It’s Probably A Good Thing…

It’s probably a good thing that we have given up selling our little condo, because it looks like we live in a construction zone right about now. Some of what is going on is improvements, and some of it is repair type work, and some is just plain mud and mess due to rain, but gosh, if I were a prospective buyer, I wouldn’t even walk through the front door. Heck, even the front door is a mess.

We live in a condo complex that is almost 30 years old, and the exterior is shingles, for that lovely ‘Tahoe look”, as they call it. 30 year old shingles start to look somewhat shabby after awhile, and they’re mighty expensive to replace. So, our homeowners association has decided to spruce them up a bit. Here’s our neighbor’s place, which hasn’t yet been treated.

See how faded and kind of blah the shingles look?

Now, here’s our place, which has had phase 1 out of 3 done thus far.

See how much brighter and newer the shingles look already? Nice! One of the other 2 steps is to stain the shingles, and I’m not sure about the 3rd…maybe some sort of sealant? Not sure. Then, they’re going to paint the doors and window trims a brighter color, rather than the brown. I think they’re leaning towards an orangish red, kind of the color of the Golden Gate Bridge, but I’m not positive. Wait, J, you say, looking at the picture of our place…did I notice an orange cone right there in front of your place? What’s that about?

I’m not clear on the whole story, but one of our neighbors is having water problems. I think the 30 year-old cheap-ass pipes the builder used are starting to give up the ghost. She had some kind of leak underground in her line, which meant that her water bill tripled, and they wanted to find out what was going on, and here we have the result of that.

This is the area where all of the water is accessed, out in front of our row of condos. See the hose? That’ll come in again later.

Then, you go around the corner, toward our place, and you find a huge pile of yucky mud, covered with a tarp, and a big hole in the ground, covered by boards, which is where the pipes are being replaced.

I think the soda glass gives it an especially “we live in a trashy neighborhood” feel. Nice touch, huh? Here’s another view.

All of which brings us to our door…where it turns out that not only the neighbor’s pipes are old and cheap (well, duh), they ALL are, so they’re going in and replacing all of the pipes in our row of condos. I’m assuming this will mean the whole complex is coming fast behind us, but what do I know. Anyway, we’re getting new pipes on Monday or Tuesday, but in the meantime, we’re having water delivered to our system via garden hose.

So, we’re using hose water to shower and cook and so on, but bottled water to drink. There’s mud everywhere, the windows are filthy from the power wash, but they still have two more processes to go, so it’s pointless to have wash them. The dog has a patch of grass in front that she uses to do her pee type business, which is being wiped out very quickly, and so every time she goes to the bathroom, we have to clean her paws to get all of the mud off.

Between all of this, and the oily sheen that the sidewalk has taken on, and the butchering that is being done to the overgrown shrubs in the complex (good in the long run, they need to be pruned, but they look kind of crappy right now), I gotta say, I’m glad we don’t have an open house today!