Tag Archives: home ownership

Revisiting a deep subject…

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I’ve had my share of well issues over the last three years. I’d never have guessed the easy one would have been that time two years ago when I suddenly started pumping sand up from deep below the front yard. Raising the pump a dozen feet solved that problem and for a while I was back to enjoying clear, sweet water from the depths. 

That continued to be true right up until I started seeing the infamous “black specks.” Those specks, upon closer inspection, included legs, antenna, and various other ant pieces that made their way down to the pump and through the filters. That led to installing bigger, badder filters to mitigate the flow and hiring a series of pest control experts to eliminate the problem at the source. I sent the exterminators packing when their proposed solution was seeding the entire yard with bait stations and dumping the industrial equivalent of Raid into my primary water source.

After those three consultations, I knew I was on the hunt for a mechanical solution. The best possible course of action, replacing the well cap, has been in the works for nine months – with my go to plumbers scouring the supply warehouses of the world for the right replacement cap. I only put them on the job after I failed miserably over a period of weeks at finding the right parts. You wouldn’t think finding a cap or even just a replacement gasket for a four inch well would be so difficult, but it’s gone on for three quarters of a year. After much waiting and burning through many filter cartridges, they arrived today with a shiny new 4-inch well cap… that didn’t quite fit. 

Their work through most of the morning, did confirm that after 23 years sitting out in the weather, the gasket on my original cap was quite literally falling apart and undoubtedly what was letting an army of tiny ants into the well every spring. The caulk and duct tape expedient solution applied late last summer was also failing – surely it didn’t look up to withstanding another ant onslaught.

I’m pleased to report that after about three hours of tinkering, a bit of unexpected electrical work to change how power enters the well, and not a little bit of swearing and cursing, I have a brand spanking new well cap with a perfectly intact gasket that has a pretty good chance of resolving my ant problem. We’ll see what things look like when temperatures start climbing into the 70s and 80s. I would dearly love to think that this problem is well and truly resolved, but I’m weighing that hope against almost three years of experience at being disappointed after each new “fix” was applied.

It should be the right solution… in theory. I’m still not throwing away my filter pitchers, bottles, and cartridges. 

Gutter related bullshit…

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I’ve been fighting with the gutters on this house since more or less the first weekend I moved in. One of the very first things that needed doing was clearing out a 10- or 12-foot segment that wasn’t so much a tool for draining water as it was a prelude to a roof garden. Living in a house surrounded on three sides by 80-foot oaks, you learn to accept keeping gutters clean is a never-ending bit of work. For me it has meant twice a year professional cleanings and periodic unclogging as needed in between.

The place came pre-installed with basic plastic gutter guards. By the time I took up residence, some were broken or missing or warped out of shape and making nuisances of themselves. At best they were a 50% solution, but I limped along with them, replacing individual pieces as needed. This year, during various high wind and heavy rain events, it seems whole sections of the rainwater management system have just given up the ghost. This past Sunday I had water pouring over the top of the gutters in at least three spots. That’s not ideal.

Hiring someone to, at a minimum, install a new set of metal leaf guards was near the top of next year’s home improvement list. Given that the existing gutters were clogged Sunday evening about 36 hours after I had cleaned them out and verified that they were running properly, getting resolution on this is now formally a “this year” problem. Getting through what’s left of the fall and then a long, cold winter with the current set up feels untenable.

So, instead of schlepping up the ladder and replacing another series of broken or mutilated bits of plastic, I’ve done what I do best – I hired a professional to rip it all down, give me brand spanking new larger gutters and cap them with perforated metal covers. It wasn’t a planned expense for this year, but getting it done right instead of applying another patch to patched patches is probably the better use of time and money. Sure, it’ll still need some periodic maintenance, but I’m cautiously optimistic that this could be the beginning of the end of seven years of gutter related bullshit.

I should file this solidly under “the joy of home ownership.”

The last project of 2022 (probably)…

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I started 2022 with a long list of projects that needed doing. Some were minor and I managed to knock them off one by one as the months crept past. Others – some electrical work, replacing the well filters, the gut and redo on my bathroom, and maintenance on the exterior trim work – were all things I opted to farm out to more competent hands.

