Lowe’s Destroyed My Life and Home
We moved in when I was in the 5th grade back in 1975. It was a beautiful country family home with a huge yard, two creeks and only 12 minutes to the State Capitol, and 3 miles to town. It was a solid well-built home, very clean and perfect for raising kids in a great neighborhood. Everyone here knows us, and respected us because we worked hard and helped our neighbors when needed, we went to our local church, I cut most of my neighbor’s grass growing up, I couldn’t ask for a better place to live or to raise my own kids. I lived here my whole life. I only moved out when I was married twice, but I moved back in after my first divorce and back with my second wife Just after my dad died in 2008. Both my mom and dad had cancer at the same time and my mom needed me. My mom told me she wanted to put on a new roof on our home because the roof we had wasn’t attractive. We had a newer nice sheet roof professionally installed some years before, but my mom never did like the color of it and wanted a dark grey almost black roof to match the house shutters. We put a lot of care and time in this family home and it was being handed down to me being the only son. I lived here; I had to help my mom since she herself couldn’t do a lot on her own with her having cancer. Both my mom and dad loved this home as I did too, lots of care went into our home. I always painted it, I kept the yard cut perfectly, it was very well kept, just ask any of my 40 years plus neighbors. We had double insulation in attic, thermal pane windows, and brand new $10,000 oak kitchen cabinets that were also bought and installed by Lowe’s and just paid off before the roof was installed. My mom went to Lowe’s and they sold her a $10,000. roof she wanted to put on my home as a gift while she was still alive. At first, I was pretty upset with her paying $10k for a roof knowing that was two to three times the price of the competitor’s price. She told me they would charge parts and labor to her Lowe’s credit card and it was the best roof made they told her and it would be installed by the most trusted name in the business, “Lowe’s”. She told me she wanted to give me the home to raise my kids here just as they raised me here in our home, my family home. She said she felt comfortable with Lowe’s installing it. I respect and love my mom deeply.
Lowe’s started late 2011 installing this new top of the line roof and was finished just before Christmas 2011. Three weeks into December it rained, and we filled up three five-gallon buckets to the top for a leaking roof. Being under warranty Lowe’s came out and made a repair. In fact, every rain, every snow it leaked, and they came out to fix it for the first year and let me tell you it leaked a lot! After one year they refused to come fix it without charging us and it was one repair after another. Some repairs didn’t show signs of leaking if it was a light rain, but if it was a hard rain or inches of snow it leaked pretty badly. I know we spent thousands more on repairs after the warranty ran out. We had to buy two Kenmore dehumidifiers, and a Rainbow carpet steam vac to suck up the moisture from the regular leaks. Many times, while I was in college my paperwork would get wet overnight from a new leak if I left it out on our table. The leaks were mostly over the restroom, dining room, kitchen, laundry room. Heavy rains it leaked over the other rooms too. Once I took my winter coat out of my closet as winter set in and it was covered in mold and wouldn’t come clean, this has happened too many of our personal things because you never knew where it would leak. I bought two brands new Catnaper couches and a new bunk bed with memory foam mattresses while I was in college on WV works program for $4,000. And they were covered in mold in no time even with the dehumidifiers running around the clock. I went to college to be a music teacher and I made a recording studio in our living room and even with the dehumidifiers running much of my gear shorted out because of moisture. I put the gear in a local repair shop and this was confirmed moisture damage costing me many thousands of dollars from loss of gear, loss of work.
I was also a well-known radio host, I hosted many of my radio shows with millions of listeners from my home studio on G.H.T.R. (GHTALKRADIO.COM) worldwide podcast and having many of the world’ largest podcast radio shows like; Late Night with Rob & Kris, Kris Allen’s Worldwide Monster Theater, Night at the Round Table, and the Morning Meltdown. I was forced to quit when I had to move out of my house many years later and live in a tiny camper.
