An Unwanted Task....

Sometimes when you think you are doing the "right thing" it comes back and bites you in the hind end....

Well that is what happened to us.  You know our "This Old House"?  Well we made the huge mistake in the fall of 2013 of selling it "contract for deed".  What this means is you have a legal contract drawn up and you become the bank for someone to make payments to.... We had our reservations about doing this for many reasons.... One of the biggest was WE ALREADY KNEW THAT THEIR CREDIT WAS NOT GOOD..... AND what if the "new owners" do not take care of the home and default on the loan and you are left with a mess to clean up and are out LOTS OF MONEY financially?  Well that is exactly what happened.....  The "family" stopped making their payments last October by December we started legal proceedings to have them evicted from the home (that alone cost us $1800.00)... in other words we were in the process of foreclosing on them.  Of course this family never bothered to pick up their mail and wouldn't sign for the certified letter from the lawyer, which only extended the process... WE finally got them out of the house and regained possession of our home April 1 only to discover what a disgusting life these people had led.  Now mind you they had 6 children, 4 dogs and God only knows how many cats.   To say the least they left a disgusting mess.  Here we are over two  months later and we are still painting/cleaning/repairing what they destroyed.  While I am a Christian and want to show the love of God, it has been very hard to be loving while trying to clean up the filthy mess they left behind.....

The Old House is a huge house..... 3 floors, a basement and an attached apartment and no room was spared the messes they made.

We are making headway and we were blessed to have a crew of people from our church come beside and help us one weekend with a painting party...   It certainly gave us the boost we needed... I  look back at my pictures of all the remodeling we had done to the house and how nice it looked before they moved in and it just sickens me as to what they did.  While our friends were there helping us paint the "Repo Guy" showed up.... he thought they still lived there and he was there to repossess their vehicle for the 4th or 5th time.... I guess I am pretty dumb to things like that, I thought if something was reposessed that was it, you did not get it back... The guy told us that what they do is after being reposessed they go and get paid up to date and get the vehicle back only to do it all over again.....  Goodness gracious what a lousy way to live.

I have pictures of every room and how they left it.   I started to put pictures on this post but decided I did not want to make anyone else sick :(  ...

Why yes, doesn't everyone just use a closet for a litter box?  This is the kind of disgusting messes we have had to clean up......  Oh but wait they used the whole house for a litter box..... DISGUSTING

They left behind unpaid bills and tons of trash.   I find it hard to believe anyone was living like they were. We are on our second construction dumpster.  This family had all the toys you could imagine from go-carts, 4 wheelers to iPhones for themselves and all the older kids, but they were very irresponsible with their lives and their money.  They had no business with children let alone animals.  They had put padlocks on all of the bedroom doors.  Unbelievable has been the word we have used the most.

The first winter they lived in the house they racked up $1500. in unpaid LP Gas bills, so the company came and took the tank away.  This past winter  they.had.no.heat other than space heaters.  The house has hot water heat so we had a big repair bill on that to replace two burst pipes that had frozen and the pump in the boiler because it drained and the pump was ruined.  Did I say ARRRGGGGGGGHQHH

People in town have come out of the woodwork to tell us stories... From them having their power shut off and running extension cords across the street to the neighbors house and plugging it in on his enclosed porch while he was at work without permission to the little 4 year old driving down the highway on a go cart.   Most of the stories I have heard are unprintable....... :(

So I have had to take a back seat to most the things I love to do and spend about 3-4 days a week cleaning up the mess we have been left with!

Just think, they are now living somewhere else and destroying someone else's home, really sad... let alone how they are raising their children!

We have literally gone room to room and have painted every.single.inch in my mind I am trying to cover their ugliness.  The carpet has all been ripped out and thrown away, whatever needed replaced we have done.  This has been an expensive adventure.

Soon we will have it back in its pristine condition and back on the market to sell.... BUT this time it will be a cash deal only,  (meaning let them go to a real bank to get a loan or pay us cash) no exclusions and after this ordeal we will never rent a home or sell it on contract again.

Through it all I have had to continually remind myself that God loves them just as much as he loves me........

And this too shall pass.......

Nancy