Why did we Leave Yafo?
Before our experience here with
Yafo I really had no clue how harmful not building a house to code really can
be to your health. In this final chapter we will
be discussing the alternate methods used to repair our home, the
quality of craftsmanship, the apartment's impending doom, and the WAR on
Shimon The Righteous Street.
Like the house every picture here comes with a history of
itself complete with an agonizing story of completely unnecessary stress.
The day we moved out our landlord had a contractor come to our
apartment to change the front door. The exact door that
I continually asked him to fix for me, because it wasn't really much
of a door it was more like fence with plastic and chicken wire riveted to
it. My conclusion is that the landlord could not care less about his
investment and the people providing him with the rent income and I am starting
to realize that many landlords don't really care and most are money
sucking liars. Out of the 4 landlords I've had in my lifetime, 2 of them have
been the skivviest bastards I've known, 2 however have proven to be
outstanding citizens. In MY experience that will mean on an international scale, fifty
percent of landlords are jerks so watch out.
This Video displays the quality of handiwork that went into the electrical wiring.
I repaired this crack twice by filling, sanding
and painting it. It however kept splitting open which lead me to
believe that the foundation of the 300 year old building was sinking. Which
would make sense, the soil here is actually sand and the sand which the
foundation of our apartment sits in is and not only sandy
but continually wet. I always un-lovingly called our apartment a
hole in the ground, maybe one day it actually will be...
This is the lovely Southeastern facing
window, lots of sunshine in the morning. Please notice the rocks and dust that
have collected inside the window sill, as you can see in the above
photograph. This mess is from the never ending construction site that is
above and surrounding our home. Rocks, dust, nails, screws, saw dust, and
chunks of wood collect here in the window sill. I swept them weekly trying to
keep the dust to a minimum, but there was nothing I could do the dust and rocks
just kept falling.. Did you notice the lovely jail-cell appeal with the
double barred window effect??? Alluring I know.
This picture's story is a
painful one, mostly emotionally pain but a few times I managed to physically
injure myself on this annoying flaw. These are my bathroom tiles, if
you look closely you may be able to see that the grout has broken out. Now if
Mike Holmes were here we all know what he would say, but since I couldn't rip
it out, my solution was again only a temporary fix. Repair it I did,
over and over, the grout just kept popping out! Mike Holmes would have torn this
whole apartment to the ground if he'd be given the chance, but alas there is no Mike
Holmes to the rescue only me... So re-grout I did.
ohhh the dent...
DO YOU SEE THE DENT ???????
Roni, Rami whatever the dirty pirate's name was, he was
probably the dullest they could have sent to fix the leaking shower that
flooded our living room the floor below. He (the dirty Pirate) couldn't
figure out why the shower rail wasn't fitting. Okay so I'm no contractor I'm not a
trades-woman, just your regular crafty gal and I really have no clue what these
parts are called so let's give them names to tell the story better. The dented
silver piece that holds the doors let's call that the door rail, and
the silver piece below with the screws let's call the wall mount. Okay?
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| shower screw |
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| shower screw |
First he attached the wall mounts to the wall by
lining them up with the shower basin. So when it came time to attach the
door rail it did not to fit into the wall mounts... STRANGE....
what had happened? why didn't it fit? Where did I Go WRONG? I could read all
the questions of confusion right off the dirty pirates dazed face.
I'll tell you what happened
the rocket scientist had the instructions and didn't bother even looking at
them. Rami's simple solution, "Ohh it doesn't fit... that must mean I need
to bend to fit" (MUCH EASIER) I am sure the door rail was made with aluminum
in it,
because it was very light not the strongest. I looked on as he grabbed
the door rail and began to push it over his knee attempting to bend it to the
perfect arc....... The dirty Pirate held the aluminum door
rail with the convex side against his knee and began to push to "C"
shape wider. I couldn't get the words out fast enough to tell Rami that I
didn't think what he was doing was a good idea. I gasped in shock
while on looking as the weak aluminum door rail gave way under his
strength. I couldn't believe that he actually thought he could bend the door
rail to the perfect shape. Rami had just dented the brand new shower we were
finally getting installed!
