CHESAPEAKE, Va. (WAVY) – The reality for a local U.S. Navy couple is walking across their kitchen and worrying they won’t make it to the other side. They loved the house when they bought it two years ago, but then it became unlivable.

Victoria Bullard and her husband Christopher Edmunds were excited about becoming homeowners in 2020. He was in Bahrain aboard the USS Bainbridge, and she was deployed to Diego Garcia, so for most of the process of buying the house in Deep Creek, they were overseas.

It was smooth sailing at first as they made their house a home, but last October, their hopes for the house began to sink. The floors were starting to bow. In January, it got worse when the floor began to crumble away.

During a Friday morning interview with 10 On Your Side, the sound of crackling wood was heard where Bullard was standing near a large hole in the kitchen floor.

Bullard moved to an adjacent closet and was able to poke her finger through the floor and said she’s “not putting any effort on it.”

As horrifying as it is, the rotting wood was not a total surprise.

Bullard and Edmonds got a termite inspection and a home inspection before closing. Their paperwork calls for the repair and replacement of rotted wood in the crawl space.

Bullard says the sellers were realtors themselves, and then she and her husband had their own realtor.

“With two realtors involved — the seller and our realtor — we felt like due diligence wasn’t done because we weren’t told, ‘Hey, there’s more wood rot under the house,'” Bullard said.

She says had she and her husband known of the extent of the problem, they would have had the option to back out of the deal.

They’ve already sunk $280,000 into the house just buying it, and now, the repairs will run at least $18,000 more.

“I don’t think it’s fair that we have to come out-of-pocket with the money that we’ve earned from the military from being deployed,” Bullard said.

The couple are talking with an attorney and looking for any help they can get to make things right. The realtor says they turned over the paperwork to the attorney. We’ve reached out to the home inspector and will update this story with any response.