So, this story took an incredible turn, upcoming long post if anyone is still interested.
So late last week we also uncovered, unfortunately, another pet-related issue but on the upper-level. We're in the middle of moving and moved the litter box for our cats and uncovered black stains below, quickly looked it up and by all rights it seemed like again replacing the wood would be the way to go (given especially how likely it is that they've been there for quite some time).
The good thing was, the upstairs is an incredibly easy wood to find (clear-coated, virtually non-stained red oak).
But in finding this in the middle of this uncertainty with how the landlords reacted to the main-level damage, I wasn't sure how to bring this up. I did my due diligence though, got quotes for the work (the material) and was lined up to initiate the fix when/where required.
We were traveling back home for a short weekend trip (and our landlords knew that) and I figured, let's sit on this a couple of days and inform them on Monday. But at the same time I had this really weird feeling they might and try to do something shady given how poorly they reacted to the fixed hardwood. So I used some old BlackBerry's and installed Manything on them and placed them in the main area of our home to record should anything happen while we were away.
Fast forward to yesterday PM and I get an alert on my phone that the Manything cam's are tracking movement activity and it recorded my landlords entering my property (without our knowledge and consent). Basically they were there for about 5 minutes and they brought one of the landlord's parents to assess. A few interesting things:
1. The parents immediate reactions were, wow what an impressive repair which really changed their tune instantly in the video.
2. Most of the video was badmouthing us as terrible tenants for allowing our puppy to cause "so much damage" and really disliking how we've turned their "beautiful home into this disaster".
3. Finally, before leaving one of the landlord's telling the other to put things back in place because "we probably shouldn't be here to begin with".
From a timeline perspective, we received an oddly positive e-mail from our landlords about 30 minutes after the above happened saying they were happy enough with the repair. But at that point I hadn't logged into my Manything account to see what caused this.
I personally watched the footage 3-4 hours later and things fell more into place but concurrently it made my wife and myself feel incredibly violated. I watched the video a few times just out of sheer disbelief trying to figure out how, why and etc. happened.
After calming down as much as possible, I sent my landlords an e-mail that basically said my wife and i found out something this weekend that extremely troubled us and needed to discuss. And then in the same e-mail I just sent a picture of the other damaged area and said we had the means to repair it and to notify them and it could be repaired by a contractor this week.
This resulted in a 'feeling out' call where our landlords called us trying to figure out what just happened? It resulted in an incredibly heated phone call where I laid out the facts and how their actions were illegal, made us feel incredibly violated and we were just beyond ourselves.
One of the landlords (as expected) went onto the defensive and tried to point out a category list of items of things they've "let slide" and how because they've turned a blind eye we shouldn't be so harsh to judge (I mean, this list was 2 items: we let you terminate the lease without 60 days notice (we gave them 40) and how we should have informed them that we attempted the repair initially which obviously resulted in an unsatisfactory result).
Needless to say, all I went back to was none of my actions were beyond the pale crossing legality in the same terms.
The interesting twist I found was, he threw out the "we'll take you to court" card at one point which just baffled me because my response was my e-mail was not a threat of action but I'd more than willing to go to court if he somehow thinks he's going to be able to obtain damages for any action I've taken especially when I've done everything humanly possible to rectify any damages caused by our part.
After a lot of the exchange, one of the landlords (the calmer one) mediated and basically said let's get through one more week (what's left of our lease) and try to move on.
I'm still not sure how I feel about it all as I'm still processing everything, but they're coming over in the morning to look at the wood to ensure it's a match for the upstairs panel before giving us the go-ahead to get the contractor in to replace it.
Part of me, so wanted to be just pound sand and leave the property but I want to fix the damage caused by us and then just call it a day.
Alright apologies if the above was just a massive rant but was good to get it off my chest and also update folks IF anyone was still interested
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