Get. It. Together. Y’all.

We’ve officially been in Nashville for four months now! In some ways, it’s flown by, and in others, I’m like, “How has it ONLY been four months?” Not in a bad way. I love it here. It’s just been a very jam-packed four months.

There are a lot of things to love about Nashville. I love how friendly everyone is. I love how much there is to do here. I love the food. I love the nature. I love the weather (mostly) and lack of humidity. I love how dog-friendly it is. If I could just make one request—can everyone please just, like, get it together? Maybe be a little high strung every now and then? These people are laidback, which is great! Until you need a plumber or a handyman, and then it’s just kind of annoying.

The Handyman Search: Part One

Something came up during our home inspection that wasn’t a huge deal from a cost perspective, but it was recommended we get it taken care of as soon as we move in so it doesn’t become a bigger issue. Our realtor gave me the number of a handyman back in December, so I gave him a call. He was busy and asked if he could get back to me next week. “Sure!”

I tried calling (and texting) once more, but…crickets. By the time I gave up on him, we were hit with a major plumbing issue, and we had to table the handyman search because the work required someone to go into our crawl space, which was currently…filled with sewage water.

A Crappy Situation

On January 31st, I did something realllllly stupid. I was making parmesan-crusted tofu in the oven (that’s not the stupid part), and the tofu was on parchment paper. When it was time to move it to the top rack and broil, I forgot to remove the parchment paper. The whole house reeked, the smoke detectors went off—it was a whole thing. Anyway, the next morning, when I got out of the shower, I noticed a rancid smell. I thought it might have just been burned parchment paper, but then Sean noticed it too and said it was definitely poop. So we called a plumber. “We’ll send someone right out!” They didn’t come.

The next morning, we noticed the smell again, but this time it seemed like it was coming from the vents. I was sure that it was, in fact, a burning smell and that our heater was melting something, so I called an AC person. He came out a couple days later and said, “It smells like death,” as soon as he walked into our house. He decided it was probably a dead animal in our air ducts and scheduled us for a duct cleaning.

That evening, Sean went down into our crawl space to get my suitcase for me and discovered about six inches of sewage water. Ah, yep. That’s the smell.

We canceled the air duct cleaning and called a plumber (The same one who no-showed earlier in the week. We probably should have seen the writing on the wall.) They came right out and diagnosed the issue but said they would need the weekend to talk with the city and try to find a viable solution. They’d get back to us on Monday.

Never heard from them again.

We called them every day (some days twice) that week, and each time were told, “Someone will call you back this afternoon.” Nobody ever got back to us. We owe them money! They never even invoiced us for the work they started. That’s how much they didn’t want to deal with our problem.

So I found us a new plumber. They came right out and took care of the situation, but our neighbor wasn’t happy with the work they did, so now there’s all this back and forth with the city, our neighbor, and the plumber. And the issue still isn’t fully resolved nearly two months later. I have to call this plumber twice before I even get a call back, and it’s always the same answer: “No updates. We’ll let you know when we know something.”

Anyway, the issue is at least fixed enough that we no longer have sewage water pouring into our basement, so we were able to hire a cleaning company to come sanitize everything, which means we were able to revisit the handyman situation.

The Handyman Search: Part Two

This time, I decided to find a company to do the job. I knew they’d probably be more expensive, but they’d at least maybe be more responsive? I talked to a really nice guy who told me he wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if he took the job because it would cost us way more to use him than a handyman. I told him I didn’t care and I really just wanted our issue fixed, so he kindly referred me to a friend of his who would be able to take care of everything we need for much cheaper.

I called up his friend. His friend asked if he could call me back next week.

Sure enough, he never called me back. I called him again two weeks later and asked if he was still available to help me, and he said, “Can I text you tomorrow and let you know if I’m going to come?” I told him that was fine. Crickets.

Whoever does end up with the gig is going to make a pretty penny off of us because the list of repairs has grown since we started this search.