#264 April 18th through May 2 at our house in Wilmington working on our house

We left Jordan Lake and went to Wilmington to tidy up the house and land for 2 weeks

I had hired Felix a guy I knew who does landscaping in charge of the lawn and grounds. Felix was mowing the grass and tidying up after the hurricane. The next-door neighbor has a preteen kid that was also helping with mowing the yard a bit. All you know for sure is that people are telling you things are okay. When we drove up and saw our front yard it all just looked terrible. What I call my front yard is a state property right of way. Since the day we bought our home I cut down the 6-foot tall weeds and bushes and manicured it into a lawn over 20 years and called it mine. We pulled in and parked and I was pretty let down at how bad the place looked. Later on, in the process, we would realize that price is really what sells houses and we were too high. Based on a feeling more than reality I started at 400,000. It had appraised for that amount back in 2007 but then the world died in 2008 and the value of our house with it. Skipping forward it would end up selling for 280.

When we got the price down around 300, we started getting more hits. It affirms something Dominic, a friend told me years before. The right price is really what sells houses. When I rode by and saw what it looked like hell I knew we needed to get it prettied up.

A lot of contractors ride by our house on the way to figure eight island and such back and forth each day. We're just a great place to throw trash and sometimes construction trash falls off for trucks. It looks like it's pretty bad out front so I took an hour or so just cleaning up the front. Then I mowed it down to a nice level it was certainly knee-high and looking rough.

Then there's the yard that’s not the official yard but way out there 150 from the porch. It’s what I called the middle yard where the circle drive is. All this was grown over with tall weeds. It seemed the only mowing was at the residence only. People are doing the best they can but they're only doing exactly what you tell them to. I wasn’t clear enough on what I wanted or somehow there was a misunderstanding. The house had been on the Market from July till now in April. I feel as if the realtor should ride by now and then and make notes and send me a memo. Randall, you said someone was looking out for the grounds but they’re not so I can get someone but if you want the house to sell we need to do something different. No matter how bad it looks I was never told anything like this by the realtor. The land over there where my detached garage is had these fast-growing weed-looking things that were 8 to 10 ft tall. They were everywhere and it just looked like an abandoned warehouse or something with trash all over the place. Dead limbs everywhere and fallen tree limbs and I mean it took two weeks actually to straighten the place out.

Inside the house, it looks nice but there had been a major train wreck during the summer in August when the realtor stepped in for an open house prep and saw a glaze of gray-looking mold on the cabinets. The floors had buckled, they call it cupping. It was because the humidity level went to 100% as no one had been inside for a month or more.

Due to some weird lack of communication, the realtor thought my neighbor was doing bi-weekly walk-throughs. All I ever said was her son and Felix was mowing a bit. It appears that the AC was turned off somehow by mistake by gremlins. No one seems to know who turned it off or when.

I guess no one will ever know for sure but it would appear that the AC system was off from probably May until August and humidity levels were at, I'm sure 100% inside the house and 200% under the house.

Nobody was checking the house in any kind of regular way to make sure things were all good.

I was a little bothered because I thought the realtor would have either made sure of this or said Randall assign someone like your neighbor to make sure this is happening. It was just assumed that I was doing that while 1000 miles away on an RV trip. A communication problem but now my house floors are kind of destroyed.

Back when this discovery was made, Dominic who was the contractor helping me with the house rebuild went and did everything you possibly do. They cleaned the fuzz off the cabinets and give it a good cleaning. He/I bought two dehumidifiers and set them up to reduce the moisture level in the house. This was the situation from maybe October until when I arrived in April.

Dominic said compared to day one, the floors were probably 50% better because we were now maintaining the moisture level indoors with the air being on.

There was one corner in the main bedroom floor that was so bad he had to replace a large section of flooring.

When I got there the floors were not horrible but you can feel ridges where each seam came together. It was better but not good enough yet.

I rented some kerosene-powered jet heaters to get it crazy warm inside and I got it to about a hundred and ten degrees inside the house for 24 hours. A day later I measure a humidity level of 3%. After this, the dehumidifiers did their best and I just crossed my fingers and hoped that we could sell the house.

The other thing I did while I was under the house is I made sure that I set up both dehumidifiers with a way to drain the water out permanently. I created drain hoses that drained the water into the sewer line. When I got there one dehumidifier was draining into a bathtub. The one under the house had a garden hose sticking out through the open crawlspace door. With the door half-open it's kind of spinning its wheels. I created appropriate hatches for the underground crawl space entry where they were sealed up. I cleaned up all around the garage and got rid of all the big tall weeds and I tell you what I worked hard that two weeks. For my final trick, I decided that the garage itself which had a bright white vinyl siding look as you drive up needed to be toned down a bit.

Using my air compressor and paint sprayer I sprayed a camouflage paint type color and that created a nice look. I thought so.

Our wedding anniversary is April 29 and we always try to get away for a few days for what we call our honeymoons. We have done this every year we've been married which was 1989. We found a place on Water st downtown Wilmington riverfront. We always enjoy honeymooning how can you not. With all these jobs done we were ready to go ahead and leave Wilmington.

We would head back to Raleigh to start our Campground hosting on May 1st.