Update

Lots of things have happened since I last wrote.  I am a poor blogger for sure.

Money update:

I have received all of the money from my 203(k) loan.  Hooray.  That allowed me to pay everyone, and have some “scratch” left over.

The insurance?  A different story.  The good folks at Traveller’s are now requesting proof of everything that I paid for.  Invoices that are signed and say “PAID” with the date paid are not enough apparently, they need checks. 

I have a bunch of check receipts (as I pay, generally, in bank checks) waiting, but the total amount of the checks needs to be up to or above the total amount of the settlement.  The checks aren’t even close.  They have paid out more money that I have spent on the fire stuff, so it’s not a giant big deal, but still… 

They have held back a few tens of thousands of dollars that I will never see, which is a bummer.  A real bummer.

Also, Traveller’s related, I still don’t have the Additional Living Expenses check from them.  It’s been over half of a year since I moved into a hotel because my house caught fire and I still have not been paid back for that.  It was a huge chunk of money (12 grand for just the hotel), so I am pretty anxious to get that back.  It’s super annoying.  I really don’t like Traveller’s Insurance at all.  They are the worst.

House Update:

The house is pretty much finished.  I have it up for rent on craigslist and it was listed for sale at $179,900 late last week.  Hooray.  I cannot wait to sell it.  I will get a large check when I do.  It will be awesome.

The only things left to finish up are a little bit of electrical work (hooking up the above range fans on the first and second floor) and some floor sanding (as the generally good folks at Le Floors (not French) completely missed a single threshold on the second floor).

Oh and packing.  Cause we’re moving to Puerto Rico on the 31st.  Awesome.

House Pictures:

And there it is.  I am in the process of trying to get it rented out, as well as trying to sell it, as well as trying to find a management company to take care of it once we are off to sunnier climes.

Don’t Worry. I Didn’t Die. I Promise.

Well.  It’s bee a looong time since I’ve written.  I am the worst.  It’s been a mixture of not excuses (for some weeks) and an actual excuse (in-law craziness.  Literally).

I’m not going to go crazy and write a million words right now, even though I’ve been known to blow out these posts in the past.  Instead, I will update all of you folks on the financial situation as of now.

During the road trip, I was sent a couple of checks related to both the insurance claim (still not closed) and the construction part of the 203(k) loan. 

*Aside* – Here’s what happens in Windows 7 Live Writer (which is awesome by the way, at least for blogging) when you type “(“ followed by “k” and then “)”.    Apparently that means kiss.  The internet is both the best and the worst, simultaneously.  Yeesh.  *Aside over*

With those checks, I paid some folks a bunch of money.  I still have not yet received the remainder of the insurance money, nor have I received the remainder of the loan money.

For awhile, I was fighting with the bank (who loaned me money) to get them to release the rest of the funds, since the house was pretty much finished up and I was broke.  I am still broke.  Only last week did the fine folks at M&T Bank finally acquiesce and allow for the final inspection and subsequent money release.  I asked Richard Who Hands Me Money to stop by for the final inspection, but instead of doing that, he just sent me an email with a bunch of forms to fill out and told me to take pictures of things.  Lazy turd.

I filled out the forms, had Al Medina, General Contractor sign them as well, scanned them and emailed them back to Richard.  I also took pictures and sent those along.  Hopefully doing those two things will mean I will finally get the rest of the loan money sometime in the very immediate future and will finally be able to pay Al the rest of what he is owed.  My bill is currently at close to $17k owed (please note that he has been paid over 32 grand in American dollars, so he isn’t flipping out about money just yet).

The insurance is another matter entirely.  It’s been months and months since the house I am currently living is caught fire.  It was on the 3rd of July.  I still have not yet received the final check for the repairs (which have been finished forever) nor have I received the financial hardship inducing “pay Ryan back for all the money he spent when he lived in a hotel and had to eat out every single meal for over a month” check.  For an idea of how much money I spent, but still haven’t seen, the total cost for the hotel stay only, not including meals, was over twelve thousand dollars.  Out of my pocket.  I would really like to see that money again, as I am starting to get a little worried.  When will I see it?  I, literally, have no idea.

I’ve been bugging Richard, who, if you remember, helped me get a lot more money than I needed from the insurance company, about that money for months now.  he keeps telling me that it is a separate issue from the insurance claim, and thus, it is generally reviewed and handed out after the final check has been cut.  Since that has not happened yet, I cannot get repaid for living it up at the Courtyard Marriott in downtown Providence.

