Condensed version: IL's gave us their house and it was in terrible shape. Spent forever cleaning it up after being told the house was totally perfect and livable (hint: it wasn't).
IL's came down in October and we gave them a head's up the month before that a lot had changed. We figured that letting them know ahead of time would be a good idea. Looking back, now I think letting them freak the F out in person without knowing would have been better. It gave them (more specifically my FIL) a month to write out (WRITE OUT) checklists of stuff that we shouldn't have done. Overall impression when they got there was "it was better before". FIL was highly pissed I got rid of all of the jungle and even more angry that I built a garbage can hideaway (I don't have a pic of that at the moment, will get later tonight) because he thought it looked stupid. He wasn't happy that we tossed a lot of stuff from the garage.
MIL cried over and over again because we changed so much inside (mainly painting).
So here is where the fun started recently.
In January, the master bedroom and bathroom lights started flickering weirdly. Then the kitchen. I have joked in the past that the house will kill us in a fire, but when half the power in the house went off one night, came back on, went off, came back on - I knew there was a major problem. Called local power company and they came out the next morning. The box outside of the master bedroom window was effing MELTED. There was some electrical short in the box and it was causing half the house to flicker, and the short was sparking inside of the meter. Called an electrician to come out and fix. He said that years of overgrowth in that area, animals (rats of squirrels) chewing on it, etc were the main causes of this problem (shout out to my FIL for thinking the overgrowth was AWESOME). $3k later, it was fixed. But lights still flickered.
MIL decided she wanted to turn the Florida room into a mother in law type apartment, and the electricity had to be fixed in there. Builder came in and yelled out JESUS CHRIS! How are you living here?! I thought he was joking but in reality, he was not. He showed us that the fuse box was actually illegal, had been for god knows how long, and there was no grounding base for the outlets in the house - and never had been. The electrician we used only went to the meter box and never went and looked at anything else, so my husband and I had no idea that we had been living in a literal death trap. As I write this, the builder and new electrician are finishing putting in the new fuse box, rewiring stuff, and fixing god knows how many shorts they have found. That was almost $6k.
MIL has been here since the 1st week of February and is here until May (and I want to drink every.single.day). She decided she wants to do what SHE wants to do to that room, and it's an ongoing fight because they DID give the house to my husband. Papers were signed, sealed delivered, it's ours - but they still have it in their head that it is "theirs". Part of the deal of the house was that they were going to pay to remodel that room, but apparently they think it gives them decorating/layout rights. She wants it to look similar to the master bedroom before they moved out. Yes, pink and floral all over the place.
The safe? It's still there in the dining room. And apparently there ARE guns inside and I just recently learned about this. I'm livid because we were told there are no guns in there. Aside from that, we still do not have a clue what else is in there because we were told it was "none of our business". The hell it isn't our business, it's sitting in the dining room and we have to deal with it every single day. Said we were going to move it into their little Florida room apartment and it almost turned into World War 3. It has to stay in the dining room.
Right now the garage is a nasty mess because they had to tear up the wall where the fuse box was, tracked all kinds of crap throughout the garage - it's just so frustrating and depressing sometimes. There's a difference between a house and a home. This is just a house. I don't know if we'll ever get it to feel like a home until they pass away.
And for those of you that are curious, they're putting that fucking ugly vinyl linoleum you see in the pic above on the floor in the room that they're remodeling because THEY HAD SOME SAVED SOMEWHERE THAT WE DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT and oh my god I just want a bottle of vodka right now.
Wow! Thanks for updating. I lurk on here and remember your other two posts and was amazed! Keep up the good work and what's your address so I can send a truckload of alcohol to get you through till may?
Wow! Thanks for updating. I lurk on here and remember your other two posts and was amazed! Keep up the good work and what's your address so I can send a truckload of alcohol to get you through till may?
You may want to send that to the closest psychiatric hospital because I feel like I'm going to end up there
Post by emoflamingo on Mar 5, 2015 10:16:34 GMT -5
Is your H, at a certain point, going to put his foot down and say that this is now YOUR house and that they have no legal rights to anything in the house or how you decorate it?
Shit, I'd be saving any money I could (not that you can save much with spending $9,000 on shit that they caused and could have seriously done harm to your family) JUST in case they flip their shit and then you can say "fine, give us the $9,000 we spent on electricians fixing your mistakes and we'll sign the damn house back over."