The painters, at long last, were here yesterday. It wasn’t a particularly big project, but it involved a level of detailed effort and agility atop a ladder that I’m decidedly not able to deliver. Still, it was badly in need of doing. All the front windows needed recalked, the steel lentils above each window and the garage doors needed to be scraped, primed, and repainted, a deeply weathered wooden door frame needed a bit of patching and a fresh coat of paint, and lastly the iron pipe that keeps the generator fueled was beginning to wear through its original battleship gray.

I’m working from the assumption that all of those bits, except for the last one, probably haven’t been looked after since the house was built in 2000. The previous owners gave it good bones, but as they aged, it was obvious basic maintenance was let go. I’m told that’s something that tends to happen with older home owners. God preserve me from living through such a fate.

I’ve slowly worked through taking the multitude of deferred maintenance problems in hand. It was an impressively long list that included fixing the entire drainage scheme for the back yard, bricking up an undrained window well, replacing the furnace, clearing the shrubbery that at one time grew in the gutters, and a whole host of other smaller efforts. It’s taken the better part of eight years, but I’m pretty much done with the things that were on my original list. 

Aside from keeping up with the preventative maintenance now that it’s caught up, there’s the large and growing list of new projects that I want to take on. The air conditioning condenser unit is 22 years old. The carpet in the master bedroom and sunroom is warn and approaching tatty. The kitchen could use a bit of a refresh. Before long the roof will reach the end of its service life. Those are just the known projects. Rumsfeld’s unknown unknowns are always lurking out there waiting to spring a surprise bit of home repair on me when they’re least expected or wanted.

I haven’t formally decided what’s next. If I can keep the air conditioner blowing through one more season, I’d like to take on some worrisome limbs that overhang the house and trees that have grown a bit too close. That’s probably the top of my wish list for 2023. Well, that, or really getting someone in here who can diagnose why my gutters suck and giving me a plan to fix them once and for all. 

As it turns out, the vast array of projects as a homeowner never actually ends, you just decide at some point to take a break. That’s absolutely where I am now.

A mark on the wall…

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I signed the contract for my bathroom renovation back in September. A few days before Christmas I got an email from the contractor stating that all supplies are backlogged, half the employees are out with the Great Plague, and every project they have is running way, way behind. Here we are in May, five months hence, and I’ve finally talked to the company’s operations manager and have a tentative start date plugged into the calendar towards the end of the month. At long last, there’s a mark on the wall.

Look, I’ve loathed the master bathroom in this house since the first time I saw the place. I almost took a pass on the house because of it. The giant tub and no shower made it mostly dead space to me. For the last seven years it has been serving as a glorified hallway where I kept the cat’s food and litter box and that I have to walk through to get to the master closet. Aside from the very big windows facing the woods and excellent natural lighting, it has no redeeming qualities at all. The room is cold as blue hell in the winter and for reasons I’ve never managed to figure out, has no particular aesthetic at all. It’s as if the original owners realized three days before they finished construction that they needed a master bathroom and scrounged up whatever parts and pieces they could on short notice.

I’m not saying this new bathroom is going to be particularly beautiful, but it’s damned well going to be functional. I’m cautiously optimistic that the designer (probably) didn’t let me get the overall look and feel too far out of whack. I mean it all looks good enough on the renderings, but there’s no way of telling what it’s really going to look like until it’s all there live and in person… which now looks like it’ll be sooner rather than later.

My fingers are firmly crossed in hopes that I haven’t spent tens of thousands of dollars on something I’ll hate once it’s all thrown together… Though the simple fact that I won’t have to schlep down the hall to shit, shower, and shave every morning will go a long way in making it a favorable outcome. Being able to do it all with toasty warm floor tiles will probably seal the deal regardless of appearance… and then I can rack and stack the list again and see what project is next.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. As I was sitting in the doctor’s waiting room, I couldn’t help but observe one of my fellow patients, a full gown adult woman, who had kicked off her shoes and was “sitting” with her feet all over the damned chair. Maybe it shouldn’t have filled me with absolute burning rage, but it did. I don’t appear out in the world very often so I can’t exactly pinpoint when adult humans completely lost the thread about how to behave in public, but I’m sure this small incident was just a symptom of a broader problem both with the individual and with the wider society. I’m trying to imagine a situation where I’d be comfortable taking off my shoes and putting my feet all over God knows what. Maybe I should just be happy she managed to change out of her pajamas before she left her house. I’d question whether I could set the bar for decent behavior any lower, but we all know there’s obviously no lower limit to what people will do if they have no personal sense of dignity, decorum nor propriety and there are no obvious consequences for shit behavior.

