The Boys & Me

I am so ticked off I'm using my blog to complain publicly.  I apologize beforehand for my rant. 

We have lived in our home six years and prior to moving in we had a custom addition added to our stairs to prevent anyone from falling down the stairs. It is something unique to our house and a selling feature in my mind.  We had a couple look at our house on Thursday and another today. I spent a lot of time getting our home in perfect condition for strangers to critique and invade our personal space in hopes that they too will see themselves living in our home and loving it as we have. This is what people do when selling their home. 

Today, we received a call from a Realtor (not ours) and was told someone wanted to see our home so we stopped everything and got to the routine of prepping.  We left our home taking one last look thinking, how could anyone not love our home. We have nurtured and loved in our home for six years.  We arrived back a couple hours later to find our custom addition broken.  No note left to say, 'sorry'. Instead the gate was placed in a way to make it look like it was never touched.  I was ready to call the agent to find out if the couple liked the house or if they didn't what the negatives were so we could learn from them.  As I picked up my phone and the business card Randy discovered the broken gate. So, I let him do the honors of calling the agent.  The agent became defensive and said he didn't know anything about it and had not even taken the couple downstairs.  He also said they brought three children and he couldn't keep an eye on all of them. First, what kind of realtor shows a 3450 square foot house and not make a point to walk the adults through 1200 square feet of the house?  Randy was able to say, we know SOMEONE went downstairs because the lights we left on were turned off.  I'm now imagining three wild boys running through the house while the parents are wondering around and the agent is... doing what?  This is someone's home we are talking about. Someone had the ability and the mental state to cover up the broken gate. The gate was so abused that the screw snapped in two pieces.  We have two boys and friends with kids all who have been over using the gate to the stairs for six years. I don't need to remind you of how active Dylan is. We have never had anyone break the gate 90% off the wall. Once, about four years ago we had a toddler boy swing on the gate with his body holding it down and it popped from the wall but not broken and very easy to repair. We've had adults and kids open the gate the wrong way and not once did anyone break the gate. These people spend 20 minutes (at most) in our home and break it.  Then try to cover it up! 

The fact that it broke makes me irritated. The fact that they tried to cover it up and not own up to it makes me disgusted. What kind of people would not own up to breaking something in another person's home?  What if we had another couple coming by today to look at the house?  What a sore thumb that would have been to the house.

Randy will be able to fix it. There are holes where the screws were pulled from the wall and a broken one but it is fixable. Randy is very handy around the house. I'm just so disgusted at the lack on common courtesy in these people.  These are not the kind of people I want walking by my jewelry armoire or the boys' video game library. I am also irritated at the Realtor for not taking responsibility for the people he brought into our home and for not apologizing even after Randy called him about it.  I doubt this Realtor will bring anyone else to our house after his conversation with Randy.  I'm sure the family left the house as quickly as they could once they broke our gate.  I won't be expecting an offer from them - they don't want a house with a broken gate!