These are words that no one wants to hear when one is sticking to a budget and digging out change from the peanut butter jar to spring for milk at the end a long month......"Mom! Somethings leaking from the furnace....".
The first word out of my mouth started with mother and ended with something that sounds like trucker. We never get a friggin' break when it comes to this house!! It's been endless home owner pain from buying a fixer upper from a previous owner that jury rigged everything from the counters to the electrical to the roofing to the plumbing. Its been a nightmare from the word go.
In our first month that we lived here, the dishwasher and the central vac broke...complete replacement. The cost of replacing the carpeting that we negotiated into the deal went over budget when it was discovered that there were three layers of carpeting, with the last layer glued to the concrete foundation to keep it in place, I guess. We also discovered that the oil tank needed replacing after our first delivery of oil....there is an expiry on these things and ours was spoiled.
Too bad the home inspector missed this stuff, along with the glass windowed death trap of a door that we have between our garage and our home (think Carbon Monoxide poisoning that could kill us all), and the improper sheathing on our roof (anyone standing on our roof would have noticed), and the electrical additions made by someone clearly not qualified. Our panel is messed up and we frequently have plugs blow out on us. The wiring to our closet is backwards and we can only get the outside house lights to go on, if the closet light in our master bedroom is on too.
He also missed two leaking showers, one so filled with black mold that once the plastic fix up job was removed, its a wonder we haven't all come down with pleurisy since. Both of the showers leak since the previous owner forgot to solder the pipes when he installed one into a corner of the washroom and the other when he converted a bathroom closet into a shower. We have been able to fix one, but the other just remains shut off until we can afford to fix it. Having one shower for a family of five, with tween girls sucks. Not to mention that none of our 2.5 bathrooms had any electrical outlets in them, so for the first two years, we had to blow dry hair in the dining room.
We had stolen cable, and phone lines that were split throughout the house to make way for cable and phone lines in every room....including one phone jack right next to the toilet.....just in case you need to make a call while taking a crap and a cable line into my lazy susan, just in case the macaroni doesn't want to miss an episode of Ellen.
Last fall, our home forever changed my career path from one of business owner to employee. It also brought my marriage as close to a breaking point that I think any marriage can bear. Luckily we survived to see another year but I don't think we are alone in having a house drive a wedge between a couple.
We put off dealing with the roof for as long as we could. That is until our insurance company insisted that it be replaced by the end of 2011 or we could forgo our insurance coverage. We did all the right things, got quotes from recommended roofers and eavestroughers, made the big decision with what company to go with and set the date. What we didn't know is that a perfect storm of hell was awaiting us and there wasn't a damn thing we could do about it.
Since the previous roofing had been done by the previous homeowner, who from here on in I will refer to as Jackass, we never had troughing that actually worked. When it rained, all of the water flowed somewhat evenly around the house, never actually entering the roofing system or being directed into the underground leaders.
When the new roofing was completed, just in time for a record breaking amount of rainfall the East Coast has ever seen, the eavestroughing worked for the first time, redirecting all of the copious amounts of water into the existing underground leaders that were never checked by the company to see if they were overgrown with tree roots, or plugged with leaves or damaged in any way. What this resulted in, was a naturally occurring Niagara Falls pointed directly at our basement, which in turn flooded and damaged our main living areas, our daughters bedrooms, my office (business requirement) and the only bathroom with working shower we have.
Keep in mind that this whole train wreck of events was instigated by our insurance company...certainly they would have our back. The first words out of the representatives mouth as I panic stricken relayed our rising floodwater situation to her were, "Maam....you best get your belongings out of the basement as quickly as possible since this here policy only covers up to $10,000 of damage and the tear out alone is often between 5,000 and 7,000, not including any replacement of belongings or rebuild."
Think mother....think trucker. The following day, the roofing company relayed its bad news too. In a little field trip up to my roof, I was shown that if I did a little tap dance across the main part of my roof, I could take a little trip down through into my attic. The previous sheathing has been put up by Jackass, all of the plywood was different, some of it with major gaps in between, some with little pieces fit together like something you would see on Tetris.
I was informed that the plywood would cost us an additional $7000 on top of a roofing job already priced at $18,000. I contacted Home Depot and asked them what the required amount of plywood would cost me....$500. After some lengthy discussions with my roofer and some threats that he would walk off the job, he squeezed $1000 off the bill. Apparently, he felt bad about the flooding situation and decided to do us a favour. Never mind that we were between a rock and a hard place, with another big rainstorm on the way and no friggin' roof on the house AT ALL!!
Day three of the triumvirate week from Hell finished off with our family van and my business vehicle dying...cracked block, all gaskets gone, not worth replacing. We did not know it at the time, but we were about to be $35,000 in debt, adding $300 a month in car payments, and living in our upstairs surrounded by all of our furniture piled on top of one another crammed into two bedrooms for the next 2.5 months and me with no job since I needed the house and the van to run my catering business.
A big part of the reason why the Austerity Measures budget began in our house was to begin dealing with our debt. The budget we set was to aggressively pay it all off in 2.5 years since we knew that there would be other things....like the kitchen with the state of the art cardboard cabinetry that has a plastic finish that continues to chip off and cut us when reaching for the breakfast cereal.
It's not just that either.......the whole kitchen needs to be gutted, the floor slopes a good two feet at one side and we have 2 x 4 's to level the fridge. There is a section of linoleum cut out in one corner that has never been replaced and acts a sucking vortex of all manner of dust bunnies and disgusting food remnants that get caught up in it. We have two plugs that have been replaced by an electrician twice that keep blowing on us...think Jackass.
