. Negative is OK, I basically get that. Fractional on the other hand, I do not understand at all but I believe that if I did, they would leave me uneasy.
He super regrets not looking at them earlier
I bet he says that to all the girls.
I wonder what he means by being uncomfortable with the negative space. The space between the cats, or within each cat?
61: I'm thinking it must be within each cat.
62: According to the pulse tracker on my phone, yes.
Right. I mean, he can't be expecting to sheath her entire torso in continuous tattooing, which is what you'd need to eliminate the between-cat space.
The "sight unseen" part seems like the absolute biggest own-goal, no? T
You've never bought a house sight unseen before? That's what we did. Worked out fine.
66: I've never bought a house unseen. But it would probably have been fine if I hadn't seen the 2 houses I've purchased. On the other hand, if my wives hadn't seen them......
This thread reminds me that I need to do something about the french drain in my house. Or lift it up, I guess.
That 3-D spider tattoo is pretty amazing. Maybe you should have spiders crawling all over your chest.
63, 65: no, he meant between cats.
He was having a hard time putting words to his ideas, but I think the gist of it is that he prefers someone to present a body part and say, "let's design a tattoo for this part" and to integrate the body part fully into the idea.
(He also said that he's changed and grown as an artist since two years ago, when he told me to go design it myself because he didn't do any design work.)
So I think he was objecting mostly to the fact that they were completely disconnected from each other, and he'd like some flowers or vines connecting them. (No.) And also a solid sleeve/canvas is in fact what he thinks looks best, although not the end-all-be-all.
I think part of this reaction is him not realizing he's in the midst of trends. But I don't want an unenthusiastic tattoo artist either.
So I think he was objecting mostly to the fact that they were completely disconnected from each other, and he'd like some flowers or vines connecting them.
This makes sense to me -- if it's several different cats, taken from different drawings, with a lot of negative space around them, it'll look like several disconnected images, rather than a single integrated tattoo. Not flowers or vines, but maybe shadows? Maybe have the cats larger so they are closer together and look like they're interacting with each other?
The bit about fully integrating the body part sounds very reassuring (I mean, he sounds maddening in the first blowing you off when you wanted to talk design, and now wanting to talk design, but the sort of maddening that I wouldn't associate with a bad outcome.
Don't know what to do about his disliking the separation of the cats. Maybe he'll have some ideas you don't hate.
Do you have an appointment to plan with him, or what's going to happen?
He felt like this was out of his wheelhouse, design-wise, but set me up with a consultation with someone he thought would be a good fit. And he's willing to do the most technically difficult cat if that cat ends up in the final design.
I think my tattoo can be improved upon quite a lot, so I'm looking forward to chatting about it with this other guy. But I'm also wary of tattoo artists designing, because I think they often have a rather narrow conception of what's allowed in a tattoo. (Like, I think it could be great if it looks sort of cut-and-pasted, like an eclectic web 'zine from the 90s, but he was horrified by the idea that I would just insert a background with an altogether different scale from the cats.)
So this will unfold somehow or another.
(I mean, he sounds maddening in the first blowing you off when you wanted to talk design, and now wanting to talk design, but the sort of maddening that I wouldn't associate with a bad outcome.
I should be annoyed, because I asked him a month ago if we could do a consultation, and he said "nah, just email me designs." Then in the email, I said, "I've got some questions - can we chat?" and then I texted him a little later saying, "did you get the email?" to which he responded, "I'm sure it went through."
But I'm not annoyed, because he was so apologetic and sorry and genuine about the whole thing, and I think he feels a sense of stewardship to bear with me until I end up with something I'm happy about, one way or another.
Every Torontonian I know wants to kill those people is not far off. My brother lived in that neighbourhood and he was evicted after 15 years so that the landlords could double the rent -- while he was undergoing chemotherapy. (He's fine now).
I looked at the "before" photos and was startled to see that aside from the graffiti and personal items the place is like every place I've been housed in by employers when I've worked in Toronto. Shabby and needing a good clean, maybe. It feels weird to have someone say "ew" about a place someone else deemed perfectly fine for you.
