#by /u/FalconerXV

[prorevenge]

Moving truck smashed our house. Repairs made home value soar

While not as explosively/nuclear vengeful as some of the other stories in here or as the one I first posted, I thought I'd share another pro-revenge story that happened to my father when I was in the 9th grade.

We grew up in a relatively nice suburb of Southern California (Walnut). My family purchased the house for approximately $250,000 in 1987 when track homes were all the rage (I still have nightmares about carpeted bathrooms). Nearly every house in our neighborhood was identical where the only 'customizations' you could apply were the accoutrements to the outside of the home. We opted for polished red brick since it was the least requested feature in the lot. These bricks were super thin (about 3/4" thick) and applied to the house to give it the appearance of being made of brick. See image 1 (this is not our house, but another house in the same area that opted for the same brick we did).

Our home was at the juncture of a T intersection where a steep hill was directly in front of the house (see image 2). On a summer morning in 1991 at 9-something in the morning, a large moving truck parked half way up the hill. It was parked about 200 feet behind where the parked car is in Image 2. The hill is actually steeper than it appears in the image due to the weird lensing effect of Google Maps photography. The truck was delivering furniture to a family who had just moved in up the hill. However, the driver got out of the truck and it started rolling down the hill. We're not sure if the truck's emergency brake wasn't set or if the emergency brake failed, but since our house was directly in front of this hill, it plowed right into the front of our house.

Being in California, we're pretty used to earthquakes. We had the big Whittier quake in 1987 and at first we thought it was a just another quake as we were all sitting at the breakfast table. The entire house shook pretty violently and car alarms up and down the street went off from the boom it created. After the rumbling stopped, we gathered up our stuff to head to karate class (assuming it was an earthquake) and walked into the garage (there was an entrance into the garage from inside the house).

That's when we saw the front of a truck buried into the garage. I've never heard my mom scream until that moment. My dad came rushing in and the list of invectives that came out of his mouth was startling. He was a short-fused man and was prone to angry outbursts, but this was full on rage.

We exited the garage and took at look at the damage. Fortunately it hit the garage and not any of the support pillars inside the garage, but the columns to the left and right of the garage door were utterly plowed.

The moving company accepted fault for the accident. But that's not where the pro-revenge comes in. It turned out that the bricks that were used in the batch of houses in our lot were imported from France and that manufacturer no longer made those bricks. So the moving company had agreed to pay for materials equal in value to the cost of the bricks. The moving company had agreed that they would pay for the labor costs no matter what material we chose.

My father, being the obstinate ass that he is, had an idea. He chose your regular run of the mill red brick for the material. He knew they were super cheap, easy to acquire, and the company would agree to it quickly. The company agreed to reimburse my father for the bricks he purchased. You see, my father, while not a carpenter or construction engineer himself, he ran his own commercial waterproofing company. So he knew what kind of labor costs would go into what he had in mind.

I mentioned earlier that the original bricks were 3/4" in thickness. The standard red brick is 3-5/8" x 2-1/4" x 8". My father purchased the bricks and the moving company thought they got away with a great bargain...until they got a bill for the labor costs.

The standard bricks required hand cutting in order to be trimmed down to the size the original bricks were made to. Because the standard bricks had to be hand cut (using a powered saw of course), and due to their brittleness at that thinness, the number of bricks the labor team had to go through was incredibly prodigious. What was estimated to take just 2 weeks of labor ended up taking nearly 4 months. Even though only the front of the house was damaged, all of the bricks around the entire house had to be replaced so they would match. See image 3. If you notice, the bricks now have a more weathered, textured appearance that look a bit more antique. This was from having to hand saw the bricks and would cause the bricks to get little nicks and cracks in them, giving them that weathered appearance.

The property value of this neighborhood skyrocketed in the mid- to late-90's due to it having a great school district, low crime, proximity to good universities, etc. In the end, because our house was uniquely decorated, by 1997 the value of the house rose to around $750,000 while the neighboring houses were valued at around $500,000-$600,000.

I don't know what the house is worth now as they sold it in 1998 when my parents divorced. But a cursory search for home values in the neighborhood show the surrounding houses are worth roughly $1.4M so I imagine our old house is probably worth a little more.

I was too young at the time to comprehend the legal battle that ensued over the labor costs. All I can recall was my dad popping open a bottle of champagne after the legal contest concluded in his favor and the moving company was forced to agree to paying the labor costs like they originally offered. Those labor costs were insanely high.

TLDR: Moving truck rolled down hill and smashed into our house. Bricks originally used on the house were no longer manufactured so we made the moving company pay for hand-cut bricks which escalated the labor costs and also increased the value of the house significantly.

I know my mother has an old photo album somewhere in her current house that shows the damage the truck did. If I can have her dig it up, I'll try to post it. I live outside the US now so having her dig it up for this might be a bit of a pain.

​

(source) story by (/u/FalconerXV)