When I bought my first ever house, it came with a huge problem.

I had to have the foundation repaired (I am scared I'll relapse telling this story again, omg stress).

So I had a couple contractors come in to look (after we tore the finished walls down, and found crumbling bricks). 1 in particular didn't say the job would require lifting the entire house to fix the issue. Said "I can do the 2 walls where the damage is, replace the old windows with new windows, and install a humidex for approx. $15,000". Considering the other contractors quoted $25,000+, this sounded like the best route to go.

So turns out my neighbor even knows the contractor (my neighbor used to be his boss!), so I think I have a good guy to do my work.

So this involved digging all around the house, hammering out the old blocks on the walls that were literally caving in, replacing the blocks, waterproofing... with the house on jackposts. But my contractor assured me, "This will take a week tops". Ok, I think I can manage 1 week...

To get an idea of the work (beginning and partially finished) here's a series of photos we snapped: Basement from hell!

To make a long story short, the house wasn't done in 1 week. It was over 2 months. They even had to come back and jackhammer around the inside foundation, because the foundation was still leaking! Luckily, he did stick to his original cost, and at the end of the day, it was worth it (I made a nice profit on selling), but it was daily calls to him to get his butt over to do his job.

I lived in a busy area, near a busy street, with a foundation that was removed for an extremely long period. I made him install a lock on my basement door. I didn't sleep for more than 1-2 hours the entire 2 months (and I was still working then).

I'm almost certain that the amount of stress that I went through at this house, and during the repair process/dealing with this contractor, was what triggered my MS onset . Goodness!