That's good to hear. Still, at least Santa could have come through the gaping crack in the side of the building instead of having to bother with the chimney.

That's nice. It's tough living in a broken home.

Santa won't be going anywhere.

The Snyder Fire Department, just a bit northeast of kellydamnit, seems to have captured Santa and was parading him around in the back of a ladder truck this morning.

They were torturing him by playing "Holly Jolly Christmas" and other assorted awful Christmas music very loudly as they did drove him along. He seemed to be taking it well.

It's a weird thing to see when you go out to shovel your driveway.

Yeah! Unbroken house!

ROU Xenophobe- Amherst used to get him every year when I was growing up. I think the hook and ladder over on Elmwood and Virginia usually has their turn with the captive around 8PM tonight. The santa on a firetruck is actually a super-popular tradition around here.

Oh, and I talked to my boss. He saw the pictures and said "Kelly, how much do you really like that apartment, if you were my daughter I'd be telling you to move right now!" (I told him if he could find me 1500 square feet in the heart of Allentown for under $600 I'd be happy to take it.)

Wonderful!

So they've gone now. And it is, well... bad. Like "oh my lord" bad.

The wall below the drywall was a layer of brick. As in, the back of the bricks on the outside. No studs, nothing. Glued. GLUED TO THE BRICK. WTF?? The windows? No frames, even!
So the whole thing needs to be redone hardcore. They used masonry screws and bolted some 2x4s through the drywall into the brick, and made wedges from wall to wall to hold it all up, as a stopgap solution.

The landlord's insurance person will be here either Friday or Monday, and once that's done they can get the real work done. We can't use the room still, but the heat isn't running, so we've got it sealed up tight. Rearranged as much as we could to accommodate the roommate's computer in the main part of the living room, and his music gear is stowed away under our beds. So thankfully, nothing was damaged. And, the insurance should cover our heat loss.

God, kelly, that's insane. It sounds as though you got out of it as best as possible, but man that's nuts.

Yay! And crazy! And chilly! but yay!

Not to strike fear into the hearts of innocent Buffalonians, but one wonders whether your floor is also being held up by prayer.

Nah, the wall predates the shoddy job (it had a window at one point, after all).
The actual enclosure of the veranda has to date to no later than the early 30s since the windows are leaded glass, and they're not modern by a long shot. Someone just decided to make it a solid wall rather than leaving the window at some point and, well, they did it very very wrong. (besides that, there's technically nothing under that room- it was a balcony overlooking the carriageway at one point, you walk under it to get in the house.)

At least this crazy nutball thing meant you didn't have to go to work, and maybe it soaks up all the possible negative energy.
There was a fire above me in a place i was living and i had just moved my stereo equipment out of the corner where dirty fire truck water came sluicing down the wall. i was on the fourth floor; there was water damage on the second.
It's the little things... kind of better now than in the dead of winter? No rushing back and forth from work to home to family?

No studs?! I doubt your landlord is going to be very happy with what the insurance guy says, nor with what the contractor says depending on your local codes regarding conversions to living spaces.

This building has always been a store with a living space above, that's how it was built originally (but they were interconnected, so the family who lived here must have run the store). The balcony was walled off at some point, though. That's why it is drywall, the rest of the house is ancient plaster. So I think the problem is very localized to that area.