I don’t like talking about this and it makes me all squeamish even thinking about it, but after about 3 months living in the property we had a run of bad luck. 3 unlucky events happened during 1 week.
Number 1. – The Infestation.
We had an influx of moth type creatures. They appeared in our upstairs landing and migrated into the family bathroom and bedrooms. Each evening we would remove the offending blighters, but by the next morning more would appear in the corners of the landing and bedroom. We spent an age trying to figure out how they were entering the house. We would remove them again each morning, go to work and by the time we got home, there would be more.
They only ever appeared in the upstairs rooms, which made me think they were coming from the attic, but when looking there was nothing, nada, zilch! I captured a pic of one and took to the internet for comparison and research purposes.
It was a ‘white shouldered house moth’ and we needed to hoover our carpets and crevices every day for a couple of weeks. (I was doing this daily anyway as I found this was the easiest way to dispose of the bloody things and it hadn’t done anything).
Andy purchased some additional bug bombs, powders, sprays and moth balls from Amazon too. We let one bomb off in the attic, as I was sure that was how they were entering, and we sprinkled powder between the skirting and carpet and popped a few moth balls into the wardrobes, just to be safe. Apparently they are not the right species to eat clothes, but I didn’t want to take any chances with my wardrobe 🙂 After approximately a week we didn’t see any more.
Number 2. – It goes bang in the night.
Our family bathroom may be haunted. It happened at about midnight, which just makes this second round of bad luck more creepy.
Andy was working and it was just me and the kids in the house, all asleep like the little angels we are. Then I heard an almighty crash. I actually thought that part of the house had collapsed it was so loud. I jumped out of bed to run to Miller’s room at the back of the house and as I went past the family bathroom I saw the below:
The fixed glass shower screen had shattered. It was a fixed L-shaped screen attached to the wall. Glass had gone everywhere and the end had fallen and damaged the wall and smashed the tiles at the end of the bath. The whole thing shook me up, it had just exploded. Thankfully, there was no-one was in the bathroom.
The previous owner assured us that the bathroom was less than 6 months old. I took to the internet in the hopes of finding out why this had happened and if it was a regular problem, I had never heard of anyone’s shower screen smashing spontaneously.
I found it had happened to others, but was very uncommon, something to do with heat and damp conditions. (Which didn’t make sense as bathrooms are usually hot and damp.) We didn’t have a warranty or receipt and this was another expense that we could’ve done without. Luckily, the glass screen had a ‘Victoria Plumb‘ logo on it, so we knew where to look for a replacement. Andy couldn’t understand why we didn’t just put a shower curtain up, at least we could guarantee it wouldn’t happen again, but it felt like we wouldn’t be improving the property if we did that.
I contacted them to see if we could maybe get a replacement for free as the one we had was obviously faulty but no such luck. We had to shell out £100 for a replacement from ‘Victoria Plumb’. We fitted it ourselves which was fairly easy as all the holes were already there and then all was set right with the world.
Number 3. – Kitchen cupboard fiasco
My new and pretty dinner set was placed into our kitchen cupboard. Where children cannot easily reach and where it should’ve been very, very safe.
I walked in from work to discover Andy turning the air blue with some very salty curse words and the children looking shell shocked with fingers in their ears at the dining table. It was then I looked and realized that the cupboard was on the floor and the entire contents was smashed to smithereens. Andy had broom in hand sweeping up the pieces while swearing up a storm. It would’ve been insensitive of me at the time to snap a photo and I think Andy may have actually swept me up along with the mess, but I have provided a photo of the actual cupboard pre- collapse.
It was at this point that we realized our previous owner, the top-notch roofer and builder, who had done a lot of the work himself, had in fact rushed several things. Putting the kitchen cupboards up correctly was one of them. It had been held up with 2 brackets instead of the 3 that should’ve been used and where the brackets should’ve had 3 screws in each holding them up, they had 2 and these 2 didn’t have wall plugs either, but had been screwed directly to the plasterboard and brick that was the wall. This was also the first of many things that we discovered had been bodged.
Andy told me how he had sat down with the kids to eat and the cupboard had fallen off the wall. I automatically blamed the bathroom ghost, he or she was a menace. I proceeded to question Andy about performing a cleansing and that for all we knew someone could’ve died in the house, and we needed to interrogate the neighbours for more info.
The cupboard smashed as well, so we needed to replace it. Luckily, the kitchen was from ‘Wickes‘ so we could purchase another one straight away.
I fixed it up correctly but couldn’t help thinking this could happen to our other cupboards and those held tins of beans, which obviously weigh a lot more than a dinner plate set. I didn’t want to rock the boat by taking the others down to put up correctly, but I’m sure I’ll just wait for the day that they fall down too.
I was shocked by the response I received when I mentioned this disastrous week. I heard replies like ‘You don’t get that with a new build.’ and ‘That’s why I’m insured.’ There was even a ‘You’ve obviously bought a lemon, didn’t you get a house inspection done?’.
I happen to prefer older properties as I think they have more character and space, but that’s just my personal preference. Of course, we have home insurance, but I’m not sure it covers ‘angry ghost!’ or even a cupboard falling down or shower screen smashing. And we did have a home inspection before purchase and everything came back green and clear, they must have visited on a day when the moths were hiding.
I think that sometimes you have a run of luck or even bad luck, but then it changes, like the wind.
I’m still waiting for the wind to change. 🙂
Helloyellowdoor 