Our Move...

Finally back at the cabin where we felt more at home than at the place we rented west of Pine River. Sometimes I wish we never left here to move there. Have had nothing but disappointments from the Landlord. Speaking of the "Landlord". Never deal with this guy. When we first met him he told us he was sort of a Real Estate Investor. We first replied to an ad to rent a place and talked to him. Told us that it has been rented. But if we were to find someplace, he would buy it and we can rent it back from him. We took a Property Source book which lists all homes, etc for sale and looked through it. One ad we found was a 40 acre Farm with barn, stalls and 4 separate pastures fenced in. We thought.."GREAT". First we thought we would check it out and see if maybe we can purchase it ourselves. It was after all going for REAL cheap. Couldn't figure that one out either until...

We contacted the Realtor and went to see the place. Nice but it Had a mobile home on it. The owners were kind of strange for they ONLY showed us the area and the barn. Not the home or around it. Contacted the Realtor again to schedule a time to see it again but this time see the house. We met her out there and looked around. We were told that the reason the price was so cheap is because it was being sold a raw land. Meaning the house was not included. The owners spent their winters away from this state doing whatever like Rodeos and such. The more we thought about it the more we thought about the potential this place would have. The bad news for us is that we really weren't in a position to buy anything right now and called Charles Chernack. He was the one who we talked to. We told him about this place and that it did have a mobile home on it but we really have no idea what the condition it was in. He told us to check it out. Before we had that chance, he turned around and bought it anyway. You might say sight unseen. So July 1 of 2006 we moved in and THAT is when the real deal surfaced. Both the barn/garage and the home were in really bad shape. The people who were there.....PIGS! Left the place dirty, VERY dirty. The rent...$750.00 per month. This is where it gets good...

The house was nothing but mouse droppings everywhere. Couldn't tell you how many mice were caught. Everything was dirty from refrig, stove, bathroom, carpets, everything. ISH! There were so many holes in the walls it would have cost a bunch to patch and paint. They had 2 additions on the place that were rotten and open to the elements as well as no power hooked to either one. The sink and dishwashers black water was piped outside spilling out on the lawn. The houses main water source was hooked to a shallow well and the water line was on top of the ground. Windows were rotten. Toilet was loose because the floor was rotten underneath from a leaky toilet. There were cracks in the tub everywhere where they leaked and God know what the floor looked like under that. I could go on and on with a list that may be 4 pages long. We told this to Charles the Landlord and he said..."Let's put something else in". To us that sound good and very nice of him. It was a start. But then the true Charles came out. He said he was strapped for cash, people owed him money, then his parents died and there was money. The issue was that if he was going to do something he had better start soon because the weather was going to change and it would be too late to do anything. Well, he delayed it. Thank you very much Charles.....

We figured we could try and stick it out for the Winter and did what we could to the house. It didn't work. We had frozen pipes, and the plastic on the windows inside were breathing when the wind blew outside. We even put plastic on the windows outside. The furnace kicked in every 2-3 minutes which left us with a $414.00 electric bill for one month. All the rest were in the $300.00 range. We went through more propane than usual. We had the pump go out in the barn. There were cracks in the pump that had been there way before we ever moved in and when that went we told the Landlord. He felt that we should have paid for the replacement or repair. We laughed and told him that is was his responsibility.

TO BE CONTINUED.......