We have painted 1970's tile as decor and the lighting consists of a white rattan ceiling fan....which I recommend if you want to collect and then spray dust over top of your food as garnish whenever you turn it on. We clean it, but a ceiling fan is a really stupid lighting choice for a kitchen. I'm lucky I don't cut off my own fingers with the amount of light it puts off since it is also positioned as far away from the counter as possible. Or maybe it could be that the counters aren't level at all...its hard to tell.
We also have our "spa bathroom", the one with the closet shower that doesn't work. Did I mention that it also includes a truck sized jacuzzi tub that was installed by Jackass and juts out into the hallway and the guest room. There isn't a week that goes by that I don't bruise my shins wandering into the bathroom in the am when I am not quite awake.
We have two different hardwoods in our living room/dining room space....it wouldn't be so bad if Jackass had laid them in the same friggin' direction....but no, he must have been drinking that day because the maple one ends right in the foyer for everyone to see and then heads off in a different direction in oak. To top it all of we have cherry laminate that connects to it in two of our bedrooms and prison coloured grey tile in the third bedroom. Good thing Jackass installed the tile too, with 2 inch grout lines that give it that "homey" feel.
We have two decks, one you can stand on for now and one that you can't unless you are feeling a little dangerous. Both were installed with no footers, are not actually attached to the house and have three 2 x 4 's nailed together as supports. On top of it, they were painted and despite our attempts to keep it looking freshly painted and nice, it requires bucket loads of paint every summer to keep up with it. Who paints decks?!!! Jackass, that's who.
We need all new windows and doors, especially doors. Our patio door is so hard to open that you could get a hernia while trying to bbq some hamburgers on our deck. We are also missing the patio door screen and even though we could get a breeze in the summer to cool down the house, we can't open the door without getting a houseful of bugs to go with it. Our daughters bedroom windows are so warped, they barely close properly and if we still lived in Toronto, it would be a safety issue for sure.
Which brings me back to the furnace. The repairman just left....I would cry but it would just cost me kleenex and since I now work in a grocery store, I know it doesn't go on sale until next week. I've mentioned in my blogs before that my husband is a bit of a heat Nazi....he hates spending money on it, friends bring sweaters and slippers....I never take offense since he turns the furnace off from April to September. I have more magic bags in my bed than some people have lovers. I am sitting here with a work order that states," Customer should consider replacing system with cast iron cold start boiler and indirect tank since existing system is 20 years old and damaged by water leaks most likely caused from turning boiler off in summer months."
Guess who's feeling like a Jackass now?
We've just spent the last five months on a $500 grocery budget so that we could pay $5000 off of our debt load and now we are going to be faced with a new debt load of around, let's say, $5000. Our 2% raises that we received last year have now been eliminated by an increase in both CPP and EI. Since January 1st, our power rate, water rate, mortgage rate and weekly gas costs have increased. Don't forget interest rate increases on the lines of credit we have our debt sitting on. This leaves our miscellaneous budget for gifts, field trips, postage, a bottle of wine, a cup of coffee, a noose....basically anything that isn't an absolute necessity at nothing. While these things are not essentials, they are the expenses that make you feel as though you are not just working to live, if you know what I mean.
I've had enough. Enough of the stupid budget, the tracking of every single expense and the staring at the spreadsheet on my computer screen waiting for the debt to disappear. Enough of trying to squeeze another week out of a bag of carrots. I'm tired of wearing long johns while watching tv at night and worrying about the extra lights the kids left on in the family room. I'm weary of waiting another ten years to get to a kitchen and bathroom renovation that we desperately need now. Most of all, I am tired of us working so hard, trading time with our kids so we can spend money on things that bring us little joy like furnaces, electrical plugs and eavetroughs.
Something has got to give....I really don't want it to be us. We have given enough to this house of hell, that should be our home of happiness. If there was ever a fairy god mother, we certainly could use her help now.
This is why I am submitting this entire blog post to the Ramar, home sweeter home contest. They want to know how a $100,000 renovation would change our families life. http://homesweeterhome.ca/
Winning a renovation of that magnitude would erase the next eight to fifteen years of stress and struggle trying to juggle the costs of fixing our broken dream home and caring for our family. It would mean that we could enjoy our home now instead of later when our children are already gone to University or leading their own lives somewhere else. It would mean that we could spend our money on things that really matter, like our kids education, that honeymoon we never got around to or a trip to Dairy Queen for an impromptu ice cream.
We honestly thought that we could manage better financially when we purchased our house but like many other families in the same struggle, we had too many problems that were unexpected and too many things went all at once leaving us with little chance to catch up. I think back to what we envisioned our family life would look like in the excitement of buying our "broken" but fixable dream home. None of it has gone according to plan and many of those dreams have instead become nightmarish experiences and painful memories with what seems like no ray of hope that things will get better any time soon.
We still believe in our broken dream home, that she has the potential to become a great home. We certainly have given her a lot of love already, but we are running out of options financially when it comes to giving her the TLC she needs. Living in Nova Scotia where the incomes are lower and the taxes are higher sure isn't making it any easier. Somehow we will find a way....maybe this contest could be a little miracle for us, since I've not a clue what else to do.
We are your average Canadian family and home ownership is making us crazy!!!