This process was, and remains, ultra frustrating.  It’s been over five months since I initially called Traveler’s to let them know that someone lit some garbage in my yard.  The repairs have been finished for months, I haven’t been able to pay my general contractor (but have managed to pay everyone else), and I will be unable to close on a sale of the place (I that were to occur) without this stupid claim being closed once and for all.  I really have not had a good time dealing with all of this. 

Oh, and since I have not been paid the final amount of the claim, I still cannot reveal to you how much it was for.  I know you’ve been anticipating the final number for months and months, but I can’t let the feline out of the bag quite yet.

So, in short, I am waiting on tens of thousands of dollars worth of checks to be mailed to me.  I have done everything I can to make sure that the folks sending the checks are in a position to mail them.  I wrote this post to complain.

The next one will probably have complaints to, but it should also have some images of the house.  I know you like pictures more than text anyways.  Imbeciles…

Just kidding.

Tradesmen Are Both The Best and The Worst

When I last left off, which was, admittedly, too long ago, I mentioned that I needed some plumbing help.  Joe Merritt, Plumber was unable to unclog the, um, clogged piped in my basement and the washing machine was rendered almost unusable.  Joe Recommended a friend of his, I gave him a call, and he showed up the next day.

He parked in the driveway and took a look at the basement.  I let him know that I would have to leave at some point during his few hours of work, so he would have to park his giant blue van on the street, rather than on my terrible property.  He agreed, hopped into his van, and made his way here:

I watched the journey from driveway to curb.  It was GREAT.

The plumber fired up his van and backed out of the driveway completely.  He then moved his van pretty much where it ended up in the above picture, but decided to fix the angle at which he was parked (which I appreciate) and to do so, he started to back up again.  He slowly backed up and slowly backed up until he had finally smooshed the rear of his van into the telephone pole, also pictured above.

It was hilarious.

He was probably only going about seven miles per hour, but (at the risk of sounding like a pickle commercial), man, what a satisfying crunch.  The result?  I nice tall dent:

He popped out of the van, once it was finally completely parked, and was livid with himself.  A nice quote – “If my effword effword-up brother did that, I would have fired his ayword.”  he complained about his driving prowess for a few minutes while angrily unloading hi van and getting ready to fish out poop.  He was great.

Another fun conversation I had with him later on (I added only a few ‘yea’s’ and nervous laughter to the conversation) started by him letting me know that he recently lived in my neighborhood.  He said that he used to live only a few streets over from my house and he asked me if I had ever seen a woman walking around the neighborhood with two white dogs on leashes.  I had not.

He then let me know that he was, ahem, “trying to get with that.”  Gross enough.  Also, “she wouldn’t let him because he would have to take her to dinner or some essword like that.”

Why do people tell me these things?  I met the man twenty seven minutes earlier and he was admitting to me that he is a terrible person who tried to have sex with a woman, but wouldn’t take her to dinner first.  Yeesh.  If you want to tell me that story (you shouldn’t), just admit to me that the woman turned you down.  I know it already.  It’s not a secret.

I also learned that he didn’t usually smoke, but he had recently rehired his brother who smokes, so naturally, he started up again.  His brother did a lot of drugs.  his dad is kind of a deadbeat.  Etc.

I did not, and still do not, care about any of this.  Please.  Tradesmen.  Do not continue to tell me these things.  Please just show up on time and do the job you are being paid to do.  No more stories, anecdotes, family secrets or anything else.  Please.

In other news, the heaters are still not installed.  We are using a small, but surprisingly effective space heater on the third floor, as we don’t want to be freezing people.  Since the heaters have not yet been installed, we cannot have the floor Asians start (or finish) the floor reconditioning.  This is terrible, as we can’t rent out these places without refinished floors or, you know, heat.

The good news is, a week and a half after he said he could show up, Dan Costa, Electrician is here now, working away on the first floor.  Yesterday, I received an email from him around 6:30am stating that he’d be by to start working between 10am and 11am. 

I called him at 11:15am, wondering where he was.  Surprisingly, he was not on his way.  He said he would be there in an hour or so, as he was “held up”. 

An hour and a half later, I gave him another call.  He was, this time, back at his office looking for the estimate he did for me.  It would be another half hour or so. 

Hilarious.