I'll see if I can find some nice straight jackets to go with zarapipe's alcohol she sends to the hospital.
Is your H, at a certain point, going to put his foot down and say that this is now YOUR house and that they have no legal rights to anything in the house or how you decorate it?
Shit, I'd be saving any money I could (not that you can save much with spending $9,000 on shit that they caused and could have seriously done harm to your family) JUST in case they flip their shit and then you can say "fine, give us the $9,000 we spent on electricians fixing your mistakes and we'll sign the damn house back over."
I'll see if I can find some nice straight jackets to go with zarapipe's alcohol she sends to the hospital.
He has. And it should be noted that FIL has a nasty, wicked temper of which I've never seen anyone else have. H has stood up to him more and more over the years, but deep down, I think he is afraid of backlash from him. He was unbelievably terrible to him as a kid and out of the 3 boys in the family, H got the worst treatment because she was quiet and shy.
Is your H, at a certain point, going to put his foot down and say that this is now YOUR house and that they have no legal rights to anything in the house or how you decorate it?
Shit, I'd be saving any money I could (not that you can save much with spending $9,000 on shit that they caused and could have seriously done harm to your family) JUST in case they flip their shit and then you can say "fine, give us the $9,000 we spent on electricians fixing your mistakes and we'll sign the damn house back over."
I'll see if I can find some nice straight jackets to go with zarapipe's alcohol she sends to the hospital.
Your poor H. I'll send you all good thoughts that this whole situation starts to resolve itself a little neater and calmer.
Post by bunnymendelbaum on Mar 5, 2015 10:37:40 GMT -5
OMG.
Can I just say the pile of kleenex on the floor in that photo made me choke on my coffee?!
I'd like to send you a case of vodka. I'd be enraged by the gun safe. ENRAGED. The electrical issue is unreal, but most of all, he made a freaking written LIST of stuff you should not have changed??
I don't remember, but you guys told him you were going to change stuff when they gave DH the house right?
Can I just say the pile of kleenex on the floor in that photo made me choke on my coffee?!
I'd like to send you a case of vodka. I'd be enraged by the gun safe. ENRAGED. The electrical issue is unreal, but most of all, he made a freaking written LIST of stuff you should not have changed??
I don't remember, but you guys told him you were going to change stuff when they gave DH the house right?
We were told we weren't allowed to do anything different to the house, period. Even though they signed the house over to my H. We started doing stuff here and there and H was dropping hints that we were cleaning and making things nice, but we ultimately knew some sort of a blow up would happen; the house wasn't very liveable. That bedroom photo that you saw was what they felt was totally fine for two adults and two kids.
I won't tell you what those tissues were used for.
Can I just say the pile of kleenex on the floor in that photo made me choke on my coffee?!
I'd like to send you a case of vodka. I'd be enraged by the gun safe. ENRAGED. The electrical issue is unreal, but most of all, he made a freaking written LIST of stuff you should not have changed??
I don't remember, but you guys told him you were going to change stuff when they gave DH the house right?
I need to take pics of the do's and do not's that they left for us when they first moved out.
One of the items on there was DO NOT CONSUME ITEMS WITH SEEDS OR NUTS IN THEM, IT WILL CLOG THE SEPTIC SYSTEM.
I felt like pouring a bag of sesame seeds down the drain.
Oh, and we had the septic system pumped over the summer. IT HAD NOT BEEN DONE IN OVER 15 YEARS. The septic guy actually had to take a break because he said it was one of the worst systems he had ever seen, and we finally had the answer as to WHY the septic was always backing up into the children's (still gross) shower.
Yikes! IDK how you have not gone insane already dealing with those two nutcases or have not run away while training! And ITA with PP that there isn't enough alcohol in the world. Just let them have their house back. You guys worked so hard and spent so much money and not a word of appreciation for at least cleaning up the filth? Sigh! ..SMH.
I'm being completely serious when I say I would pay to move the safe into a storage room somewhere. Then, if FIL blew up I would call the cops to have them escorted from my property. This is way too much stress to be having about a shitty house that you're literally having to rebuild.
Can I just say the pile of kleenex on the floor in that photo made me choke on my coffee?!
Are we talking about our favorite parts of the photo? Because mine is the twin beds with the box springs wrapped in plastic.
