That was my first thought, too. But not in this case…
From the homeowner’s point of view, though? I’m sure it seems stolen to her, since she was about to sell it along with the house…
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I do agree that the term stolen is accurate, but I still find it strange to use here. I suppose that is what makes the headline intriguing.
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Exactly, agreed. And, I would think, the majority of people seeing a headline like that will identify more with the homeowner than with the contractor or the scammer
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Maybe the driveway was made up of paving slabs which the guy has stolen. He then hires another company to replace the driveway without paying them which creates confusion over what is going on.
25 or 30 years ago a crew showed up on a philadelphia street, a small one, & they proceeded to take digging bars & picks to the cobblestones. They yanked up & hauled off the entire street. They weren’t city workers. I don’t think they ever found out who did it.
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THIS.
While I paid several hundred bucks for an inspection on the house I bought (which reported a number of things that I’ve since fixed over the last ten years), there were a number of things that were never really found until we started digging (in at least two cases, literally) that turned out to be pretty expensive. (Spoiler: both of them involved the drain system of the house.)
Other things were just items that had been half- or even quarter-assed ‘remodel’ work. As an example: the kitchen was ‘remodeled’ in probably early 2004, and the extent of that was to remove the countertop on the original cabinet carcasses, and put a granite countertop in place.
The doors on the cabinets were all removed and replaced with pre-made, ill-fitting doors sourced from… somewhere, and tile was installed around the cabinets, resulting in a lovely gap which made replacing the dishwasher a pain in the butt.
The tiled walls, with a simple floral pattern, also probably dating from the 60’s? Spray painted white. A literal “krylon rebuild” (from the automotive world), and a sloppy one at that.
I could go on further, but that will turn into a rant and I’m trying to start this year on a positive mental state. (it’s not been a good start, I might add. 
)
It could have been someone who was sick of potholes finally taking direct action to force the city to ‘fix’ the problem by replacing the entire street? /sarcasm
(Personally, I’d rather go the route of learning how to patch small holes in asphalt and just patch the damn things rather then hire a demo crew to rip out the whole thing…)
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Sounds like our place. The previous owners made some poor life choices and we get to pay for it … a lot. It’s actually a nice house, it just needs a lot of attention. Like you, we knew it was going to need work, but we were a little mislead as to how much it needed. (Although we’re not planning to sell.)
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One house I looked at had been “worked” on to the extent that the drawer fronts in the kitchen came off when I tried opening them.
And more on topic, bricks with stamps from particular brickworks are very popular and can bring a pretty penny, so I can easily see a brick driveway being pried out and hauled away.
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