Renovations, Broken Dreams, and a Whole Lot of Frustration (Part 2): Five Break-Ins Later

If you haven't read Part 1 of this post, I recommend doing that first before continuing. You can read it by clicking here.

Previously, I talked about how we were renovating one of our properties and converting it into two separate units: a house and an apartment. The idea was to rent both of them out and generate income from a single property.

Well... we've hit some serious snags along the way.

Since January, vandals have repeatedly targeted the property, breaking in multiple times. I briefly mentioned this in a post I wrote back in May, which you can read here.

It started with something relatively minor. A section of the front gate had been ripped out of the ground. The photo below was taken just a few days after we cleaned up the mess they made and repaired the area. 

For whatever naïve reason, none of us believed they'd actually try to break into the house since it was heavily fortified with locks and chains.

We were wrong.

Over the last seven months, vandals have broken into the property five times.

Nothing we tried kept them away. We installed motion-activated exterior lights, replaced the chains with heavier ones, and reinforced the metal gate, but none of it made a difference.

They smashed through the front door every single time. With each break-in, the damage to both the door and its frame became progressively worse, requiring increasingly expensive repairs.

But the front door wasn't the worst of it.

For whatever destructive reason, the vandals destroyed bathroom sinks, bidets, and toilets, too. Replacing them was expensive enough the first time. 

Having them come back four more times to destroy the exact same fixtures and then replacing everything over and over again has been financially draining, frustrating, and incredibly disheartening.

But there is a silver lining.

It turns out we weren't the only ones being targeted. Several neighbors suspected the vandals lived directly across the street from our property. According to some of the people we spoke with, they were poor AF and had more kids than they could take care of.

Personally, I hate it when people use poverty as an excuse to steal, vandalize, and be assholes. I've never been rich. Neither have my parents nor my husband. Yet none of us has ever felt the need to break in and destroy someone else's property.

It's simply primitive and animalistic.

Unfortunately, the cops are pretty useless in Argentina, especially in Córdoba City. But I probably sound like a broken record since I'm sure I've written about that in plenty of other posts over the years.

This time, however, the vandals made one serious mistake.

At least one of them did.

It turns out another property they had broken into was equipped with HD security cameras, which captured crystal-clear footage of their faces, especially the ringleader's. That footage allowed the police to identify him and eventually arrest him.

From what the authorities have told us, he's looking at several years in prison.

Honestly, I find that pleasantly surprising, given how weak the Argentine legal system often is. But as far as I'm concerned, this asshole and the family that now has to make do without him got exactly what they deserved. I won't shed a goddamn tear for him or anyone else affected by his choices.

So, is the threat over? Not in Córdoba City. When one asshole falls, another one rises. I'm pretty sure I've said that before, and I have no doubt I'll say it again.

For now, all we can do is finish preparing the property and hopefully get some tenants moved in. In fact, we're hoping to have it rented within the next couple of weeks.

Only time will tell if things finally go our way.

Renovations, Broken Dreams, and a Whole Lot of Frustration (Part 1)

I haven't been posting much lately, and there's a reason for that. A couple of things have happened over the past few months that have really taken a toll on my emotional well-being. One of them revolves around a renovation project we've been doing on one of our vacant properties, which I'll call House Alpha.

After the previous tenants moved out last November, my folks and I spent several weeks discussing what to do with the house. My idea was simple. Sell it and use the money to buy another property as soon as possible.

Unfortunately, my parents originally paid around $80,000 USD for the house back in 2007. In today's Argentine real estate market, we'd probably only get about $40,000 USD for it if we're lucky.

I also had a personal reason for wanting to sell. The fact that it never happened is one of the biggest reasons I've been feeling so angry and depressed.

You see, all of the properties are in my parents' names. Adding my name to the title would be expensive as hell in Argentina. In fact, it would cost so much that we'd practically have to sell one property just to add me to the deed of another. Since we own several properties, that simply wasn't realistic.

However, if we had sold House Alpha, we could have purchased another property and put both my husband's name and mine on the title.

Officially becoming homeowners would have given us a lot more leverage when it came to adopting a child, something I've wanted for many, many years.

Earlier this year, my mom and I had a long conversation about why becoming homeowners meant so much to me. She was genuinely excited about the idea of me becoming a father and her becoming a grandmother someday.

But, as has often been the case with major decisions involving my parents, the sale never happened.

What hurt the most wasn't even the decision itself. It was the fact that they made it without talking to me first. To say I was beyond pissed would be an understatement.

Did I hate them a little?

TRY A LOT!

I honestly don't know if I'll ever completely forgive either of them for this. However, at the end of the day, my relationship with my parents has been more business than family for the last twenty-five years. It wasn't always that way, but it gradually became our reality a few years before they left the United States to retire in Córdoba, Argentina.

Looking back, I know I shouldn't have counted on them to help make our dream of expanding our family a reality.

So, after accepting yet another heartbreaking disappointment since moving to Argentina, I waited to see what they planned to do with the property.

Well, guess what? Instead of selling it, they decided to renovate it.

The house is fairly large for a family of four. Definitely nowhere near Kardashian-sized, but spacious enough. Their plan was to divide it into two separate units. A one-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment on one side and a smaller two-bedroom, one-bathroom home on the other.

A lot of money has gone into this renovation.

The company they hired to repair years of humidity and water damage—and to divide the house into two units—would only accept payment in U.S. dollars.

That was an immediate red flag for me.

Most Argentine contractors don't normally operate exclusively in dollars, but I'm pretty sure my father opened his big mouth and mentioned that we were from the United States. Unfortunately, some people hear "American" and immediately assume, "Oh... they must be rich."

I've been checking on the property as the renovations have progressed over the last couple of months, and let me tell you... it's been painfully slow and incredibly expensive.

If I'm being completely honest, the quality of the work doesn't come close to matching the amount of money we've paid the company and its workers.

Removing plants that had begun growing on the roof was a top priority because they were causing cracks, allowing water and moisture to seep inside. 

This, in effect, raised the humidity levels in the house, which resulted in damage to the walls and mold build-up. 

The workers installed several layers of what appear to be metal panels designed to provide additional protection against moisture. You can see them in the first photo I added to this post. I'm not sure if it's going to work, but I guess we'll see as time goes by.

As of July 2026, they've finished most of the work on the main house, but they still have to build an entirely new roof over the apartment. The reason for this is fairly simple. We enclosed what used to be the backyard to create additional living space for the new unit.

It's a motherfucking work in progress, but you get the idea.

We also had to trim back several large tree branches. Part of that was because the municipality insisted on it, but it was also the smart thing to do. The branches had become so large that a strong storm could easily have snapped them, sending them crashing into the house and causing serious damage.

All things considered, it looked like my parents were finally going to get what they wanted.

Then everything went sideways.

Vandalism.

And that's where Part 2 of this ongoing frustration begins.