I did the weekly hoovering today.
I felt more than a little ridiculous moving the catch basins while vacuuming the bedrooms.
Rearranging the proverbial deck chairs indeed.
It’s not rained steadily for a few days, so aside from the lingering smell of damp, the missing lights, and the bare bed frame, mattress propped along a wall, you might not notice anything amiss.
We looked at around a dozen places across two days, narrowed it to two that we thought we’d be happy living in, and have agreement in principle with the landlord of our first choice. If all goes to rapidly-evolving plan we’ll sign a lease by close of business Monday with a start date on or around the 19th. The new place is hundreds of yards, as the crow flies, from the old place. And because I’m not very smart, it too is on the top floor of a building and is reached by a lift.
What could go wrong?
On Friday we served formal notice to our current landlord by way of their agent that we wish to abruptly terminate our tenancy on a “mutually agreeable date” due to the ongoing and unresolved leak issues, and proposed 26 October. Under normal circumstance our lease would require sixty days notice, so it’s still possible that our landlord refuses to release us early and we end up paying for two more months.
I’m hopeful that she does the right thing and lets us out of the lease, but I’m not sure I’d put odds on it.
Similarly, we’re going to try to get some responsible party to pay for the move cost, but I’ve no plans to hold my breath. The landlord’s agent bluntly said to me at the landlord isn’t liable and pointed me at the block (building) manager, who I pointed out I have no legal relationship with. So I’ll push on the landlord, they’ll push on the building management, and I’ll end up paying for the move ’cause it won’t be worth chasing it in court.
That finger pointing likely foreshadows a rather protracted argument between our landlord and the building management over who’s fault this all is, and who pays to make it good. Since it involves the shared roof, that argument could easily expand to include all the other owners in the building.
It’s the sort of thing that might be educational to watch from a distance, but I’ve really no interest in being in the middle of it.
And while they’re arguing, water will be doing to this building what it does to buildings. If they argue long enough, there will be no apartment left to argue about.
Dawnise is pretty sure that this problem was a result of both parties thinking it was the others’ responsibility. I suspect she’s right, and the fact that the bits of roof most affected are under terraces that “belong” to this apartment do seem to muddy the responsibility issue. I figure the building management will ultimately demand our landlord be responsible for taking up the decking on the terraces in advance of roof works.
The weather forecast for the next two weeks shows a few days of “proper rain.” Not as much as precipitated this crisis (see what I did there?) but enough that we’ll probably have more rain in the bedrooms.
So there’s that to look forward to.