The Story of the Half-Asses

In her post on Sunday, AndreAnna over at Diary of a Modern Matriarch was talking about the problems they're having with their house and the fact that someone lied, boldfacedly (is that a word?), to a pregnant woman about the fact that water had never been in the basement.

Her situation reminds me an awful lot of my own just a couple of years ago. We bought from liars too. At least I hope they were liars because if they're not they're the stupidest people that ever lived. But since the husband is an elected official in these parts (not in our district anymore, thank God), I'm not sure whether to hope he's a liar or really stupid. That's a lose-lose proposition.

But Mr. Daddy and I came up with our own name for them. We called them the Half-Asses. They lived in the house we bought for at least 20 years and if something needed to be fixed during that time, they went about fixing it in the most half-assed manner they could.

When they painted the family room they didn't even attempt to spackle over the holes or the scratches in the wall. But the worst offense? They actually painted over dust and lint particles. You could see them there, like fossils in the paint.

The front room, what had been an old 60s-style formal living room, didn't have a light in it, so Mr. Daddy cut a hole in the ceiling and wired in a light fixture. When he took the switchplate off near the front door, there were actually two switches there -- one had been hidden under the plate. And it was taped into the up, or "on," position. Huh. That's weird, we thought and hooked the new light to that switch. Let there be light!

But then that night it started to get really, really cold in the house. Huh. We had no heat. Mr. Daddy started flipping switches and fuses. Nothing. So, he climbed back into the attic whereupon he discovered that the Half-Asses had wired their HEATER to a light switch that was located by the front door, taped it "on," and covered it up. Half-Asses.

But the real kicker, well, that was one was a doozy. When we had our annual termite treatment, the bug guy crawled out from under the house and said "You've got some water under your house." Hmmm...well, it had rained a lot recently and our soil was weird -- our land didn't "perk," whatever that meant -- so maybe that was it.

A few weeks later the pool guy (oh yeah, we had a pool, but that's ANOTHER story) was under the house hooking up the new and very expensive pump and came out and said "You've got some water under your house." Well. Hmm....this time there'd been no rain.

So, we called a plumber who was a friend of my dad's. He crawled under the house where he discovered a problem with the drain line from the washing machine. The problem, you ask? The Half-Asses had knocked a hole in the drain line. The plumber suspects they had a clog and instead of fixing it or replacing the drain line, the just knocked it loose. And water had been pouring underneath the house for over a year every time I did a load of laundry. With a toddler and a newborn in the house.

Now, someone who is more goodhearted than I might think, "Well, maybe it just burst. Maybe they didn't know about it." Well, one could think that except for the fact that they left their work light hanging there. Half-Asses.

And to top it all off with a nice big eff-you cherry, all of this had been missed by our apparently incompetent home inspector. I call him by a different name.

I don't really know why I'm telling y'all all of this. These thigns really used to piss me off, but I actually find it kind of amusing these days. Sort of one of those laugh so you don't cry kind of things.