Could you Live LIke This?

Now that we've lived in our gorgeous house for almost three months, time for a reality check. We had a visitor recently who commented that our landlords must have a lot of money to have built this place (yet they live in the smaller house next door). I'm sure it cost a pretty penny to build a nice, 3-storey house, but we have found some places where corners were obviously cut.

First thing Brett noticed the first day is the kitchen faucet. It's a nice, tall faucet, but it's a bit loose at the base. We haven't asked for it to be fixed, because it isn't leaking, and we're trying to establish that we're low-maintenance tenants. Don't lean on it or push it too hard and it's probably fine.

The faucet is across from the pointless stove hood.

Also in the kitchen, the hood over the stove-top isn't connected to anything! It's like they installed it to impress foreigners, but don't understand its purpose. There's no ventilation at all, just a light and a fan.


Then it was the internet. They hooked up the exact internet Brett needed for his online teaching the day we moved in, and he can hard-wire into it from his office. The smart TV was connected via Wi-Fi. However, I had no internet access in my workspace. When we called the guys to fix the internet, it turns out the ports in the walls weren't even connected! Just a bunch of loose wires in there, while cosmetically, the rooms look wired up!

There are several places where loose wires are coming out of the wall, waiting for a new light fixture. Not that we are lacking for lights, but why all the wiring without a light? Doesn't matter. The house is only a year old. It allows for modification.

Next, one night I noticed a puddle on the floor of the living room, near the plumbing wall. We have four bathrooms, that are all somewhat lined up so that the plumbing comes down through a central location. In fact, there are two ceiling patches that clearly indicate there has been leakage before. We guessed that it was the shower in Brett's office causing the puddle we'd seen, and with three showers, he just stopped using that one. No problem. No more leaks. If it happens again, we might talk to the landlords about it.

So, they didn't finish the wiring, they short-changed the plumbing, and they skimped on the kitchen.

The front door isn't flush. It's just a bit too tight, so you have to pull it hard at night to get the top lock to slide up.

But it's such a lovely front door!

One tiny, cosmetic thing I've noticed, too. All three floors use the same white tile, with lovely black marble trim. However, the top floor is glazed to a mirror-shine. The top floor is basically laundry and storage. Why polish it? The living floors have no wax, no polish, just raw tile. I don't know if that was a "ran out of money" situation, or if, maybe, possibly, the top floor is polished because it's right under the roof and in the torrential rains of the coming season, water might find it's way to the floor?

There haven't been any puddles, I don't believe there is a roof leak, but the roof-tiling here is kind of open. I think for ventilation. One time I was doing my yoga up there  inside because it was raining, and I could occasionally feel  tiny droplets of water. I determined that, in the gusty winds, sometimes drops landing on the roof splashed inward under the overlapping tiles.

I have a friend in the States who would never live like this. She complained and had her kitchen re-tiled when it came out crooked, and she has never gotten over the fact that one of the corners of edging around the floor is slightly askew. 

We have a beautiful home that we love. I think, if a person can live in Asia happily, a loose sink faucet is a reasonable compromise.