2. Spam texts. My phone is currently being overrun with spam text messages. I’m getting a dozen or more of them a day. Is it the Russians trying to do a bit of fundraising? Don’t know. Don’t care. The first person to devise a way to get it to stop and keep it stopped should get $1 Billion tax free and the chance to sleep with the damned prom queen.

3. Gutters. I have them cleaned religiously every year. I have leaf guards installed. I’ve even had the pitch corrected on a couple of sections. Somehow, they continue to clog on what I can only call a regular basis. Two or three times a year I can count on water shooting off the roof and cascading down the outside of the house. It happens almost invariable after spending hundreds of dollars doing spring prep and therefore has the added perk of washing out some significant section of fresh mulch. Short of hiring someone to clean the gutters as often as some people hire people to clean their homes, I’m quickly running out of good ideas to mitigate this particular joy of home ownership.

Be not afraid…

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It’s hard to miss all the current reporting on the growing impact of inflation on the overall economy. Even without the reporting, rapidly rising prices for petrol, food, and other consumer goods, the impact of our inflationary economy would be hard to miss. 

Most of the major news outlets paint a worrying picture – particularly for retirees, anyone sitting on a lot of cash (in a savings account or in certificates of deposit, for instance), or those who loaded up on variable rate debt (like your average credit card). That’s a fair concern, but it’s only part of the bigger picture.

If you happen to be a homeowner – especially one who locked in a mortgage when fixed interest rates drifted down under 3% – inflation gives you the bonus of paying back your loan on an appreciating asset with devalued dollars. If you happen to be holding equities as opposed to cash (including things like 401k, IRA, and other retirement savings vehicles), values should largely increase as the cash value of the underlying companies is inflated. All of that, of course, presupposes that your income also paces the rate of inflation, or at least doesn’t entirely stagnate during a period of sustained inflationary pressure.

I’m obviously not calling for a return to the bad old days of inflation, sky high interest rates, and 10% unemployment… but by read is that there are things out there a hell of a lot more frightening than a little pop of inflation every now and then, so for the time being my motto is “be not afraid.”

Becoming those people…

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Six years ago today the spot where I’m sitting to write this was covered by a stack of boxes freshly hauled inside by three guys from Allied Van Lines. If you find yourself in a position to move your entire household after the age of about 30, I promise you hiring the job out is absolutely worth the money. You’ll have plenty of time to throw out your back moving furniture into just the right spot or lugging boxes once they’re already in the house. Moving is chaotic enough without personally schlepping every item you own in from the curb.

For most of these last six years, every spring has involved a minor crusade against the green algae that appears inevitably on the north and east sides of the house. Usually, it was a minor annoyance that could be beaten back with a good scrub brush, a hose, a few helpful chemicals, and half an afternoon of concerted effort. It’s not the kind of yard work that’s particularly fun, but necessary for the sake of keeping up appearances.

Over the last year or two, the algae has been creeping higher than can comfortably be reached, even with a ladder. Worse yet, the roof is now showing undeniable signs that good growth of moss is starting to take hold. I love my woods full of old oaks and poplar, but this is one of the inevitable inconveniences – and not one of those that can be remedied by ignoring it until it goes away on its own. 

I’ve long since gotten too old and fat to risk falling off my own roof… a result that feels almost inevitable if I were fool enough to take on the job myself. Since I’m going to have the roof done, I might as well let them take on the gutters while there here. The fascia and soffit are filthy too. The algae needs taken care of. Since there’s a spot of it up towards the gable end, they might as well deal with that while the equipment’s already going to be here.

Yeah. I’ve apparently become one of those people… but at least the exterior of the old place will look better than it has since I took over the management here. Even if that means I’ve got to pay someone to scrub the place from roof peak to foundation.