An hour thereafter, he finally showed up, hopefully to start working, as he said he would be.

Apparently, to Dan Costa, “starting work” means “ask for a check”.  I didn’t, and still do not, have any checks to offer, so I handed him a few hundred bucks in cash and he said he would be back the next day (this morning) around 8am, to start.

One more day without heat.  Hooray.

He showed up this morning right on time.  No he didn’t.  Only a half hour late though, so that was nice.  I handed him a huge check and he is currently working.  he should be finished in the next few days. 

Since he started, I called up the floor Asians and set up their start date.  Next Monday.  Blamo.

Almost finished…

I Live In A Wonderful Neighborhood

No I don’t.

So, over the last few days, I’ve been dealing with smelly things.  The installed washer in the basement, as I mentioned in the last post, doesn’t drain so well.  The three or four five gallon buckets per washer load wasn’t a great time, so I called up Joe Merritt, plumber, to take a look at it, and also replace a few dripping basement water valves.

He showed up a little bit late (surprise) on Monday and headed down to the basement.  I showed him what needed to be done and he got to work.  After a few tens of minutes, I checked in on his progress.  He had replaced all of the valves (three of them) and had moved onto the clogged waste pipe, seen below the pipe with the bucket resting on it here:

He was prying the PVC pipe back to let it drain a bit into the bucket.  Some really super smelly water was coming out of it.  Like, super extra poopy.

Now, keep in mind that this drain had been sitting idle for months and months before we moved in.  There was likely all kinds of crap (literal and not) sitting in there, drying out, and thus, shrinking a bit.  Once we moved in and started to flood the drain with water from showers and sinks and toilets and hopefully nothing else, that old, dried drain stuff swelled again and made for a slow drain.

Once he had sufficiently and slowly drained the pip of grossness, he started to snake the drain with a small hand snake and I headed back upstairs to not snake a drain with a plumber.

When I returned to the basement after I heard some swearing, I smelled something truly awful.  Just abysmal.  When I finally fought through the stink cloud and found out what the problem was, I was met by a huge pool of drain stuff all over the place.  Apparently, the snaking didn’t go well and to figure things out, Joe Merritt removed the pvc pipe from the sleeve to the left of it.  Big big mistake. 

As soon as he removed the pvc, all kinds of disgusting and old, um, material came flying out of the sleeve.  He caught some of it in a bucket, but there was more than five gallons of material to catch.  The result?  All kinds of poop, grey water, hair and all things disgusting all over the floor.

Better news?  When trying to put the pipe back into the sleeve, he broke the pipe, and the attached trap right off.  Awesome.

We moved the appliances out of the way and got down to cleaning things up.  Well, he did, as I pay him to keep poop off of the floor.  He used the shop vac for a few minutes and brought a bag full of gross out to the garbage can.  Once the chunks were gone, he replaces the pipe and the trap so it was all back to normal.  But much smellier.

Here’s the after picture:

And another, for fun:

Everywhere that is wet on the floor in those pictures is where the drain sprayed grey water and poop.  There was a lot and it smelled very terrible.  It still kind of does after two days of open windows.  Gross.

I paid Joe Merritt for his troubles and he left.  he gave me the number of a plumber who actually unclogs drains, rather than just does rough/finish plumbing and he came here yesterday.  I will write about that shortly.  Why not now?  Because I have better things to write about.

As I mentioned in the title of this post, I live in a crappy neighborhood.  The evidence has been mounting for awhile now (Exhibit A, Exhibit B) and I think, based upon what happened last week next door, the verdict can finally be rendered beyond a reasonable doubt.  Here is the nail in the defense team’s proverbial coffin:

Around 11pm, I was in the living room watching an illegal feed of the Celtics overtime win in Boston over the Chicago Bulls.  In the final few seconds of the overtime period, I heard a bunch of yelling and commotion from outside.  Since the yelling in my neighborhood usually amuses me (it’s usually a teenaged guy yelling about a girl who wronged him, seriously), I opened the window next to me to listen in.  Nothing crazy, just a girl yelling about something and a guy trying to explain himself. 

After a few minutes of this, Amanda, who was in bed, appearing out of the bedroom and asked me if I heard all of this.  Of course I did.  Since there isn’t much space between buildings around here, it’s tough to tell the directionality of yelling in the neighborhood.  I figured it was coming from around the block, but Amanda let me know that it was, in fact, coming from the parking lot of the house next to us.

