House Issues

The landlord was in town for Lempira Day, talking again about wanting to sell the house we are renting. Of course, since the last time he talked with us about this, in February, until now, he has not sent anyone to view the house, so we haven't been feeling overly concerned about possibly having to move out in a hurry.

The timing was especially bad for this visit. I'd been away from home for six weeks, so the house wasn't at it's cleanest, and then we were in the midst of hosting a huge team, which was eating all of their meals at our house. To accommodate feeding such large groups (45 people this time, including the team, translators, and my family), we move most of the living room furniture out of the living/dining room and squash it into my bedroom. Then we move all of the tables we own into that large open room. This means that my bedroom is a mess, and any other room in the house which would normally have a table in it (we use these as desks) has piles all over the place, of stuff from the desk.

The landlord wasn't happy about this state of affairs, and I can understand his point of view . . . if he'd wanted to show the house right then, it wouldn't have looked good for buyers. However, Allen brought up with the landlord the fact that almost every room in the house leaks badly, and that the carport ceiling is almost ready to fall in because the ceiling tiles have soaked up so much water from the leaks in that roof. So, even if we had the house clean and picked up, the house wouldn't show well because there are huge mildew stains on all the ceilings and many of the walls, plus buckets and towels are sitting in strategic locations throughout the house.

Today the landlord's workmen came to see what they could do with our roofs. They started with the carport, pulling down a lot of broken clay tiles. In the process, they also caused two of the (probably asbestos)ceiling tiles to fall. Happily, there was no one under these water-logged tiles when they came crashing down!

Now it has started raining, and we have several large holes in our roof (instead of just leaks). I honestly expected the workmen to just leave, with the explanation that you can't work on a roof in the rain. But, so far, they are still up there, and I've placed as many buckets as I can find under the open holes in the carport roof. Sadly, most of the buckets we own are already in use, catching water from the leaks in other parts of the house.

Sigh.