Sometimes a small problem turns into a big problem...

A few years ago my husband and I bought our first home together which happened to be a "flip" home. Upon doing our home inspection we discovered the house was not done well. In fact we were given a rather lengthy report of all the things wrong and not much right with the house. However, after some further negotiation and the realization that we knew what we were getting into we moved forward with the purchase and acquired the home at a nice discount in lieu of repairs. I mean they obviously didn't do it right the first time, why would we want them to fix anything right? What we have come to realize is that what we didn't know was worse than what we did. Over the years we started to make changes to update and correct the issues left to us by the last seller. Some fun stuff and some annoying stuff but that is the literal joy of home ownership. One small project is always bigger once you dive in and being in real estate I know that to be true. One birthday my husband got me a custom closet make over for our humble walk-in. We had the standard L-shaped bar option with a shelf above that just wasn't enough to handle my ever rotating wardrobe...and his. While removing all the things from the closet we discovered a wet wall in the back corner of the closet which happens to be the back exterior corner of our home. My husband and father in-law who used to be a contractor many moons ago evaluated the problem and felt the water was getting in via the poorly done brick work on the exterior. Now this bedroom was an addition many years ago prior to the last seller and from what I understand it was a porch that had been turned into a bedroom to make the 2 bedroom home a 3 bedroom home. That should of been red flag number 1..

They did their best to mortar the brick exterior corner where it looked like it needed it and patched up the wall so we could install my new closet.

Fast forward a few years.....We learned we were pregnant after 2 years of IVF! So excited!!!! I went to pull a dress from the back of my closet and discovered it was wet. After looking and feeling further I barely pushed on the wall and my whole hand went right into the crumbly wet drywall. UGH. I called my trust contractor and friend whom I do rehabs with and when he came over and started pulling back the wall we realized it was a whole lot worse than just a tiny leak in the corner when we were greeted by the smell of the mold. Whomever the person was that made the addition originally clearly was not an expert. The aluminum studs used were not load bearing, there was no vapor barrier between brick (which you could literally see sunshine inside the closet once the drywall was gone) and the insulation, and the metal trim around the exterior was wrapped over the flat roof over-hang instead of behind it. Basically water has been pouring into that wall the entire 6 years we have lived here and turned into a giant moldy pit of a wall. Thats nice isn't it. Lucky for me I know a guy and the master bedroom and closet gut begins. I have been wanting to redo our master shower since we moved in too. We have that plastic all in one tub/shower combo that no matter what you do to it it is never clean enough. So with the baby on the way my husband thought it best to do it all at once and get it over with. Lucky we did cause that install was a hot mess too. Our tub had also been leaking, our plumbing was not even cemented together properly, just sitting there in the wall and their was severe old termite damage they just left in the wall.

Since the brick and metal was a mess we had to get that fixed too. In addition to that we also have this lovely almond color metal trim and windows and its looks dated and ugly. The windows are cheap and never seem ed to be installed properly so instead of fixing the one section of trim that was installed wrong and keeping the windows we should just do the whole house new so if others were wrong we would run into the same issue. Luck for us we did because upon pulling out the first window in our bedroom that too was full of water and would of caused another issue if it had been left.

I MEAN COME ON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!