Housewarming

I think housewatering sums it up better. We closed on the new house Wednesday morning and stopped by last night to get things started. We have the apartment until the end of July, so we're going to take our time, paint, and get everything prepped before we move.

We brought some small boxes along with painting supplies with us. I started taping off the living room (colors to be disclosed soon!) and Chris was getting the music set up. He wanted to wash his hands and discovered that no water was coming out of the faucets.

We went downstairs and saw a few ceiling tiles were on the floor, and for some reason the laundry tub was moved to a different wall. Things looked fishy. I called my real estate agent to see if someone had gone back to the house after the final walk through. She said there hadn't. We went back upstairs to see if anyone had gotten in somehow.

All of the doors and windows were locked. Except one, of course. Since the house is old, the wood by the lock was rotted and half of the lock was on the floor. We figured someone stood on our recycling bin, reached up and let themselves in.

When we went back downstairs to try and figure out why you would break into an empty house, we discovered that many copper pipe sections had been removed. We found pipe insulation laying around and cut off pipes everywhere. There was water dripping from a pipe that was at one point connected to the water heater. The main water line is nowhere to be found and all of the pipe leading to and from the first floor bathroom was removed.

We had a police report filed. That was fun. We had to wait almost 3 hours for them to come, and it was almost 11pm by the time we left. They offered to have a technician come by and try to take fingerprints, but Rochester had other ideas for us since there was another shooting that night so the technician wouldn't be ready to come until even later- maybe not until 1 or 2 am. I don't know about you, but both of us had to go to work today, we're leaving for Syracuse for a craft show, and we still hadn't packed so we really needed sleep (and food and water). They said it would be difficult to pull prints from wood anyway so we told them not to worry about it. They took some photos and then we went home.

According to the one quote we got (we'll get at least 2 more quotes), it's going to cost $2000 to repair because all of the pipes were twisted and ripped out.

The emergency dispatch lady told us we were pretty lucky. Usually burglars leave the water on. At least our basement just had patches of water- no more than half an inch in places.

But really? What kind of a house warming is that?! If I do well at the show this weekend I think I'll be okay- just as long as the bad things don't start piling up. I'm just glad we didn't move any valuables in yet.