I didn’t even get a blasted skylight out of it!

Oh, don’t worry, it didn’t happen again. I’m talking about last April when the neighbors’ tree fell on Mouse’s bedroom. Nobody was home. Mouse was at school and we were driving up the I75 SUV Speedway to Da Yoop. Because we love blizzards so much that we just had to try to catch one more. And we did. Anyway. Unlike the *last* tree that fell on our house, this one didn’t actually come down through the roof into the house. As near as I can figure out, it hit the roof and bounced off. Or something like that. Damage? Oh, I dunno, about $35K or thereabouts.

The damage was limited, if I can even use that word in this situation, to exterior stuff and Mouse’s bedroom. As extensive as it was, it didn’t affect our day-to-day activities very much. Working kitchen and bathroom and utilities, etc. Just a pain in the you-know-what to have to deal with it all. Eventually, the roof and the trusses and the plaster and whatever else were fixed and we settled up with the insurance company and the contractor and slogged on. So, what was stuck in the door when I got home from work yesterday? This notice from the Planet Ann Arbor Building Department:

Our records indicate that the Building Department issued a permit for either a new house, an addition, remodeling or some other type of construction. Interior inspection and/or measurements are needed to complete the appraisal of your house for the 2009 assessment year. Please contact blah blah blah….

New house? Um, can’t you see that this is not a new house? Remodel? I wish! Come ah-uh-ah-uh-ahnnn in, Mr. City Inspector. Take a good long look at the ugliest kitchen on earth (check it out on YouTube) and the junk-filled, rodent-infested dungeon. The One and Only Blue Toilet and the crumbling blue tile floor that surrounds it. Complete with a mushroom that grows in one of the corners. It’s obviously a hardy species, it’s been around since 1984. While you’re at it, you can admire our loverly decor: Student Ghetto/Early Inlaw. That green couch is probably 80 years old! According to the GG, every person in his family has been sick on it. As of Christmas 2005, that includes your favorite blahgger!

Seriously, Mr. City Inspector, I would *love* to do some remodeling. Maybe when we get done paying the last two small private liberal arts college tuition bills? And finish paying ourselves back for the Ninja Vee-hickle? Kitchen? I am chompin’ at the bit. For now, noooooo, we did not add anything on to the blasted house. Don’t those building permits tell you what kind of work was done? I sure hope that disaster recovery reconstruction doesn’t equal higher property tax.

You guys, I did not even get a blasted skylight out of it!

5 Responses to “I didn’t even get a blasted skylight out of it!”

  1. Dog Mom Says:

    …annnnnnnd if you do not contact blah-blah-blah, they will arbitrarily raise your property taxes, at which point you are forced to fight tooth & nail to prove that all you did was friggin’ repair work.

    Amazing that these threats of raising property taxes because one had to get a required building permit (price of which is a tax of sorts) to make the repairs to return the house to full habitability in reality can actually prove to be counter-productive…. discouraging folks from making repairs or improvements or modifications …OR driving them to finding ways to try to do it withOUT the proper permitting…

  2. grandmothertrucker Says:

    try calling the little turd and just explain to him about the tree falling on the house, and email him pics of the mushroom. beware, you may be cited for growing psychodelics.

    ahhh… the green couch. i hated that thing, you still have it? olive green scratchy material? yeeeesh…. ask santa for a new couch. it would look better in gumpers shed @ HL.

  3. Pooh Says:

    You have pics of the damage and subsequent repairs, b/c we’ve all seen them blogged. Print copies of the pics and the reciepts and send it off to the address, and invite them in, if they need to do the interior inspection. Make sure to apologize that you just set off a flea bomb, and it might make them cough a little. Well, maybe you don’t want to do that, but you can think about it. Tee-hee.

  4. kayak woman Says:

    Yes, I had thought about the pictures. There are just a few odd things about this whole incident.

    1) We went through an inspection at the end of it all. Actually, two or three, I think the work didn’t pass the first time. I would think that there would be some kind of documentation on file from those inspection.

    2) We did make one improvement to the house — a hard wired smoke alarm. But that was only because we were forced to by the building code. And we have since disconnected it because humidity from Hurricane Ike-related rain storms kept setting it off.

    3) The document we received on Tuesday was STUCK IN THE DOOR! Not mailed. That makes me think that if I had been home at the time, somebody would’ve been knocking on my door asking to come inside and inspect my house. I don’t let ANYBODY into my house unless I KNOW them or have made an appointment for them to be there.

    I do think it is a legitimate document from the city, I’m just puzzled by how they seem to be handling it and why they (apparently) don’t have documentation on file about the project.

    Yes, Grandmothertrucker, it is that scratchy old green couch. 🙂

  5. susie Says:

    I got the same notice when the contractors finished on my house so I called the number and told them it was only repair work. The person who put the note on my door just wanted to know that much so they kept my assessment the same and haven’t bothered me since. The conversation took about 30 seconds.