Business Flip!Flip Business Flip

Photo by Chris Desmond // Buy this photo

The Ranja’s home in Lakeland has vaulted ceilings in the great room with hardwood floors.

Photo by Chris Desmond
Buy this photo »

The Ranja’s home in Lakeland features 3,000 square feet located in an established neighborhood with a country feel to the surroundings.

Photo by Chris Desmond
Buy this photo »

The eat-in kitchen, with its brushed nickel hardware, pickleld oak cabinets and ceramic tile floors, is where the family loves to hang out. “We spend probably 90 percent of our time in this little area,” Nora Ranja said.

Photo by Chris Desmond
Buy this photo »

An eat-in area opens to a cozy keeping room just large enough for a sofa, chair and TV that’s visible from the kitchen.

It’s a dream and a nightmare all rolled into one.

When Nora and Umer Ranjha found and then bought the ideal house for their growing family, they had no idea what lurked beneath it.

Which was, basically, shifting dirt.

“We recently found out our house is sinking,” Nora said about the family’s five-bedroom, four and a half-bath home in Lakeland’s Woodbridge subdivision.

The Ranjhas knew their backyard, which slopes down along a series of tiered retaining walls, needed some work. But they had no idea how much.

“We knew there was a sinkhole and the ground was settling,” Umer said.

“We thought it’d be a matter of getting some sand or dirt and filling it up,” Nora added.

What they didn’t realize was that the problem went much deeper. Umer learned what was happening when, about three months ago, he noticed work being done in a neighbor’s backyard. Curious, he went by to ask what was going on.

“They were digging ditches and making holes, and I wondered what was wrong with it,” Umer said. “So I stopped one day and said, ‘Hey, I need some work done in my backyard — drainage and retaining walls.’ They said they were actually foundation fixers.”

The work crew asked Umer a few questions and offered to take a look at the Ranjhas yard.

“And lo and behold, they said, ‘You have cracks in your foundation,’” Umer said. “We’d seen some cracks when we were looking at the house, but nothing beyond what was normal.”

That’s because the real cracks had been covered up. The workers showed Umer where a previous owner had patched cracks in the home’s brick exterior with mortar, then painted over the original brick. Ironically, the painted brick was the one feature of the home the couple hadn’t liked when they viewed the house.

The problem, the Ranjhas have since learned, relates to drainage. Rather than draining properly, water pools in front of the home when it rains.

“It goes under the flower beds, under the slab and comes out the back,” Umer said. “It seemed that instead of doing proper drainage, the builder built heavier slabs, which over a period of time actually compounded the issue. Not only is water not draining, but that heavier slab is pushing down on unstable ground, making it more unstable.”

The same problem has occurred with at least six more houses along the Ranjhas’ street, Umer said. Luckily, the problem is fixable, and the couple is taking steps to have the foundation repaired and a proper drainage system installed.

And they plan to stay in the 7-year-old house, which they bought last May for $204,900, for years to come. Nora, who was pregnant at the time with twins Haadi and Haniyah, had been searching online home listings in her spare time.

“I would always peruse Realtor.com just for fun, especially when I got pregnant, even though we had no real intention of moving. We were just going to kind of make it work,” she said.

At the time, the couple lived in a 1,700-square-foot house in Cordova’s Cumberland Farms neighborhood, which they shared with their 6-year-old son Hamza, as well as Umer’s mother and brother.

When Nora happened upon the listing for what is now the family’s home, she was instantly intrigued by one feature.

“It had four and a half baths, whereas a lot of houses of this size or even bigger have three and a half,” she said. “And with his mom living with us, we wanted that extra bath.”

Nora watched the bank-owned house over a period of several months, during which the price dropped twice. When she was eight months pregnant, she became convinced the family needed to take the plunge.

“I was getting stressed out, just that nesting instinct, about where we were going to put two cribs, two high chairs,” she said. “I said, ‘We’re going to buy this house. We need it.’”

So she contacted friend and Realtor Stephen Mansour of Re/Max On Track, who helped the Ranjhas through the purchase. Rather than selling their former Cordova home, however, the couple now rents it to Umer’s brother.

Apart from its exterior issues, the new home is ideally suited for the family’s needs.

An arched doorway off the wide entry leads to a formal dining room. The entry opens to a spacious formal living room, which features a corner fireplace and a large picture window that lets in a lot of natural light.

The adjacent kitchen contains pickled oak cabinetry with brushed nickel hardware, ceramic tile floors and a two-seater breakfast bar. An eat-in area opens to a cozy keeping room just large enough for a sofa, chair and TV that’s visible from the kitchen.

“We spend probably 90 percent of our time in this little area,” Nora said.

And although she said it’s “great that we’re not on top of each other anymore,” Nora and Umer agreed there’s one drawback to having so much space — 3,200 square feet in this case.

“We’re not on top of each other, but at the same time, we’re quite distant,” said Umer, a native of Pakistan who works in information technology for Evergreen Packaging. “Before, if I wanted to talk to Nora or Hamza, I could stick my head out the door and talk. Now I’m shouting across the house. So it goes both ways.”

“It’s something we’ve had to get used to,” added Nora, who was born and raised in Memphis and works as a document management specialist for American Home Shield, a division of ServiceMaster.

But they are thrilled with the home’s floor plan, which includes a small bedroom and bath just across from the downstairs master suite that’s perfect for the twins, as well as a split upstairs floor plan that allows privacy for Umer’s mother, Mahmooda Ranjha.

Umer also got a feature he really wanted: a large upstairs media room.

Nora, for her part, loves the layout, the closet space, the extra half bath and the fact that the kids will go to Lakeland schools.

“It was perfect for the babies; it was perfect for Umer’s mom,” she said.

And once it’s on stable ground, it’ll be perfect all-around.

Similar Posts:

• My New Home: First-time homebuyer decides on a larger space, in a location close to family, work
• My New Home: Worth the wait
• My New Home: Impossible house
• Builder of the Week: Go large with digs in Tipton
• Builder of the Week: Park-side living a rarity