The 'contractor' is so slow
at working that by the time that Maor got home from work Rami still has not
attached the door rail and he really cannot understand why he is unable to.
Maor takes one look at the instructions that came with the shower set and looks
at what Rami has done in the bathroom, and he tells him he's installed the wall
mount pieces upside down. That just so happens to be the reason why the
aluminum door rail didn't fit directly into place. Since the aluminum wall
mounts that hold the glass had to be taken out and re-installed, my shower
on the inside was filled with sharp, rough, jagged, empty, rusting screw holes
because of Rami's complete disregard to how things work. I have provided
pictures so you can see exactly how barbaric the job was done (above on
the right and the left) Every screw in the shower looked like this!
This my friends is what two showers look like
when you lazily place one over the other, dirty pirate style. The original (the
tile under the new shower) leaked due to the tiles being placed over top of
2x6s without the necessary supportive layers needed to tile properly over wood.
(this is the reason for the tile grout popping out and the living room flooding) The old shower had leaked
profusely every time we showered soaking our living room downstairs. We have yet
another great idea if you like to cut corners and do things the cheap way.
So let me explain our lovely landlord's solution to fix Jack's mistake.
Firstly they drilled a new drain hole, then they took a bucket of cement and
filled the old drain and spread a nice thick layer over the floor and then they
placed the new shower floor on top and they pressed down. It was like a big
kids cut and paste project. I watched this all happen, exactly how they did it.
It worked but it wasn't pretty and I really doubt that is how you are
supposed to do it... I really have no clue, but with the amount of cement they
used I think they guaranteed that the shower would never move. Jerry Rigged some miscellaneous pipe fixtures together and they finished all the plumbing seals with the same silicone that they
sealed the leaky shower walls with. Again I don't think it gets cheaper than this...
Please note the picture below, it displays the old drain and the new shower drain.
Diagram explaining the flow of water leaking into the Living room
ahahahah Ouch.... painful memories of these
guys...... The above pictures are two of many screws that I needed to hammer
down, the spiky tips upstairs because we kept ripping our feet and
socks open on them.. OUCH!!! There was probably 12 or more screws and that is
what is holding the interlocking wood floor of our bedroom to the iron beams
that support it.
Beautiful light fixtures throughout, giving you that quality finished feeling. :D
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| figure b |
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| figure a |
This is the crumbling foundation that supports the story above us (see figure a). Not just small pieces quite large sized chunks of rock started falling out of this hole. (figure b, c &d) The walls were literally falling apart from the inside out....
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| figure d |
 |
| figure c |
Ohhh our wood beam ceiling
the icing on the cake, or the straw that broke the camel's back, whatever
you wanna call it. If only the ceiling had
been efficient enough to house us, I might have been able to live
here ignorantly for another year. Our ceiling the very wood you look
upon, at one point was the only ROOF over our heads. The
renovations the floor above removed the old existing roof
leaving our ceiling to act as our ROOF. The construction team of dirty
pirates removed the roof and didn't bother putting one back for about 2 months.
During those 2 months living in a subtropical climate you are bound to get rained
on, and we did it rained for days. As it poured down outside it rained down
inside of my home. The front half of my house might as well have been outside,
water poured through the cracks in the ceiling and down every supporting column
and around the front 3 walls in my house water streamed in like waterfalls. Okay
talk about night mare, my kitchen was a lake and no number of buckets, bowls,
pots or pans could possibly hold the quantity of water cascading into my house.
This is actually why it took me so long to post the sixth and final chapter of
my rant, because I was determined to find the DVD with the video I took of the
waterfall I had instead of a front door. I still cannot find it, I think the
camera ate it.
Thoroughly traumatizing let me tell you, there
are very few times in your life where you feel this helpless and when your
house is filling with water, there is really not too much you can do. The first
night I mopped for hours with a big squeegee pushing the water out the front door but
all of my efforts were lost as more water continued to inundate my home.
After the liquid assault was finished, my wood ceiling beams were
drenched and because they had sat dry for hundreds of years before being exposed
to the elements they had sponged up the water. Since the rains had halted
construction had resumed, they rubber sealed my ceiling to start the floor
above and put a roof on. The beams had not had time to dry out before being
sealed from above the ceiling beams were holding so much moisture, they made the
house feel cold and damp always. Anything you pulled out of the closet felt
damn and as if had been sitting outside over night and the dew had set into it.
