Renovation 2007: Thou shalt not kill

Forgive me, O Lord, for the sinful thoughts that welled up in my heart, for desiring to hire a hit man to deal with a certain Nigerian contractor, and place in my renovation budget. May the murderous anger that fills me be replaced by charity and forgiveness. And I ask, may I not find any more like surprises that trigger these thoughts in the first place. Amen.

I haven’t mentioned him in a while because dang it, I moved on, and I just attributed many of these things to nameless ‘crackheads.’ Yet, I am going to say, and warn all who read this posting, if you meet up with a Nigerian contractor named Sunny, don’t let him anywhere near your house. If you buy a house that was recently ‘fixed’ or ‘renovated’ by this man, tear everything down to the party walls and the joists. Why? Because this man’s ‘work’ is dangerous.
I’ve begun part of the demo in the house and while whacking away at sections of drywall I discovered something that makes me afraid to sleep in my house. Sunny, being the contractor who ‘renovated’ the house for sale had a false wall near the part of the house that meets up with the kitchen.
I had gathered that the false wall was built to hide the radiator pipes. Yes, that and something else. There was a big crack hidden behind the wall that I’d seen the top of and figured I would fix in this renovation. This week I pulled back more of the drywall and discovered that big crack jagged down to an enormous sized hole about 2 feet wide and 1.5 feet from the floor. This hole continues through the floor revealing the joists and the drywall for the ceiling of the cellar.
Unfortunately I haven’t gotten a real camera yet and my Palm camera can’t get the lighting right so I’ll have to describe this. Start about 4 feet from the ground with a crack in the plaster. Go down about 1.5 feet and increase the size of the crack creating a 1/2 gap in the crack. Three feet, make the gap 1 inch. Then from there open up a big hole, where near the top you see a brick hanging loosely. Behind most of the plaster surrounding the hole, nothing. At the bottom of the hole you will see joists, wires, and three bricks sitting on the ceiling of the basement.
The reason for the murderous thoughts was what the big hole meant. Above the wall that sits between the 1 floor kitchen and the main structure is an exterior brick wall. I’ve always wondered what was keeping up that brick wall seeing that the basement didn’t continue that wall….. Apparently, nothing! Nothing is keeping up that wall! That wall being my bedroom wall, the wall that my bed leans on. Sunny’s cheap ass slap dash crackhead work put the structure of my house and possibly my life in danger. I. Was. Livid!
I can forgive the superglued plumbing, the unsecured plumbing, the wiring that makes no sense, the toilet encased in tile, the poor paint job, the crooked windows, and the nasty textured paint, but this, no.