They claimed they spared no expenses when they built this place.
If only they had spared me their bullsh*t…
I’m going to have to apologize about the lack of foreplay upfront.1I’m also going to have to apologize for the lack of better analogy than “foreplay”. Sorry, Mom. I’m so exhausted from trying to publicly catalog all the weird-ass things about Eden Cove 9 (aka EC9) and Better Beach Rentals, that I’m just going to assume you know what I’m going on about and jump right in to another round of idiosyncrasies from the 5 weeks my fam and I were refugees at this particular beach house.
In the off chance you are not familiar with good ol’ EC9, then you can catch up on what you missed here. Otherwise, let’s dive right on in…
Level 5: A Real Smorgasboard of Random WTFs
“Three microwaves?!?” Our 3-year-old couldn’t have been more excited to find that our home for the next month had not 1, not 2, but 3 microwaves!
Of course, would you expect anything less from the place that unabashedly bills itself as a member of “the most luxurious town homes on Oak Island“? No, you wouldn’t.
Clearly you would need a fancy built-in drawer microwave in your kitchen, which just screams “luxury!” at you and any of your guests. Also, the bright-ass clock–which you can’t turn off for some reason–makes for an excellent source of light pollution for anyone who might be desperately trying to get some sleep on the couch in the living room, as they take refuge from a vengeful smoke detector.
And what says “I’m so ----- rich” better than completely unnecessary excesses? That must have been the motivation for having a duplicitous countertop microwave in the kitchen, mere feet from the first one. Or–alternate theory here–the first doesn’t work, because hey, it’s EC9.
Lastly but not leastly, is the coup de grâce:2a French phrase that apparently didn’t mean what I thought it meant, but Ima use it anyways the wet bar area featuring–wait for it–another microwave! But this time, with a twist: the plastic trim around the buttons was falling off, and when maintenance was asked to fix it because, hey, you can’t feel fancy with things literally falling apart around you, guess what they thought would do the trick? Good ol’ duct tape. NOPE. I ended up buying some super glue and fixing it myself because it was starting to depress me.
Oh, and by the way, Microwave #3? Never could get it to work. Yet, this turn of events surprises me not…
Exorcising with a screwdriver and a can of WD40:
When we first showed up to EC9, it didn’t take more than one night to convince us all that the place was haunted. Fortunately, it turned out not to be the case, and instead every single door suffered from one of two problems. Either the hinges were squeaky as hell–like, for example, the bathroom door on the kitchen/living floor that everybody used and would open super-slowly by itself if not shut all the way (I’m telling you, “well-maintained” is one word that should never appear in the same sentence as “Eden Cove 9”).
Or, if the door didn’t creak, then it indubitably would look something like this:
That was supposed to be the door to our closet in the master bedroom. But, as you can see from the gap in the upper right, it was not exactly square, and it was ----- near impossible to actually get into it because of that.
The door from the master bedroom to the master bathroom suffered from this as well, but unlike the closet, we really needed to be able to use that door. So halfway through our first week there I made a trip to the local Lowe’s and bought a Phillips screwdriver and a can of WD40. When I got back I set about doing what the maintenance team I guess could never be bothered to do, and did some basic up-keep on the hinges throughout the house.
I was real proud of myself after that, especially for fixing the bedroom-bathroom door. My pride party was short-lived though, as we soon found out that the only thing that had been keeping it shut was the friction with the door jamb when it was off-kilter…when Frank & Anne escaped from their hiding spot in the bathroom and nearly made it out the beautiful balcony doors and onto the roof–OOF!
I thought to myself that would be no problem, and I could just adjust the hinges a bit more so the door would latch when we shut it. But, like Icarus, I flew too close to the sun, and ended up stripping all the wood out where some of the hinge screws were and made things worse–oh, so much worse! In order to get into the bathroom after that, we would have to firmly lift the door knob straight up with all the might we could muster, then throw a shoulder into it, hoping that we had lifted it high enough and wouldn’t dislocate a shoulder.
I attempted to fix my original “fix”, but that ended up only making things worrrrrrrse, and yes, it eventually reached full-on “fiasco” status…
“We’re from the 80s, and we’re here to help:”
From what I could gather, these “newly constructed” townhomes–upon which “no expense had been spared”–were built sometime around 2014 or 2015. Not “newly constructed”, but fairly recently nonetheless.
Pray tell then, how did this hi-tech bit of home audio equipment end up throughout the home:
Or, how about this very exciting, state-of-the-art piece of home audio equipment:
Now I hope you’re starting to fully understand the Huge Lie that the proprietors/vacation mongers of this insanity-inducing place have been trying to shove down people’s throats: if you’re “newly constructing” a building and “sparing no expense,” then why in the hell are they scavenging home sound systems from early 90’s (at best)? Hmmm? Like, did they run over budget so badly that they had to go hit up the local Habit for Humanity?
Actually, I would like to rescind that comment about Habitat for Humanity. I don’t want to drag their good name into this whole mess. They at least have standards, and wouldn’t accept crappy 90’s tech, much less try to resell it to the public. I mean, I tried to give them our old dishwasher, but they wouldn’t take it…because it was a 2007 model.
Oh, and I need to include one last tid-bit in regards to their paging/sound system. I never could figure out why there was a doorbell just outside the main doors on the first living level. You know, the doors to the balcony. Why was there a doorbell on the balcony?!? Are guests getting drunk and locked out there, and have to ring the bell in order to get someone to let them back in? If you have a better theory, I’m all ears…
Here’s your sign:
One morning I was out for a stroll, and I decided to take a closer look at the big sign just out front that seemed to be promoting the Eden Cove complex.
For your contextual pleasure, I snapped a photo of it for you:
First off: see, I told you they were going all-in on the whole “luxury” angle. Secondly, I hope by now you’re laughing your ass off about them touting there circa-1992 “Centralized sound and paging system.”
But the real fun is when you take a closer look and discover just how on-brand these people are with their half-assery. And lucky you, I took a picture of those-there floor plans on the right, so you can take a closer look for yourself as well:
Now, it is very important that you don’t adjust your television sets. The crappy resolution you see is not from my camera, but exactly how it was on this mini-billboard. It appears that the hapless executive assistant over at Better Beach Sales–sister company to our infamous Better Beach Rentals, took a screen shot or picture of the floor plan, then tried to blow it up to billboard size. And not a single soul there could be bothered to think, “Hey, this might just make us look like a troupe of complete ----- idiots to the outside world. Maybe we should call in someone who knows how to run one of the fancy, new-fangled computers and fix this?”
Nah, why the hell would these nincompoops actually give a darn about details?
Details…like my favorite of them all: take a look back up at that last picture. It kinda undermines their whole luxury schtick when none of those ----- -faces can spell “Bedroom” right. And it wasn’t a singular typo, either–they are straight-up selling 4-“Bedrom” condos over here!
Man, and these guys want you trust them with all your Oak Island real estate needs? Sheeshus funking crust…
Content created on: 31 July/1 August 2021 (Sat/Sun)
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