(Resolutely) I understand what you mean.
The reno story is spooking me. We're starting to house shop, and I found this absolutely beautiful three story Victorian that needs a bit of work. This is my nightmare, except way more expensive and with crackheads. I don't really feel sorry for these fools, but something something Dunning-Kruger and lead and maybe we should just rent forever.
We're starting to house shop, and I found this absolutely beautiful three story Victorian that needs a bit of work.
I am not an expert, but my impression is that doing a inspection, as part of the closing process, is designed to protect you against unknown problems (by, hopefully, identifying them).
81: Though the inspection my sister had done on the house we just bought in Salem, OR missed the mold that's going to take several thousand dollars to deal with even if we can get the previous owner to fess up to having covered it up deliberately (which it looks like he did). You can't really protect against deliberate concealment of defects, but it's something to be aware of anyway.
81: The problem is less knowing about defects and more guessing how much they will cost to fix and whether that fix will reveal more problems that cost even more money. Like, there's a huge pipe in the basement that appears to have a small leak. But what if replacing it leads to a cascade of plumbing problems? And we know the windows will need repair (they can't be replaced due to the house's historic status), but I'll need to pay for lead testing on the interiors in the same period as a home inspection so we can factor in abatement costs. And I'll probably want an expert in foundations as well. And I need to figure out how much it would cost to strip and paint cedar shingles and all the lovely carved trim in historically appropriate colors. It seems kind of manageable until I realize we could be totally screwed by many of these things.
Lead is just a given and any contractor you'd want to work with will know how to remediate, ydnew. Almost a year out, I'm glad I bought but also glad I bought super cheap.
And heebie, I'm glad to have read how the tattoo story resolved for now. You do want someone who gets it and gets you. Mine is different than I had envisioned but I think in a good way, but I needed to actually have that conversation.
(I also don't yet have a bathing suit that shows mine, but spending time at the pool sure gives opportunities to observe and have opinions. We're in the wealthy suburb Y where dads have upper half-sleeves and lower chest tattoos not our town public pool, where baby's footprints and birth dates are normal, which is how I learned that the only woman thinner than I was gave birth in March.)
Here's the listing, in case anyone (JRoth?) is curious.
If you don't buy that, I'm going to march up there and forge your name. Holy amazing shit.
82 before seeing 81. And don't test for lead unless you need to. You know it's there, behave as if it's there, but once you've officially tested you'll need to disclose that to the next buyer and it's a huge headache. That's the one DADT I endorse completely. Those all sound like things your inspector could tell you. Or maybe see if the historic district has a Facebook or email group you could join to see what others are complaining about and recommending?
84.1 Kinda. I mean, I'm fairly sure we'll have some lead problems, but remediation may have been done on the interior walls (I kind of suspect), but if we bought it and fixed the windows, we'd need them to be stripped entirely (which I think is the difference between remediation and abatement), and the numbers I'm finding are $500 per window, which, OK, but I need to count windows and figure out whether we can afford it. And to have a real estimate.
86: Right?!?! But what if I'm signing us up for a total money pit nightmare? And we lose a bajillion dollars? And spend all our waking hours refinishing that bannister?
" Julian had just finished his PhD in education and was teaching part-time at Humber...I was an editor for the Food Network's website and preparing to go on maternity leave....Our budget was $560,000"
problems start before this particular house, imo
But what if I'm signing us up for a total money pit nightmare?
This is a real possibility. Basically, know your budget, get estimates, and figure that it could well cost double the estimate. Things always come up that no one anticipates.
Just use the 2 million dollars you're saving by not buying the house in California.
When's the 20th anniversary wing-ding? Because the venue is now identified.
That's a nice enough house that it could make me be willing to live in Michigan.
94: No grotto, though!
95: More overcast days than Seattle! You'd love it. You can buy the fixed version when we move back to civilization.
I don't think you could get a rundown studio apartment anywhere on this island for that price.
