Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Phantom Contractor or Act of God: You Decide

A few super things have happened since we last chatted. See how sarcasm bursts through that freshly typed sentence!

My ceiling...

See that bumpy curve deal in the middle—the part that's not the color of an unattended healing flesh wound? That was spurting mad amounts of Irene. However, once she was done and after we collected a nice chunk of brown water in our recycling bucket (what was handy at the time, also the use of "we" sarcastic as I was alone—more themes!) the dripping stopped. Miracles upon miracles when the rain stopped the dripping stopped.

Still, being the tremendous tenant that I am, I emailed my landlord the next day explaining the damage. I figured, Hey! Let's start fixing this sad sack of water drops! Let's turn these rusty colored tears of weeping sadness into clogged up holes of joy!

It's been a week and I'm still ass deep in water stains in the shape of New Jersey.

Sideways NJ? Dog? Tell me what you see in the comments! 


Full disclosure: I'm not a licensed roofer or an effects-of-long-standing-stagnant-water expert. However, I think I can safely assess that many a-changing orange shapes on a-ceiling does not equal a-nything good.

I know that a lot of people give contractors a hard time, and I fully understand why. My landlord said I should contact her contractor myself (theme alert!) I spoke to him immediately after the "hurricane" and I stupidly assumed he would take my claim seriously and patch the roof. I called him twice last week—a super duper sunny week might I add. He assured me he would take care of it. He never called back. He never asked for my keys. He never painted my ceiling. I assumed he never did boo.

This evening after an afternoon of raining cats and NJ dogs, I lugged my stuff home from work, ready to unleash the unholy power of "You gotta be kidding me with this friggin leak!" and found . . . nothing.

So what happened:
A) Contractor fixed a leaking roof in a timely manner. Told no one. Did not repair interior damage.
B) Contractor did not fix a leaking roof. Rain water currently swirling into shapes of New Hampshire, Vermont, and/or contemplating a nice Massachusetts.
C) Act of God in the rarely seen "protective" format.

I ask you, which is the most believable? It will continue to rain here all week, maybe I should pull a Rick Perry and pray for it to stop. Otherwise I have a feeling that we're dealing with "Situation B". I can see it now: my ass will have to scale up the fire escape to put a tarp over the crack by (you guessed it) myself.

2 comments:

  1. It looks like a browning lace collar! Aladdin's lamp!Something dirty?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I was thinking more of a mouse or an anteater?

    ReplyDelete