Linda's Homemade Carport....the adjective 'homemade' is
Posted at 3:44 PM, Jul. 4, 2006
not a compliment. When I learned to sew, the worse thing that could be said about a hand sewn dress was that 'it looks homemade.' My friend Linda emailed me this story about closing on a house, with the promise from the seller that they would come back later and make a necessary remedy. The lesson to be learned is that once the closing takes place EVERYTHING should have been taken care of....don't leave any loose ends out there!"Ok, you all aren't going to believe this story ...but here goes...
When we bought this house in Ardmore, the previous owners had never built a carport (which is a requirement from the City of Ardmore). And when we bought it from them, we were given a year from date of sale to build one.
So, we had a contract drawn up by a real estate attorney when we bought the house from them. One of the stipulations in the contract was that they (the previous owners) had to build a carport for us before the year was up. We had asked them to just reduce the cost of the house by what it would cost to build a carport and we would have it done ourselves ...but they refused that, saying *we have to have every penny we are asking for the house and cannot lower the price at all*. They assured us at the time (when we asked about their building experience) that it would not be a problem because one of their best friends was a building contractor who was going to assist them in building this. When they were here the other night to talk to us, we asked them where was this friend who was going to help them and they told us "oh, we don't talk to him anymore ...we really aren't friends any longer"..
About 3 weeks ago they finally showed up and started building the carport. Oh my gosh .. you should see it. Well, it is only partially built because Bob went out there and asked to see their building permit and of course, they didn't get one. :( This carport looks like a bad tinker toy job, I kid you not. They went to find out about getting one and realized NOTHING they have done so far will meet code (which we already knew by just looking at their work). So now they have spent all their money on really bad materials and have found out they really don't know what they are doing.
We were at the attorney's office on Thursday ... bottom line, we are basically stuck for now. We have to wait for the year date ... which will be Aug. 17th, and if nothing has been done, then we can call someone to build it ... have it built and then sue them for all the costs involved.
I am encouraged today because they actually sent a friend of theirs over and he is out there starting to disassemble the thing. Geez, I have been so afraid one of our infamous *winds* that we get here in Ardmore would come up and just push the thing into our house.
After Bob made them stop construction till they had a building permit posted, I went out ..climbed on a ladder just to see if it would be at all possible for us to start working on taking it down. Yikes* the things swayed all over the place just with me leaning against it on the ladder. No way either of us or anyone we love is going to be trying to take it down. I figure none of us needs any broken bones. And, of course, there is no way I would let Bob get on a ladder to do ANYTHING what with his inner ear problems.
I know there must be a lesson in all this. Probably that in hindsight we should have just walked away from the deal when they wouldn't allow us to reduce the price of the house by the amount it would take to have a carport built. But we just keep on learning our life lessons the hard way......"