When last we left our heros, it was Sunday night, we’d returned after a weekend trip to find that the drywall had been installed and was ready for taping and sanding. No more leprosy!

We figured that last week’s question (just how ugly CAN the house get?) had been answered. We’d bottomed out.

We were wrong.

This was a very expensive week. Expensive for our bank account, our dwindling reserves of patience and emotional fortitude, our remaining confidence that this was ever a good idea.

On Monday morning Ben got a call from our contractor saying that the electrical inspector had come for his scheduled approval of the kitchen and basement electrical work. The drywall in those areas was still open so that all the work was visible, just like it’s supposed to be. The inspector signed off on everything that was on the permit, but proceeded to accuse the crew/contractor of throwing up drywall in the rest of the house to hide shoddy electrical work. He insisted that all the newly-installed drywall be torn down, the plaster walls underneath demo’ed, and all new electrical conduit and wire be installed throughout the house.

You can imagine how much money that we don’t have that that was going to cost. After all, if we could have afforded a gut rehab we would have done it in the first place. We sure can’t afford do a cosmetic drywall, then UNDO all that drywall, and THEN do a gut rehab on all of the walls and conduit. The BX conduit that runs through the house is not current code-wise, but both housing inspectors we had come through assured us it was safe. It’s still standard all over Europe.

We might have freaked out a little bit on Monday night. Combine this news with sheer exhaustion from all the recent road trips, upcoming travel, trying to jam 40-hour work weeks into 3 and 4 days between all the travel, and a super hellish few days at work. I started to actually wonder if we’d made a horrible horrible financially ruinous mistake. This house had been under contract and then back on the market 4 times before we bought it. We were just too naive to see what all the other potential buyers saw. Calling it the Money Pit stopped being even a little bit funny or clever.

Besides the cost, we are on a timeline now – our current apartment has been re-rented and as of May 1 we don’t have anywhere to live. Yes, we can put our stuff in storage, and couch surf, but I’m in tech for all of May so that would really be hell. Plus no one wants couch-surfers with two elderly, querulous cats in tow.

Our contractor said he’d get it sorted out “with a politician friend.” Well, that politician friend was out of town for the week. We called our HUD 203k FHA inspector. He said it was out of his realm – if the city inspector says you gotta do it, you gotta do it.

So Ben got in touch with our Alderman. Who happens to be a big fan and supporter of the theatre company of which Ben is a long-time company member. Dropped a few names. Told him our sad story. Chicago business as usual. Asked if there’s anyway we could request a second inspection. Our contractor would be happy to pull down any particular piece of drywall for spot checks, to prove what was underneath is plaster and that the drywall is cosmetic, not a cover-up job. A very kind staffer from the Alderman’s office got back to us at 10:30pm that same night. Said he’d make some calls to the city Building Office and to call him the next day.

Meanwhile we met the contractor at the house on Tuesday morning to talk through the problem, and to walk through a few other things. The weather finally got up above freezing so they’d started the roof replacement. Which actually means chopping the old roof into a little bits and throwing it in to a nasty sooty heap in the back yard. (Good thing we hadn’t started landscaping). And they’d pulled the front steps off the porch, only to discover that the rest of the porch was rotten too and were in the process of disassembling the entire thing.

Our contractor had said he “didn’t really need a permit” just to swap out the porch stairs. But now that he was rebuilding the whole porch structure, he conceded that we probably needed a building permit. Or rather, now that we’d invited the Alderman to pay attention to our little project, a building permit might not be a bad idea. So he yelled at his guys to stop work. They piled all the lumber in the living room.

The Alderman’s office called and they managed to arrange for the same inspector to come back out. Appointment to be scheduled at his whim and with very little advance notice sometime in the next few days.

We met at the house again on Wednesday morning (jobs? what jobs? of course we can just swing by the house any day, any time. **Moment of gratitude for our flexible employers**) to sign permit application for the porch. Oh, and a dummy contract that I had to throw together because the building permit required a contract covering the porch even though it’s getting rolled in with the rest of the bigger project.

Ben was called back to the house Wednesday afternoon to look at some mortar work that was needed. The first row bricks under the parapet tiles on the roof were loose and needed to be re, um, whatever you do to bricks to glue them down to other bricks. (When they don’t come with lego bumps, that is). Another $650. Whoosh! The sound of money zipping out of our savings account.

We both left town on Thursday morning – me to a conference in Texas, Ben to visit his sister for her birthday in Washington. All week we waffled on whether to change or cancel our trips. I really wanted to be present when the electrical inspector came back. But there was no way I could back out of this panel presentation I was on in Texas Thursday afternoon. So we left the re-inspection in our contractor’s hands. Which ended up taking place early Thursday morning, JUST as we were boarding our planes.

The end result is that we still have to do about half of what was originally spec’d. Another $8k in electrical work. We no longer have to replace all the conduit or tear out the drywall, but he got nitpicky about a whole lot of little things. Number and location of outlets. Technical details of the grounding. Some old fabric wiring that was lurking in a few places means they’ll pulling new wire. A 3rd “common area” electrical panel in the basement. Some of it, like the 3rd panel, is frustrating because it’s meeting an arbitrary code rather than addressing our particular situation or safety. And some of it is necessary. I don’t want old frayed fabric wiring in our house any more than the electrical inspector wants fire hazards in old homes. And it’s frustrating that we’re re-doing some work, and it’s costing more and taking longer because we did things in the wrong order.

We can point fingers and ask why two different housing inspectors didn’t find the fabric-covered wiring. Or why the electricians working on it didn’t point it out sooner. Or why we didn’t just open up a few light switches and look behind them ourselves. The electrical inspector said we were idiots for not having cut open walls before buying to determine the extent of the electrical work needed, but when you’re buying a house as-is from the bank, you don’t get that option. In the end it won’t really do any good to assign blame, so we just have to write the check and keep moving forward, and frankly, be glad that we will be poor but safe in our new home when all of this is done. And keep our fingers crossed that this house will appraise sky-high when we’re done with everything.

So the question of whether the house could get any uglier? The answer is yes. We’re still looking for that bottom. We’re also still looking for the control wires for the furnace that I broke.

Some photos to wrap up this week’s post:

This is why we’re spending another $8k on electrical work. In the end, I feel okay about it:

New porch (what color should we paint it? votes?)

First we were walled in by snow, now we’re walled in by roof debris. The depth is about the same:

They dug up the front yard looking for the water main shutoff valve. And still haven’t found it:

Which means that the water still isn’t on. I find it’s better not to ask questions about this: