My Simple House

Of Wires and Roofs!

By Matt - Monday, November 12th, 2012

So in Tara’s last post she told you about how she managed to knock out power to most of the house while trying to run the space heater. Yes it’s important to keep the house somewhat warm while there is no heat (its not quite cold enough for the pipes to start freezing but our contractors might!). There’s another issue with the the lack of power, our contractors (mostly Glenn) need to have power to run their tools which is pretty key!

So after blowing the power to most of the house it merited some investigation and I have to say the results of said investigation were not good to say the least. Having a single device like a heater knock out power isn’t normal and mildly worrying and when the electricians came in the next day we found out that most of the wiring through the house was frayed and a fire hazard. The only thing running through my mind when hearing this was ‘Oh shit, this is going to be expensive’ and it was at $5,500 for something we thought was ok.

This really didn’t need to happen, the budget was tight already!

Now you would think this is the end of our problems, alas that would be wishful thinking!  The decrepit (as Tara puts it) garage attached to the house had an aging roof and we knew this when we bought the place. It’s a flat roof that had water pooling on it when it rained and while this isn’t an immediate need for concern what was happening with that water was.

The water on the roof was leaking slowly into the house and it was coming through into the kitchen. Thankfully it was just a little bit but with new walls and cabinets going up right where the drip was it could cause problems like mould.

I could almost hear the bank account crying in pain about yet another unexpected cost!

Another $4,100 later there’s a new roof on the garage (at least there will be no more water in the house).

At the end of it in the matter of a couple days we’ve managed to spend almost $10,000 in unexpected costs. That’s what happens when you get an older house and start opening things up. If this keeps up the house will become a money-pit.

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