Will noone note that these people were at first willing to take advantage of an elderly couple's not knowing market rates to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars? I'm all for a bargain, but there's a point where it's borderline criminal. Given that and their extraordinary stupidity, I really was rooting for them to lose everything. But rich godfathers do exist I guess.
And heebs, I'm glad that your tattoo guy made the call he did. Better to slow things down and get the right tattoo than be dissatisfied for the rest of your life.
Tattoo guy is despicably unprofessional. My blood pressure is spiking vicariously.
Maybe she should take a beta blocker.
Man alive! Them people in the op are foul. I can understand not wanting to live with rats, but that's what ratcatchers are for. I guess the entitlement is the thing that stands out most to me. 900 SQ feet isn't a lot for two adults and two kids, but it's hardly the Black Hole of Calcutta. Clearly, the whole saga is predicated on a belief that they and their children deserve only the best. Come to think of it, they're a lot like another family in the news.
101 is the part that scares me. Make the sellers fix the leaky pipe!
https://www.thebeaverton.com/2017/05/bought-3-million-bungalow-full-bats-not-happy-result/
Nouveaux riches have no fortitude. We have bats and like it.
Didn't your parents hire someone to remove the bats? Oh, right. Sorry.
Connect the cats with a heart shaped ball of yarn unraveling into a pattern on map of blood vessels. At least on paper.
Am I literally in the city that never sleeps? I fear I may never sleep.
This is just as tone deaf as the guy complaining about having trouble living on $400k a year. Tough life, dude.
54: THE NEW MOUNTAIN GOATS IS MY JAM. you should all listen to it, pronto.
the real problem with the house was its denizens; I agree it didn't look that bad inside. jaysus what a bunch of maroons.
Wasn't there some scam involving selling people houses (or maybe cars?) just based on pictures without seeing them in person, and it turned out they were just really detailed miniatures?
85. You are going to have so much fun with that place! Lead is lead, get a full survey, and unless you have lead water pipes, live with it.
There is literally nowhere in Britain where you wouldn't need an armed guard stationed outside 24 hrs a day or a generator for basic power, where you could buy that for less than the equivalent of $500,000.
I am less sanguine about the lead. We thought we had it under control at our old place, but our baby still managed to find some lead dust to crawl in. It was a dusty, covered porch, the ceiling of which was covered in lead paint.
Needless to say it freaked us the hell out when his blood tests came back from the pediatricians with high levels of lead in his blood. We dealt with it immediately - went through a whole cleansing regime - and I guess he's fine now. But, to this day, whenever he does something knuckle-headed, there is a part of me that wonders if it was because of the lead.
I did discuss the tattoos a decent amount with my mom (who is an artist). In her opinion, the trend right now is for very dense, cluttered tattoos, and this guy wants to clutter up my design, and she is staunchly opposed. It was nice to get that opposite opinion.
Anyway, I meet with this other design guy on Sunday. His designs are better and more interesting, but his execution is worse.
In Texas, you need to be good at executions.
Heebie, a suggestion from a friend about tattoos was that most artists will be willing to do a pen and ink version in advance of the real thing, on your body, as a draft version. Then, you can wear it for a few days and see how you like it, what might need changing, etc. (I'd admired one of his and he offered up an overview of the process.) He went to someone pretty famous who was still willing to do two appoinments to make sure everything was going to be right.
And thanks, all, for the encouragement on the house! Good idea, Thorn, to see whether the seller would handle the leaky pipe. I think we should get it, just have to convince the other half of the household. And just to calibrate folks on home prices, I think the fixed version would probably sell for about $250,000. And the garage probably contains dead bodies. (Only one garage door of the five works right now. Money pit!)
Dead bodies and money in a pit means pirates.
And the garage probably contains dead bodies. and Money pit!
Not everyone gets a chance to live in two Tom Hanks' comedies at once. (The 'Burbs* and the one you named.
*An underrated masterpiece.