Awesome!

I bounded into the bedroom, we turned the lights off inside (as to not be seen), high fived and hunkered down for some greatness.  We were not disappointed.  It was a group of about five or six people (of college age, but most certainly not enrolled anywhere accredited), all visible from our bedroom window, milling about around a four door sedan.  There were two or three girls, one yelling hysterically,  two fellows near the car and one guy who seemed to be playing intermediary between them all.  It was clearly the two fellows near the car versus the hysterical girl and her roommates, with the third guy trying to calm people down/keep the fellows in the yard.

After a bit of time, one of the two fellows, started to get really nervous, antsy, as it was revealed that the police had been called and would be arriving shortly.  he really did not want to be there when the police arrived, but he never actually had the nerve to run.  We surmised that it was because the car was his and he would be caught one way or another (either now, or later I guess).

Knowing that something funny might happen, I grabbed my video camera and got to immortalizing the experience.  The audio is a bit soft, and it was nighttime, and thus, dark, so I apologize.  Oh, and there’s swearing, so heads up:

So here’s what we think went down: The crying over the trunk fellow drove his friend, the other arrested guy in the white striped black leather jacket, to the house next to ours.  The other arrested fellow apparently had a key to his ex-girlfriend’s apartment.  He used the key to enter her apartment while his driver waited outside.  While in the apartment, he managed to grab her computer and television.  Before long, his ex-girlfriend came home and parked behind the perpetrator’s car, boxing it in.  She flipped out.

The police came and made me laugh a lot.  Apparently, he broke into the apartment and tried to steal his ex-girlfriend’s stuff because she, *throat clear*, she owed him five American dollars.  This guy broke into a house to steal things over five dollars.   He was arrested and went to jail, at least for one night, for five dollars.  He convinced his pants peeing friend to be an accomplice with a car for five dollars.

Hilarious.

This neighborhood is hilarious.

Back In Business. Or Rhode Island With Minimal Business.

So.  The Road Trip is over.  We came back a week or so ago and have been kind of sitting around ever since.  I’m still in the process of writing all about it here, but figured I’d get my regular house blog readers up to speed.  All seven of you.

Miraculously, nothing in the house or outside of the house was destroyed.  I was shocked to say the very least.  Not only was nothing in the house burned, exploded, melted, eaten, broken, leaking, busted, stolen, ruined, etc., but the house was in better condition than when we left it.  Also?  Amanda’s terrible car wasn’t even stolen or broken into.  Can’t win them all I guess…

As I said, the house was in better condition than when we left it for five plus weeks.  This was because I asked Al Medina, General contractor to finish up most things in the house while we were gone.  I figured that since we got too much money from the insurance company, I could give some of it to Al to keep things moving while we were gone.

When we first got back, I checked the mail:

We have a mail slot, so it could just pile up inside the door.  It piled up for sure.

One of the things that Al and his folks did while we were gone was hang some cabinets in the first and second floor kitchens:

He also finished up each galley, including painting the second floor countertop grey:

He replaced the first floor shower surround (as the old one was hilarious and made partly of wood):

New bathroom floors for the first and second floor bathrooms:

Finished up the painting on the first and second floors:

There are still some little things that he overlooked, like this bathroom floor trim:

For the most part though, Al Medina and his crew are finished up here.  Still to be done though?  Refinishing the floors, installation of electric baseboard heaters and a little bit of plumbing.  Oh, and finding tenants that only smoke heroin a few times a month…

The washer and dryer have been installed in the basement.  That is good news.  The bad news?  The waste pipe that drains the washer is super clogged.  I found this out a fun way, when testing out the washer.  A bunch of water came spewing out of it.  not as bad as the last house, but still, stinky water is no good.

I sat in the basement for an hour watching the washing machine fill up and drain.  When it drained, I got to unplug it, then head outside to dump out a bucket of dirty, detergent filled water.  The bucket pictured here:

Apparently, the washer uses three five gallon buckets of water per cycle.  I wish that was in the manual.

Joe Merritt, Plumber is headed here Monday morning to take care of that, as well as replace some leaky valves in the basement.  No big deal.

Hopefully, Dan Casta, Electrician will also make his way here this coming week to install the heaters and hook up the brand new electrical meters that were somehow installed when I was away.  I was, again, shocked.

Next installment?  A video of what happened at 10pm or so at the neighbors house.  You won’t want to miss it.

