And so it began...

I have decided to turn this blog into therapy and hopefully a helpful tool for anyone involved in new residential construction. I will be updating this daily so you may read the horror that has become my investment in one of the worse residential developments ever to grace this Earth. I will also be putting in 'pre-entries', entries of things that happened in the past, and will date them as such. Ergo, new postings may actually occur in the past, so feel free to delve into archives.

It all began in the winter of 2002. I was 28 years old, and was getting ready to take my first big step into adulthood (yeah I know, at 28). I was going to buy a house, or a condo, or whatever. I had started searching in the Salem area. I liked Salem, went to college there, and it offered a bunch of things (close to the highway, near the water, etc.) I looked and looked but was finding one disappointment after another (foreshadowing of my entire experience at the Charleston Lofts). I had put things on hold for a while, figuring I'd wait until after the holidays to restart my search.

Around April of 2003, I got an instant message from a friend of a friend who was an architect working on a new project. He found out it was in Everett (where I grew up) and wondered if I knew where the building was. The building was the former Charleston Chew Factory. I had driven by that building literally THOUSANDS of times, wondering what it was like inside, wondering if it still smelled of chocolate, etc. I have a fascination of old abandoned buildings--and this was one I had wanted to sneak in and explore one day. Imagine my elation when I found out that it was being converted into CONDOS. Not just condos, but LOFTS. I had always wanted a loft in the city, and what made this more exciting was that it was right in my price range.

I told this friend of a friend (henceforth named Cosmo, after Cosmo from the Fairly Oddparents--my fav cartoon right now) to let me know as SOON as they were for sale. I saw preliminary drawings, floorplans, etc, and even had a unit picked out.

Soon, the big day arrived. On June 28, 2003, on a warm Saturday morning, I purchased the very first loft in the Charleston Lofts. I was given a tour of the building, and got to see exactly where I was going to be living. Since I studied the floorplan, I knew where my walls would be before I even got there. The developer, who was there for the first sale, didn't. I had to tell him where they would be. I should have known on that day what I was in for. I however, was so caught up in the exposed brick wall, the high ceiling, the promise of T-1 access, an onsite gym, lush landscaping, and a life not unlike David Addison's from Moonlighting, that I never in my wildest dreams thought things could get so bad that I no longer want to even be near the building, let alone live there.