Dec
1
But I Swear I was Knocking on Wood
December 1, 2007 |
Mini-crisis with the sale of House #1 yesterday, but it’s looking like it was averted. One of the items on their inspection was that the water meter was registering a tiny trickle of water somewhere that shouldn’t be there with everything turned off. They wanted us to track that down, fix the leak if one was found, and have receipts from a licensed plumber that performed the repairs.
Our realtor got some plumbers out there (ironically actually one of the local companies that’s blown me off twice as far as getting an estimate for House #2) and they found the leak, but expressed concern about patching it, as it was older galvanized pipe (which is the bulk of the plumbing in the house), and we all know how little fun it is to have galvanized plumbing, especially when you disturb it and try patching it, etc.
Patching it and hoping for the best was going to be $300-$400, whereas replacing all of the galvanized plumbing was going to run about $1,500. So yeah, not the kind of call I was hoping to get early yesterday morning.
The buyers only stipulated that any leak would have to be repaired, so I briefly did think about just patching it, but that’s the cheap and crappy way out, as odds are great they’ll just have more problems down the line with the obviously failing galvanized pipes. But paying $1,500 would wipe any of my tiny profits on the deal out, so that’s not a welcome alternative, either. They didn’t ask for a price reduction for any repairs, so I was hesitant to be stubborn and try to dump the entire bill on them.
Our realtor suggested that we could tell them what was up and offer to split the repair bill for completely replacing the galvanized with them 50/50, increasing the purchase price on the contract to cover their half of the expenses so they’re not having to come up with it out of pocket. Which seemed fair to me, but maybe a bit overly generous, at least for an initial solution. I’d be willing to do that to get it done, but we ended up presenting it to them like this originally, as far as they could choose to:
1) Have us pay $300-$400 for the patch job, as they requested.
or
2) Increase the purchase price to cover the cost of completely replacing the plumbing, and we’ll credit them the $300-$400 towards that which we’d have spent on patching it.
They ended up going with #2, which I think was the best option for all parties. They get essentially brand new plumbing and we get to cling to more of our remaining tiny little profit in the deal.
One obvious potential problem is that we’re paying for the repairs before the deal is officially closed, so if everything fell through we’d have sunk $1,500 more into the house in plumbing upgrades. And yup, that’s an area of concern, but I can’t really see any way around it. The plumbing issues need to be addressed sometime, and we’d likely be renting the house if this deal falls through, so we’d be faced with exactly the same problems if we just patched it now, not to mention seller’s disclosures in the future if we tried to sell it again.
Got a ton of work done yesterday at House #2, including getting about half the Hardibacker down for the slate tile I’m putting in the big front living room and kitchen. It was pretty amusing as I was using the Ramset that I bought a few weeks back to secure the Hardi, as it’s a concrete slab and I didn’t relish the prospect of mixing up enough thinset to cover 500 sq. ft. of area. I’m being a little anal by putting the Hardi down in the first place, as there’s no shifting or cracking int he slab and I could likely just tile over it directly but I’m trying not to cut corners, so some Googling presented the Ramset solution, as a faster alternative than securing the Hardi with thinset.
If you’re not familiar with Ramsets, they’re basically a gun that shoots nails into concrete and other difficult to nail surfaces. Quite literally, as the loads are .22 shells, just with no projectiles. You stick the nail in the end of the barrel, load the shell, put the end of the barrel flush with what you’re securing, and pull the trigger. Bang.
The Ramset itself looks fairly gun-like, and it’s basically as loud as if you’re firing off a .22, so there I was in the front living room of House #2, producing all sorts of gunfire as I nailed down 20 sheets or so of Hardi, one eye on what I was doing and the other on the street, waiting for the cops to roll up at any time after a neighbor reported gunfire, and me standing there in front of all the curtain-less windows that face the street with a “gun” in my hand.
I got about half done with no visits from the po-po, so hopefully my luck will hold up today and I can get the rest of it nailed down.