I was told I had to move out after I had a waterline bust two years ago. My home owner insurance didn’t feel they were responsible because a water line in my wall froze. Now my home was almost 100% heated with wood from large wood stove less than 12 feet from the waterline that bust. This was a very cold winter and I was keeping the wood stove hot around the clock and my electric furnace and electric heaters on. It seemed like I could not keep the house warm at all and this house was made for cold winters with an extra layer of insulation in the attic, a drop celling and new thermal pane windows throughout the house. My insurance company sent out Advanced Engineering to look at my house from top to bottom and they made a very detailed report of their findings on my home. The engineer told me whatever idiots installed my roof were responsible for my waterline busting and my floors buckling. He also told me my walls were soaked because whomever put the shingle roof on the 2 -1/4 grade slope should have use metal or better than metal, rubber. Plus, they cut the overhang off at the edge of the roof allowing water to soak my walls giving me a very little if any R-Value insulating thus busting the waterline and flooding my floors. The floors nails were rust rotting staying wet from the walls. He also said the valley of the house wasn’t installed right and there was a total of three code violations on my roof filling my home with mold, black mold too. We were unaware of mold filling our walls, our celling and floors before this but me and my kids have been sick with many breathing issues not long after the new roof was installed. My two boys had missed lots of school, in and out of Kid care and other local pediatrics for asthma like symptoms. They were given breathing treatments and even rented a nebulizer because we were completely unaware of the mold growing unseen inside the walls before we found out later found on. I remember cleaning under our new couches and as I pulled them away from the walls I was horrified of what I seen growing on the back sides of these two couches, mold, lots of it too on both walls and couches! Countless times we fell asleep on these couches watching TV……. what is growing inside our lungs now I often wonder.
I called Lowe’s and told them this MUST STOP NOW, in fear of our lives, my kid’s lives, enough was enough! The manager of the local Lowe’s pretty much called me a liar when I told him they charged labor and parts on our Lowe’s card. He replied with an attitude; SIR, WE DO NOT ADD LABOR ON YOUR CARD! PARTS YES BUT NOT LABOR! I told him they did, but he would not believe me or listen to me. Now with the years of damage for water leaking from the roof and now busted waterline, kids being sick (me too) and my electric bill going through the roof heating the house and running not one but two dehumidifiers and all of the extra wood I had to cut and or buy, losing my gear and home to moisture damage taking money out of my pockets and now being called a liar I think I about lost it. I took the contract to see their store manager to put my contract in his face……but he wouldn’t see me! I did however see another manager and they finally sent out their insurance manager, Kevin Mullins. When Mr. Mullins pulled up he said he didn’t even have to get out of his car, he said he seen the work on the 2-1/4 pitch roof and he knew they were guilty. Mr. Mullins brought out three different contractors I met when they came to look at my house to fix my house they would never return? They would never show up except the last one, the third one and this was Chris Jones, from Classic Construction, from Huntington, W.V. I found out later from Mr. Jones at Classic Construction that Mr. Mullins lied saying I chased off the other two contractors, that was crazy, I was very excited to finally get my house fixed, and why would I dare chase them off. Mr. Mullins told me whatever was needed for the repairs would be taken care of. They even called around for the hotels with a kitchenette to put me in until the work was finished plus expenses and at the time the rooms were about $200 per day. Lowe’s paid me $7500 for the first month. They hired Classic Construction to remove everything I owned from my home. Almost everything was thrown away, my brand-new couches, bunk beds, my bed, and my furniture; my appliances including my 3-month-old stainless steel refrigerator because the refrigerator’s fan sucked in the mold spores and it would not be safe for saving since food was kept inside (it too was bought at Lowe’s). I lost all of my family’s photos! I lost things impossible to add a price tag to it like videos of me as a baby, and my kids first born. I sang to them while inside their mom on video. I had a hope chest of things I made from kinder garden on, I had 8 world hit songs on the world charts and my music recording reels of my songs recorded in Nashville were damaged by mold, my books, newspapers and magazines I had been featured in, all of my awards I spent my whole life training for, won or received, everything gone. I was left without one single photo of my dad, or my kids, my childhood was completely gone as with my kids past childhood gone too. Lowe’s insurance manage Mr. Mullins told me I didn’t have to stay in the hotel, I could stay wherever