Standing at the kitchen sink, rinsing some veggies before adding them to my lunch, I’m enjoying the warm breeze (I mean a 32°C toasty kinda “warm”) coming in through the window at me. I’m listening to the pounding and noise of workers down the hallway (to whom, at least some of this breeze owes it’s existence) and I’m thinking about all the changes in our home since we purchased it.
We’ve had a dedicated team of workers in here, off and on, for almost three months now (yes, I meant to write months). Each job we hired them for, becoming something bigger and more important than first imagined. As happy as I am we’ve actually found reliable tradespeople, and the engineer who’s guiding them, I’m annoyed at the extent we need them. It seems like every job they’ve started here, it’s turned out soooo much more was wrong than what we could see and thought was going on.
The day we were island house-hunting and came to look at this house for the first time, it was spring, and a cooler one than many since…but stepping into the house, it was shaded and cool feeling. Not overtly cool either, so there was no dead giveaway that the A/C had been run before we arrived. Of course in retrospect, it had been, I’m certain of it. It was clean and dry, bright white and beautiful.
Of course after we moved into the house, quickly, we started to have issues with heat and mold and discovered we could not get any decent air flow through the house no matter what we did. So unless we chose to run the A/C regularly, it was often muggier and hotter inside the house, than outside. Literally, it was often cooler to stay outside. It only added to the frustration when people told us it was just a matter of opening the windows. D-uh. Like as if that hadn’t occurred to us.
Hey…did you know these glass thingies actually open??? Cool….and look, there’s a breeze!
Aside from the house being sunken and there being walls around it, which come up high, diverting the majority of the breeze, one of the biggest reasons for the lack of airflow inside our home was several 2-3ft headers, placed separating room from room, and 3 more down the hallway. We never understood the reason for them being there and since our team of workers has since removed them, it seems they served no actual purpose. Aside from being annoyingly low (I’ve been waiting for the day my son bounces his forehead off one of these stupid things) the only thing they were there for is apparently just to completely hold air captive in separate sections of the house. HA! Buen trabajo.
Who the Hell designed this house? Seriously.
Pinche pendejo.
Which brings me back to why the workers are here in the first place… The flooding damage our home sustained in last season’s (2020) hurricanes.
Whether it was the previous home owner (was there more than one?) or the people hired to do it, this house has had multiple extensions built on – and they were done easy and dirty. What do I mean by this? I mean they were done the cheapest, easiest way and most definitely not the correct way. This current team of workers has been left shaking their heads as much as we have, each time they uncover the source of our troubles.
One of the hurricanes that brought a fuck-tonne of water to our yard (yeah, I got that milkshake game going on y’all), actually had our bedroom floor rising on the tide before it literally heaved so high, it cracked open, letting some sort of angry water-god pour in, unabated in the darkness of night. It seriously sucked – and it wasn’t over.
Over the course of three close-call hurricanes, in a short span of time, we found every goddamn nook and cranny this house could leak from – and then some. My husband has joked for years I am Poseidon’s daughter. Not so funny when dad comes to call…inland.
After the 2020 season, we hated this house and I was really keen to meet the previous owner and ask, “WTF?”
With a shovel in my hand…
I’d really like to know who’s responsible for this mess. I still clearly remember when we first looked at this house, and we were specifically told there used to be flooding but it had been “fixed.” Um…we have whole areas water came pouring in last October.
Please define “FIXED“.
What a freakin nightmare.
The running tally on the stupidity that’s our home:
- Room floors with no proper foundation prep, reinforcement, etc.
- Areas that were simply cemented over, rather than actually repaired.
- Headers restricting air flow, for no apparent reason.
- Walls crumbling because of moisture and mold – due to foundation not being done correctly and moisture moving upwards from damp earth below.
- Areas of ceiling in danger of collapsing from previous water damage (the roof was not previously maintained well).
So we’ve now had an entire bedroom, and laundry room, dug up and a new waterproof cement foundation laid, with reinforcement, etc. Then re-tiled. We’ve had an entire area down the side of the house dug up, only to discover it was tiled down under the cement and that’s the area where water was running into the kitchen cupboards from (water actually poured out from under the cupboards during one storm). We had the kitchen ceiling fixed in several areas, the walls in both the kitchen and laundry room chipped off and resurfaced. The entire hallway chipped off, the base of the walls filled with waterproof cement (to hopefully stop moisture from moving up the walls) and re-surfaced. Crumbling walls and one of the headers which remains were fixed and we figured, while they were at it, we might as well have as many headers removed as possible. We’re also having some windows that actually open replace the ones at the end of the hall, also to increase air flow. Coming up: there’s an area being dug up and back-flow valves being installed, to stop the sewage that flowed into our home each time we flooded (GAG).
So with the new air flow, the different look of smooth walls, areas of new tile and all new paint…it’s practically a “new” house. Not really the way it should have gone though and it was actually specifically what we’d wanted to avoid when buying here – but there you have it *sigh*
For people looking to buy here, you might be thinking a home inspection would have caught this. Sure. Maybe. Never heard of a home inspector here though. Next suggestion? Maybe hiring an architect or engineer to tag along or at least check out the places you’re really interested in might help. I’m not really sure…
I’m kinda digging this house now, as we enjoy the evening breeze – that actually wafts through the house. I like the smooth walls. I like the tile I actually chose for our bedroom. I’m excited about the new colours I’ve chosen to re-paint. I absolutely love the open feeling, since those stupid headers were removed… And I think once the back-flow valves are in, I’ll be a lot more relaxed about the upcoming hurricane season, because they’re saying it’s gonna be an active one as well. Fabulous.
So what’s my point? What’s the moral of this island story?
BBB.
No, it’s not the Better Business Bureau. It’s Buyer Beware Bitches! ‘Cause there’s no guarantee of anything, especially here, so you better be able to deal with it if your island castle turns out to be just a shed in a barnyard.
Thanks for nothin’…NOW our house is fixed.
*fingers crossed*
Top row: Our flooded hallway – and one of those stupid headers. A photo of the floor that cracked open, after the water receded and the floor had settled back down (mostly).
Second row: One of the showers backing up with blackwater. Finding damp earth right under a thin layer of quick set (in the room where the floor heaved).
Next row (3 photos): Our flooded living room, a crumbling wall in the kitchen being fixed and the outside area the workers dug up and repaired – they found it was cement over previous tile and was allowing water to run into our kitchen and under the cabinets (causing the mold issues and also allowing more flooding).
4th row: A header between the kitchen and laundry room (which remains) that was about to collapse. One of the headers that was removed (dividing the hall from the living room and part of the hallway where the walls were damp and molding because again, it was added on at that point but the foundation was not done correctly, so the damp earth underneath was making the dampness creep up inside the cement walls.
Bottom row: The hallway now, without headers. Oooooohhh…so open! And an area under a window that had water, literally pouring out from the wall during one of the hurricanes. It’s now a solid, cement wall, not cindercrete blocks.
A Canadian In Mexico 