We have always been very generous in letting family and friends use our condo at the beach. I like to have people there so if something goes wrong I'll know right away and not when I arrive to find that all the food in the fridge has rotted. But occasionally that comes back to bite you. This past spring break an extended family member (very extended) asked to use the condo for a family spring break trip. I said "Certainly, Have a great time." Mom, Dad, and three kids. So teenage girl kid is angry one day and jerks her bathing suit off the little trellis I have on the porch for drying wet suits and towels and although the trellis is attached to the wall she manages to angrily pull it so hard is comes away from the wall and pushes a hole in the screen. A small hole but a hole nonetheless. And I do not want to live with a hole in my screen. So they offer to pay for the repair. I'm certain that they had no idea that the repair would be a major event and $240. It's a big deal because the electric hurricane shutters had to be removed and reinstalled to be able to pull the screens. I made the arrangements for the screen repair and while my dad was visiting the condo the repair got done.
Now, I think everything is good until I get the phone call from my dad this morning. One of the shutters on the porch closed as usual but on the other one the motor runs but the shutter does not close. I said "Don't worry about it. I'll call the man who repaired the screen to see if maybe it got off the track when he was working." This is the best case scenario because if the shutter is actually broken it is illegal for them to repair it as no longer meets building code and I'll have to have it replaced with new shutters that meet current code . The hole in the screen then will cost me about $10,000.
Hopefully my repair person can go to the condo tomorrow to look it over. Luckily I do trust him to be honest in his assessment. I've used him for lots of jobs and he's always been very good and had fair prices for his work. But because he is so honest I know that if it is actually broken he won't break the law and go ahead and fix it. He doesn't do new installs of shutters so it isn't any incentive for him to not tell the truth to sell me new shutters. At this point all I can do is shudder when I think about it.
2 comments:
Oh good gawd. I think they need to read a copy of this blog post! Love you xoxoxo
We could run into this, too, with our condo in Seattle. Friends and relatives sometimes damage things or don't clean up well, but on the whole they have been careful. Occasionally they buy us presents or linen, and they will leave bottles of wine or preserves. My daughter bought us a coffee machine, even. She had to stay there for a while with the grandkids until she could move into her new house.
This is not our vacation place, though. It's where we stay when we visit family. Our vacation place is our primary residence in Hawaii!
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