Another thing that bothered me in addition to everything everyone's already said is they were buying a 4,000 sq ft house for 4 people (or 5, inc. the mom), and yet they STILL got duped by their toothless contractor who told them how they could add more space. How much fucking space does one family need? Maybe they should have considered saying, "oh no I don't really need to expand the basement, I already have a four story 4,000 sq ft house." There it was really straight up greed that did them in.
Another thing that pisses me off is when people have careers that clearly don't match their income levels, but then they sort of lie about it and pretend to be just normal lowish income people. If someone's a trust funder, I would much rather they be open about it than pretend like they buy several half million dollar houses on an adjunct's salary.
But anyways, this is a great example to point to next time you're arguing with conservatives that rich people are just smarter than everyone else.
On the flip side, I'm seriously considering having a baby in a 300 sq ft studio. When I think about how insane it might make me, I think of how much joy saving money brings me, and figures it evens out.
Heebie, have you tried the printable temporary tattoos? I could send you some cleaned up versions of the cats to scale if you send me the dimensions.
119: You'll barely have room for the doula.
I noticed on holiday last week (so seeing a lot of people without many clothes on) that there are distinct tattooing styles. In fact, a couple of guys I saw had ink so similar, I wondered if they'd gone to the same person, except one guy's was of a really quite amazingly high standard.
Basically, the style was "17th/18th century scientific illustration", or the kind of engraved art you get on maps and on astrolabes. Lots of 'white space', very very precise art, with very subtle monochrome shading.
Ydnew, I keep getting hung up on $500/window, which sounds totally unreasonable. Could you try calling the city code enforcement office and asking to talk to the historic preservation officer? That might be the best way to get accurate information and you'd know it follows the requirements.
If they have to strip all the paint, fix any issues with the frames, prime, and paint, $500/window seems pretty good.
You're probably right, Moby, but yikes!
re: 119
Fine when they are a little baby, I think. Our flat feels pretty big, even with a 4 year old, and that's only 800 sq ft or so.
I'm starting to gather ideas for my own mastectomy tattoos now. I've decided against having nipples tattooed on, and am thinking about something Mucha-inspired.
We have three people in 1,500 square feet, plus a small basement/garage for storage. It feels cramped, but we have so much stuff that needs to burn in a fire.
Wow, that Kalamazoo house. Three bays of the garage become the workshop, which makes the rest of the house much easier to live in during any work. (Though it looks like an After to me. )
We're possibly suing a neighbor over their un-engineered, un-permitted, failing retaining wall between our lots. We couldn't bring ourselves to sue an ongoing neighbor but they're moving and asking well over $2mil in a market on fire, so they can afford it.
Also my other half really doesn't want to sue but his parents talked him around. And then found us a much better lawyer for the purpose than our wills-and-incorporation guy.
125: yeah I think there's a company here that advertises $250/window, but that's before they tell you about the add-on charges, and the problems unique to your house, which are so bizarre and unfathomable that they also need to bill for several hours of extra labor for each window.
So yeah, $500/window doesn't seem ridiculous, as long as it is good workmanship.
131. Yes, got to do something to avoid getting that grandfathered in as "sucks to be you".
Yeah, fortunately the current owner four years ago agreed to "fix it", just went silent when we said she didn't get access through our yard unless a city permit and an engineers plan had been signed off. It astounds me how much she expects to literally take from us illegally. Of course, she may yet get away with it.
When the wall collapses they'll be giving you all that soil for free, you can sell that for a lot of money. I'm assuming if it's their wall they're uphill and it's retaining their land from falling on yours.
Looked at it again. Pretty sure it isn't going to work out financially. In addition to the exterior work that was obvious and windows we'd looked at before, We found ducts rusted through, water in the basement (it has been pretty dry weather) in more than one room, and multiple places with daylight visible outside the window frame where support should be. Storm windows are painted on on the outside, some of the door frames are a funny laminate, not wood. One chimney is missing 60% of its bricks at the top, and it's crumbling to powder at the bottom. There is mildew on pipe insulation; all the plumbing is cast iron in the basement. The wood trim that looks dark in photos is painted dark brown, not stained. To strip and stain is lead exposure or paying someone to do it safely. There are some gaps in the baseboards. Hot water flow in consteicted (mineral deposits in the pipes) so water pressure sucks on the second and third floors. Oh, ans both porches have failing footings and the front one is badly rotten. Every exterior repair will require an $83 application to the Historical Association.
