Hillbillies in a Barn: The offer gone bad--October 2007

We had showings often enough in the fall to keep the house cleaner than normal but no bites Until October. Let me see if I can cut an paste email updates...OK maybe not so you will get the Reader's Digest version here.

We had a showing. When we got home they were just leaving with smiles on their faces. While I was fixing dinner they were parked on the side street. I was getting bothered, they were obviously looking at my house. So I asked if they had any questions. They were still glowing and said they were just waiting for their agent to get done with another appointment so they could go write an offer. They just loved the house for all sorts of reasons. So got the offer, settled on a price fairly quickly. Then the inspection...

They had been by the house a few times...I recognized the car. But When they left after the inspection something was obviously wrong. They rug on the sun porch had been pulled back revealing a crack in the tile floor. We knew it was there, but the tiles were right on top of a concrete slab so we weren't worried. The crack was also just inside where there is a ventilation duck that helps with temperature control so those spots were naturally weaker.

They wanted to back out at first, then we said we would do what we could. They seemed open to us fixing a few things. So we started, we got our contractor out to look at it. Their inspector, the children dubbed him Inspector Javert form Les Miserables--he is doing his job but is still the bad guy. Anyhow he was convinced that there were cracks in the foundation. My initial response was no way are we going to spend hours digging up our yard to prove you are wrong. Well that is just what we ended up doing when Todd got home from work he started digging. We finally finished at about 11 PM. We dug 2 feet out and 3 feet down to reveal the entire footings of the 30 wide sun room. In the dark we saw no cracks.

The next day we had the Township building inspector come check it out and he saw nothing to be alarmed about. One tiny crack right around a ventilation duct. But we never got the buyers to come back and see. It was a very long emotional week.

So now we had our yard and sun porch torn up and we had no buyer.

After deciding the best way to fix the problem Todd and friends put a new raised wood floor over the tile. Then we covered the concrete brick wall with panelling to match the inside wall. All in all I really like the improvement, but the emotional cost wasn't really worth it.