Take it where you find it…

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After ten months of watching interest rates plummet through previously unimaginable record lows, I’ve finally stuck out my hand in an effort to catch the falling knife. Almost six years ago, I was thrilled to lock in 4.25% for 30 years. I’d taken 7.5% back in 2001when I bought my St. Mary’s County condo. At the time, that was a steal – especially for a 23-year-old with no significant credit history. I refinanced that one a few times over the years and the shopped around for financing for the Tennessee house in 2007. I closed on that one about three months before the bottom fell out of the housing market in 2008. Good timing, that.

I’d gotten used to being able to move through the mortgage process pretty effortlessly. I have every conceivable piece of electronic paperwork the underwriters may need at my fingertips – often sending it off before the call asking for it even ended. I’m still good for that, but the mortgage business itself is having a bit of a struggle at the moment. Just getting a broker to call me back proved to be more of a challenge than you might think. I suppose it’s a case of having an embarrassment of riches as everyone is racing to their favorite banker to take advantage of the unprecedentedly low rates. I was warned that getting through to closing, usually a 30-day affair, could take up to 90 days because of how much of a backlog they already have in the pipeline. The rate is locked in, with an option to go lower if they should continue to fall, but now that I’ve started the process, I’m impatient to start getting my monthly savings.

Plague, famine, sedition are all loose upon the world. Maybe we’re all going to hell in a handbag. It’s important to take your happiness where you can find it in strange times, so damned if I’m not going to appreciate a blisteringly low interest rate with no points on the way to the collapse of civilization.

The plastic doohickey…

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I inherited all the major appliances here when I bought the house. They’re all 20 years old and serviceable, so I haven’t been in a wild rush to replace anything. That said, though, I’ve hated the refrigerator from the day I moved in. The damned thing looks huge, but interior space is cut up and awkward. There have always been drawers that never seemed to sit level, shelves that were supposed to slide but didn’t, and an inexplicable missing piece of glass shelving that I replaced early on with a thick piece of plexiglass (because I’m too cheap to pay Maytag prices for a panel of tempered glass). 

The whole contraption went to pieces last week. The crisper drawers wouldn’t push in all the way, two shelves were wildly askew, and you could forget about anything sitting level. It was at some point during the great unpacking of the fridge that I discovered there was very clearly a missing piece somewhere in the middle of the mess. Whatever this missing bit was, it was obviously the lynchpin on which all of the slides and drawers depended to operate correctly.

The manuals for all these appliances are long gone, but thanks to the power of the interwebs, I was able to pull up some schematics and identify the missing bit through the process of elimination. So, after ordering up a $26 plastic doohickey, a couple of days shipping time, and once again pulling 75% of my refrigerated items out of the refrigerator, it’s all now working the way it should have done from the beginning. Reaching in for George’s spring mix is no longer an exercise in playing early morning Jenga, so that’s a thing I’ve got going for me now.

Mostly, the saga of the refrigerator leaves me wondering how the geriatrics I bought the house from lost both the oversized glass shelf and this particular bit of plastic in the first place. Alas, that will remain an unsolved mystery unless the ghost of the previous lady of the house starts leaving me spectral clues as to what tragedy befell them here.

Taking care of #2…

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There are whole books written about the “joy of home ownership.” Depending on the day you ask me, I’ll probably question whether the person talking about that has actually ever owned a home. The joy of having a roof over your head is surely tempered by the random bullshit of air conditioner repairs, flooded basements, trees falling, clogged drains, and the myriad other everyday problems that come along with owning a house. More than once I’ve thought wistfully about the ease of apartment living. File a work order with the office and things got fixed – eventually – although the “eventually” added its own degree of aggravation.

Today’s adventure in home ownership is the semi-regular pumping of the septic tank. It’s a necessity, of course, but there’s something disheartening about paying good money to haul your own feces out of a hole in the back yard. Then again, it may be best not to spend much time pondering on the fact that there is, in fact, a hole filled with feces in your back yard to begin with. Probably something that’s not worth dwelling on until it’s absolutely necessary.

Whether you’ve running your own waste disposal site or you’re on town water and sewer, you end up paying for the ability to poop indoors one way or another. If you’re lucky the basic maintenance won’t lead to needing to throw even more money literally down the sewer. The number of basic home maintenance projects I’ve undertaken that haven’t resulted in sprawling mission creep you can probably count on one hand.

I’ll be the first to admit that indoor plumbing is one of the most undercelebrated features of the modern world, but making sure it all stays in working order feels like the polar opposite of the joy of home ownership.