Oh, and the white subway tile in the "new" kitchen was installed poorly, some cabinets have no shelves, and the scratched and slightly damaged cherry hardwood floor has gaps where it meets the marble that will need some work to fix. And that doesn't even start to include repairing water-damaged decorative plaster and other cosmetic things.
131/134: Good luck! Retaining walls aren't expensive at all; you are right to push.
125/132: Yes, it's probably (1) strip paint so storm windows can be removed (2) repair rotten sills (3) strip old lead-containing paint on interior (4) repair raise/lower mechanism (5) reglaze glass (6) repaint exterior (I'd do interior myself). It would be cheaper to just buy new windows, but we couldn't, because it's not permitted by the Historical Association.
For our next house, we are really, really hoping to find one where someone else has done all that shit.
Does somebody know a lawyer named "Walls." I want to say "I'm retaining Walls."
Anyway, I wouldn't want to suggestion that somebody should make as important of a decision as a home purchase on the basis of what would be the most entertaining as far as reading about it here, but I'm not above casually mentioning it.
There it was really straight up greed that did them in.
I'm really late to this, and everyone else has already noted how everything about this story is completely crazy. But what's truly bonkers is that, what with Toronto's housing market being what it is (totally insane, just batshit crazy), nothing this couple did is likely to actually do them in. To the contrary, the more likely scenario is that this couple will be richly rewarded for their recklessness and stupidity.
If someone's a trust funder, I would much rather they be open about it than pretend like they buy several half million dollar houses on an adjunct's salary.
I know! It's like, 'I was underemployed, and my husband was teaching part-time at a local college...But luckily we still had that condo that we hadn't yet sold!...'
It took us three tries to find lawyers who grokked that soil moves downhill, not uphill. So if a wall is bowed halfway across the property line, it didn't start downhill.
Hoping that seller wants to sell promptly and will cave. Buyers currently will buy anything.
My back fence leans into the parking lot beside, which is huge and never has more than a handful of cars. I haven't fixed it yet but the building is low-income mental health services, so the one therapy appointment we had there rather than at school left me wondering if the girls will grow up to complain to a therapist that their childhood therapist's office looked right at their bathroom window, which is glazed but still! Anyway I told the secretary that I'd get the fence fixed when I could afford it but it hadn't been a priority and she said, "oh, no one gives a shit and the people in charge don't even know."That's pretty much the approach the neighborhood assumes in letting small children play in the parking lot on weekends and late in the evening, but it was nice to have official confirmation.
136 is heartbreaking.It really is a spectacular house, and tragic that it's been so poorly maintained/upgraded/repaired. FWIW, I think your lead abatement goals may be a little loftier than necessary*, and refinishing painted trim may not be the highest priority, but clearly there are enough red and yellow flags aside for those items that it's a no-go. Sigh.
Looks like the only responsible choice is to build new. When should I come up?
*we got 3 years of repairs/improvements in before Iris was born, during which a significant amount of lead paint was encased, and we were careful doing work after she was born, but the bottom line is that the #1 non-water source of lead for kids is lead dust from operating windows, and I know our bathroom window creates it (I assume others as well, but I don't spend time sitting beside their sills with nothing else to do). But we had both kids tested all up the line, and there was never an issue. Point being, while even tiny amounts of lead in the blood are bad, tiny amounts of lead in the house don't nec. translate into kids' blood (it does help that neither of our kids was especially prone to shoving their hands in their mouths). Also, to Spike, as it happens, Drum just printed yesterday a study done in NC (IIRC) that compared kids with borderline high lead levels who got treatment against ones with similar levels who didn't, and the difference in outcome was stark. That is, the treatment works pretty effectively.
