Bees, I need some advice:

We are renting a beautiful home in Portland. We are the first renters (our landlords owned and lived in the home for 10 years before relocating). Whenever there are little issues, I try excusing them since they're very new at the whole landlord thing. Like, they take 3 weeks to cash our rent checks (UGHHH!).

Our home was advertised as a two bedroom, 2,400 sqft. house. The upstairs is 1,200 + a basement. The basement is mostly unfinished, but has a room that's nearly finished. It had carpet, drywall, can lighting, ceiling, etc. We offered to paint it & do finishing touches so we could move in earlier. Our plan was to use it for visitors once our baby arrives in January. It's perfect.

Two months ago, Portland got a CRAZY rain storm. Our basement took on a lot of water, and the carpet in the room was saturated. We dealt with it all ourselves. After the carpet started drying (we borrowed fans & dehumidifiers from friends), we noticed mold all over. The landlords gave my husband permission to pull up the carpet.

He pulled up the carpet, sanitized the floors, scraped the glue, cleaned the space, cut the carpet into sections & taped it all up to be hauled away. It's still in our backyard, and our landlords will not respond to us about the next steps.

We are 6 weeks from my due date ... the room is a mess. No flooring, no baseboards (they were damaged), no paint, can lights are still unfinished.

Am I wrong to assume that as a part of our property we're paying for, they should replace the carpet?? Sure, the house is only a 2 bedroom, BUT it's still space we are paying for. If our stove or refrigerator died, they'd have to replace it.

We are willing to do ALL of the work, which I think is more than they should expect, and we're getting really frustrated that our emails & texts are not being returned.

What should we do? We're tempted to go out & buy some cheap carpet ourselves, do all of the work, then deduct the price of the materials from our next rent check. I feel like their lack of response is forcing us to do something! I don't want to ruin the relationship (because it's really great so far), but I feel ignored, and that they are really dropping the ball.