Drea’s Dream First Apartment Turns into a Disaster

MY FIRST APARTMENT DISASTER by Drea

Hello, fellow apartment hunters!  I’m sure you’re wondering why you haven’t seen me around lately.  Well, hold tight and prepare for my tale of woe.

Vincent and I decided to take a chance and signed the lease on the cottage I had previously discussed.  It was absolutely adorable.  Truly the perfect starter home for us.  There were a few hiccups, however: the Internet was not installed on time — had to wait for that; the water heater needed to be replaced — that only took a few days; then, a catastrophe.

When Vincent had showered before the water heater was replaced, he said, “It feels nice, but it’ll feel nicer when we have hot water.”  The water heater was replaced the next day and while Vincent was at work, I decided to test out the hot water.  The shower felt so relaxing!  As I was finishing my shower, I suddenly heard a dripping sound.  I opened the curtain to see that the sink is leaking.  I immediately turned off the shower and stepped out.

As I was brushing my hair in the living room, I heard a more gushing-like sound.  I peeked in the bathroom only to discover that the shower was overflowing in the bathroom.  Freaking out — as I am a person who’d never encountered plumbing issues — I called Vincent for advice and did my best to clean up the mess. Fortunately, nothing was damaged. I called our out-of-town landlady and notified her of the plumbing issue. She promised to send a plumber. 

While I was at work, the plumber came and told Vincent that the overflowing was caused by the lack of a vent system.  This is all gibberish to me, so I took him at his word. After a ventilation filter was installed and the plumber left, Vincent called me at work to report a new emergency; now our shower was backing up with sewage.  The second plumber sent by the landlady was not able to fix the problem and the sewage continued to back up in our shower. To add to the damage, I had to commute roughly an hour back to my folks’ home just to bathe and use the restroom.  Now, we could have used to the toilet in our apartment, but the stench was intolerable.

Exactly one week after moving in, and about five days of rinsing and cleaning sewage in our shower, I awoke to an indescribable stench. It was so strong that I could not even stay inside.  We brought out two chairs to our front yard to wait for the plumber number 3 who was scheduled to be at our apartment at 5 o’clock.  At 6 o’clock and after several phone calls, we still hadn’t heard from or seen the plumber, so we made the executive decision that if the plumbing issue could not be resolved that day, we would move out of the apartment.

It was an hour later — nearly 7PM – when the plumber finally arrived at our apartment. Three hours later, he assured us that the problem was fixed.  He asked us to turn on the water, which Vincent did.  Clean water!  Vincent gave me the thumbs up.  As I went outside to tell the plumber, I heard Vincent yelling from inside, “It’s overflowing! It’s overflowing!”

That night, Vincent and I packed every single thing we brought into the apartment into our cars and headed home: I went to my parents’ house, he went to his.

It’s been a few weeks since we moved back and we are again looking for that perfect first (actually our second!) apartment.

Have any of you experienced some sort of disaster within the first few days (or weeks) of living in a new home?  What would you have done differently, if you were in our situation