EVERYTHING felt like this. The floods had turned my beautiful old wood ceiling
into a giant humidifier that I couldn't turn off. Sadly it doesn't end here.
If living in a jungle bog
wasn't enough the ceiling had more ways left to torture us, and did it ever. Before being sealed, my beautiful ceiling
was used as a construction site for some time allowing each gap between each
board to be packed full of dust, dirt, rocks, pebbles, nails and screws. The
ceiling had now been sealed with rubber from above for months and these items
were a new precipitation leaking through the cracks of my ceiling. Every vibration
brought a cloud of dust and debris from the gaps, for months I dusted like a
Mad woman, trying to keep up with the constant onslaught from above. If the
dirt and dust wasn't enough, then you'll love what's coming next.
Having a vaulted ceiling with beautiful
wood beams seemed like a dream, but the ceiling again contributed to so much unnecessary
stress it really is quite remarkable. The 'construction' workers working above
us were a pack of baboons, in order not to insult the Baboons of the world let's
call them Dirty Pirates. The Dirty Pirates working on the project above us
failed to ever finish installing a floor above our ceiling in the entire time
we lived in Yaffo. Our landlord had promised that the floor was to be installed
immediately after we moved in to reduce the noise of them working. In the
beginning we had an agreement with the Dirty Pirates, no noise before 10 am, and
our landlord was still on our side at that time, he would not give them access to electricity until 10 am. They followed roughly to the rules for a couple
months, but then as if the rules were lifted and as though we never existed,
they began regularly working directly above where we slept, with a variety of
tools. Every day I was awoken by the sounds of drills, jack hammers, sanders,
circular saws, generators, compressors, heavy boot
footsteps, Arabic radio stations, every hammer in the tool box,
chisels, blow torches and arch welders, bobcats and backhoes, they would pound,
drop, cut, burn, dig hammer, slam, drill, screw, sand, saw, throw, sing, yell, and break, everything wood, glass, iron, steal and tar. It felt
like the dirty pirates would choose our apartment to work above and they had
found a new electric outlet one that my landlord didn't control. The
guy who owns the outlet told the Dirty Pirates they could use it whenever
they wanted as long as they built him a kitchen.... Nothing short of
war broke out upon neighbors and landlords on our street, and there was no more
peace on Shimon the Righteous street. With nothing holding the Dirty Pirates
back, they began work whenever they pleased, they'd start most days before 7am, if I was lucky sometimes they started at 8:30 am and some days they would
work until 10 at night. I went berserk I couldn't sleep and when I cannot
sleep I become very angry. The unfinished floor above our ceiling turned our
apartment into a giant wood drum for
the dis-symphony orchestra.
The lifestyle that Yaffo had
brought us deteriorated me in every-way it could, we had finally had
enough. I told my landlord off like I've never told anyone off
before, that day Maor gave him our notice that we were leaving and I finally felt calmed and a weight had been lifted off of my shoulders.
OOOhhh One more thing... Meet the Death
Block nicknamed that because in the event that it fell it would most certainly
kill us..... if our heads were positioned under it and it just so happens that this is
the last sight we saw before drifting off to sleep every night. The Death block
was strategically placed over the only sensible place to put the bed
upstairs. We slept every night with the block precariously positioned to kill. Let us just be grateful we survived Yaffo, with hopefully
no long lasting effects. I loved our apartment when we moved in and when
the time finally came I loved moving out of it! I've been living in
my new home in Ra'Anana for over a year now and I am so seriously content with
what I have here it's amazing how much the little simple things count . Our new
Apartment is a little bit smaller, has zero history, it's a basement, and I
LOVE IT! It's finished nicely, it's an open functional space, two bedrooms, one kitchen, one bathroom, one living room and I
even have a storage space, good neighbors, a great land lady, fruit trees,
peace and quiet and I even have where to put my plants. There is no history
of leaks, flooding, or infestation and certainly no dirty
pirates and their dirty construction!
This is why we left Yafo !
