A Very Very, Very Fine House

by Pa Rock

Homeowner

My house is a very, very, very fine house.  It has two small bedrooms, two small bathrooms, a small kitchen with inadequate cabinet space, a small utility room, a decent sized living room and a finished half-basement.  It sits on a 10-acre corner lot at at the intersection of two paved county roads and is about a mile from the city limits.  The property has three out-buildings that came with the place including one large but very dilapidated old barn, a decent garage, and a serviceable chicken coop.  Additionally there are two very nice 8' X 24' metal storage buildings which I had custom-built seven years ago and are sitting on a concrete slab that was a basketball court when I moved here.

I've never counted the trees, but there are many and most of them are large, so massive, in fact, that some pose direct threats to the house in the event they ever blow over.  When the town tornado sirens wail, about once a year or so, we go to the basement!

My house was constructed by a professional carpenter, one of the best in the area, and he built it for himself and his family - a wife and four sons - in the 1960's.  That family occupied it for the next four decades or so.  There was one owner after them before I bought it.  The house has what builders refer to as "good bones.".

I bought this very, very, very fine house in the fall of 2013 while I was still living in Phoenix, and moved in upon my retirement in March of 2014.  My intention was to live here alone, do some travel and writing,  and enjoy my golden years.  I had a grandson who lived here and was in high school, and I earmarked one of the bedrooms as his in the event he ever needed it.  Now that grandson lives 200 miles away and works full time in the town that I grew up in, the one that I undoubtedly would have retired in had i not relocated here.  Funny how life works out.

But I like it here, and for the first decade there were few major financial issues with my very, very, very fine house,    It had been on a well water system when I purchased the property, and after a major (500-year) flood a few years back, water tests on the well came back negative, so I switched over to the rural water provider.  Getting a meter installed, digging atrench from the house to the meter, and securing the hookup was $2,500 or so, but it was worth the expense and I am glad to be off of the well.

The two other major expenses that I encountered during my first decade of residence were the two storage buildings constructed at a Mennonite family factory seventy miles away and then transported her (a total of $10,000) - not a necessity, but something that I wanted, and matching metal roofs on the house, garage, and well house (there had not been any leaks, but the existing roof was old and I wanted to get ahead of the game.)

So, all things considered and by my perspective, the first ten years weren't too bad.

The second ten, however, are shaping up to be a different story.  This decade in residence began with the central air going out.  It turns out the unit was thirty years old, and that expense ran four grand.  Then one of the big pines (somewhere north of 40-feet tall and the closest one to the house) died and needed to be removed.  I had the tree men take down an enormous dying hickory while they were here with their heavy equipment - $2,200 - and my neighbor who knows about such things assured me that was cheap.  The furnace has been operating in fits and starts for several weeks, and this week it had to be replaced as well.  $3,400!  (Turns out the furnace was also thirty years old.)

There is major bad weather coming in tomorrow, so I was not surprised at all when, while taking my morning shower today, I heard the toilet burping - a totally new occurrence -  and when I finished showering I found that I was standing in an inch or so of water that had not drained.  A plumber will be here later this morning, just in time to get things dug up and spread out before the snow starts tomorrow.

Some days if it wasn't for the lottery, I'd have no hope at all!

I have heard a couple of news stories over the past few days which credit home-ownership (the American dream) with being the most direct path to accumulating wealth for the majority of Americans, but it is a hard path to access, and once you are on it, home-ownership can be an expensive path to navigate.

And now, with private equity firms and ultra-rich s.o.b.'s  snapping up every house that comes on the market, breaking the chains of homelessness and poverty becomes even more complicated.

If ending poverty was a concern of our government, which it clearly is not, building more housing would certainly be one way to begin addressing it.

Oh, my, but I have wandered.  I think I will refer to this type of mindless musing as "the weave" and stop where I am at so that I can rush to town and buy some rock salt for the walks - and stock up on bird feed. A homeowner's work is never done, even in a very, very, very fine house!