TBH, if they bought the house in the 70s, I can kind of see never upgrading the wiring. I bought a 1920 house that hadn't been sold since the 40s and re-did all of the electricity. All of it. It's not like they could see it and willfully ignored it, or that they did it wrong themselves. It BLOWS (I also spent $9k), but it's something that just has to be done to old houses eventually, but no one wants to do because it's not fun like something you can actually see.
But I would feel RAGE over the gun safe. No, sorry, that would be in the garage if it was even still on my property. Or they could drive it to their new house.
And OMG at the laminate floor and pink. My house was also majorly pink and I sometimes wonder what the previous owner would think about the fact that everything has been repainted. Because the last time she painted it was literally probably 1968.
This bitch would have told them to go fuck themselves the first time they threw fits on a house they LEGALLY GAVE ME. Or tell them they can pay me for the repairs I made, and they can have the house back. I don't put up with shit like that. Luckily my in-laws know better than to mess with me. My H would describe me as "passionate". LOL. Or be like nursecramer and ditch that thing.
When you are ready for the final meltdown, blast open the safe and sell (or keep) the contents. I believe that anything left on your property becomes yours after you notify the prior owner it is still there. I am not a lawyer so a local lawyer may be able to definitively answer better.
I wish that I lived a little closer,(we're in Seminole county) so that you could pop in for a place to vent and a stiff drink. Feel free to pm and I can give you my number to call.
I can say that I would stand up to them, but in reality I would probably be too afraid of your fil to really stand up....to a point. I would be putting my foot down on the safe (and its removal) and flooring choices though, and I would not let them pay for the mil suite, even if it had been part of the original deal. There is no way that they will ever back off if they 'own' that room.
I can understand their stance to a point. It would be difficult for most people to have someone come in and totally re-do "their" home, especially if they are still there often. HOWEVER. They gave you the house. It's not theirs anymore and they need to realize that. I would flatly tell them that this is your home now and you will redo it as you see fit. If they can't be okay with that, then they won't be welcome there anymore. Any argument on the subject will be met Witt "this isn't a discussion we will be having. If you can't accept that, the door is right there." Over and over and over until they accept it or they escalate and you stop contact with them.
I agree that I would not have them pay for the MIL suite. It gives them too much perceived ownership when they already feel that it's theirs since they gifted it to you. I think they feel they can dictate the MIL suite, the safe, what you can and cannot change, as they gave you such a huge "gift" and you owe it to them to do it their way. There are so many levels of denial and lack of understanding on their part. First, the fact that they can't see that home was in need of repairs. Second, that they can't understand that you would make changes even if the home was flawless (everyone makes changes to a home to make it their own when they first move in). Third, the safe...there is just no understanding the safe and its need to stay in the exact spot they left it.
His Dad is pretty BSC. He will get into SCREAMING arguments with you if you don't listen to him or take his political advice. Many years ago, I stopped by the house (before they gave it to us) and when I got out of my car I could hear FIL outside from the driveway. I mean, some of the words coming out of his mouth made ME blush and I wasn't even in the room. Got inside and saw that he was freaking out on his OWN MIL who was staying at the house (who was in her 80's) when she made some off handed joke about how her daughter waited on him hand and foot and it was a bit uncalled for.
He was also the loving father who took the boys to a 7-11 after church one day, bought a bunch of Penthouse type mags, then got back in the car and threw them at my H (he was in his teens) and told him if he couldn't get a girlfriend, he needed those to "take care of himself".
He is a very, very, very strange man. MIL said that he has planted close to 1,000 trees at their new farm and wants her home earlier than May (YES PLEASE) to plant more.
MIL is staying with us for an extended period of time to see all the grandkids and her friends locally. Normally I don't care if she stays but it starts to become a situation where I am just another body in the house. She spoils my son and gets him off of his routine (he has neurological issues and we have to keep him on a pretty strict schedule or he goes haywire), and she's always "forgetting" the schedule or stepping over us to let him play with the kindle for hours, etc.
FIL just scoffed that the jungle and animals did that much damage to the electrical box outside. He really felt like the house looked amazing the way that it was, inside and out. He maintains that because he and his wife lived there for so long and it never had any issues, we are "overusing" the house. Uh, there are 4 people living in the house and we use it like normal people would.
I anticipate another battle tonight because I'm going to make sure that the room is painted how *we* want it, not them. And she made a comment to H this morning about when her husband would be coming down in October and staying a month. NO. NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NOOOOO. Not going to happen.