Fun At the Bank

Not actually at the bank, as that’s in Buffalo, but I guess fun with the bank on the telephone in the car travelling to New Jersey.

I’m still waiting on tens of thousands of dollars.  The repairs on my house (fire repairs) have been finished for weeks.  I still can’t pay those who finished said repairs.  I am a deadbeat. 

I was supposed to get a check for $8k, as the bank folks said they sent it out on the 10th.  That was a long long time ago.  I was a productive member of the workforce way back then.  Since we were leaving for a road trip for five weeks, it was kind of important that the check arrive at the house before we left.  I explained that to the bank folks before the 10th and they assured me that the check would arrive before we left (yesterday).  They are liars.  I have no check.

Kind of angry about it, I gave the folks at the bank a call as soon as we got on the road to smelly NJ.  On the call, I explained my situation, then told them to cancel the check that they “sent” and then send a new check to a different address overnight.  Normally, there is a $25 fee for overnighting a check.  I told them that I would not be paying that fee. 

The woman on the other end of the phone had a quick (not quick) chat with her manager while I was on hold and told me to, ahem, call back on Monday to cancel the check and they would send the new one out then.  Also,  she let me know that I would be paying the overnighting fee.

Crap.

She explained that I would have to wait ten business days to cancel the check (as it still might be delivered at the house) and that since they aren’t the US Postal Service, the overnighting fee would have to be paid by me, as they’re not responsible for delivering mail.

I was kind of pissed at this point and decided to re-explain the situation, hoping that some logic might seep into the conversation.  I also asked to talk to her manager.  My basic point was, since were were already gone and wouldn’t be returning to check the mail for five weeks, it doesn’t matter if the check arrived by Monday, because, duh, no one would be home to open it.  I told her it made no difference, since we wouldn’t be there on Monday, if I waited until then to call back and request a new check, since I was going to have to do that either way. 

I then moved on to why I wasn’t going to pay the overnighting fee.  In short, they told me that the check would be there by the 22nd, as it was being sent on the 10th.  I then postulated that they requested that the check be cut on the 10th, but sending the request, and actually cutting the check (which is done by a different department) too a few extra days.  I surmised this because the US Postal Service doesn’t take 10 days to delivered anything, especially something from Buffalo to Providence.

She took in the argument and basically told me that she wasn’t authorized to do anything and that I would have to call back on Monday.  Jesus.

I once again requested to talk to her manager, so she said that she would see if he was available.

After another few minutes on hold, she was back on the phone telling me that my requests were reasonable and that she could cancel the check and send out a new one shortly. 

I was stunned.  After all of that, apparently all it took was asking her to tell the manager my logical argument and he obliged. 

I felt like I won something.  I now have a check for $8k and $39k headed to my friend Dan’s house (we’ll be Dan’s House Guest) outside of Philadelphia.  Hopefully it will be there when Amanda and I visit there this weekend on our way out to the West Coast.  Heads up Dan.

Inspection

So. Since all of the work was completed on the house, as far as restoring it to livable condition after a fire, I scheduled an appointment with the mortgage companies inspection service. It was supposed to be at 8:30am yesterday. It was actually at 9:30am yesterday.

Aside: "Tardiness" is not even close to related to "retard" linguistically, but I'm glad that they are similar. Aside over.

The woman who showed up in her late model white Dodge Durango, with the back windshield replaced by a taped on piece of thin Plexiglas, was super extra hot. Like, really super hot. I couldn't figure out, despite the entire meeting's worth of trying, how such an incredibly good looking woman could be stuck in such a terrible job. Maybe she was recently divorced and needed to make ends meet before the settlement money? Maybe her friend needed a favor and she was filling in? Perhaps she actually enjoyed it? Is that even possible? She was so physically appealing, it made absolutely no sense to me that she would do inspections for a mortgage company for a living. She was just so hot.

No she wasn't.

She was exactly what I expected: A squat, round, bespectacled troll of a woman with a little too much dark hair on her upper lip and a tinge of social anxiety.

That aside, she was very nice, if not a bit awkward. I showed her around the house, she took a few photographs and approved the house as 100% complete according to the contract with Al Medina, General Contractor.

It is now a race between me leaving Rhode Island for the road trip and the check reaching my mail slot. If the check loses that race, we cannot pay for anything during our road trip. I will have a better idea of the check's chances early next week, when I can bug people at the mortgage company.