The Money Pit

The dog and cat don't play so much since the move


The time had finally come. We saved enough money for a down payment and closing costs. For a year, we looked for our beloved home. I poured over newspapers and talked to realtors. Almost every day after work (I was now working at the dry cleaners--the 1st one) I'd drive by dilapidated houses that sounded wonderful in the ad.

After a year, we found it. 2,100 square feet (with a one car garage) of never ending city taxes! The previous owners failed to pay their mortgage. An older dude stepped in and bought it from the bank for a mere $30,000 and sold it to us for $58,000. To our dismay, we found this out after the transaction had been completed.

The living room is that same odd L shape. And some strange things were done in building the house. It's an older house, so that's to be expected. It was added onto sometime in the seventies or eighties: The den, the master bedroom and master bath. We use the den for storage right now, and that, I'll explain later. In the bedroom, there's actually a door that leads outside but we put a huge entertainment center there. If anyone ever decides they want to come in that way, they'll have to move about 3 tons of particle board and videos first.

The window along the wall is off center by about 2 feet. I made curtains to hide this fact and "center" it. My sister marveled at the curtains. "How did you ever find material to match the bedspread?" she said in awe. Her eldest son has the same bedding. Apparently, we have the same taste in cheap Wal-mart bed sets. I laughed at her saying, "It's the top sheet from the bedding! I put a hem in it and hung it off a rod from the Dollar Store!"

A few days before the closing on the house was complete, that movie The Money Pit came on TV. Shawn's oldest brother had come by for visit and joked about it. I laughed but was slightly nervous inside.

We moved in 3 years ago this month. For the last 2 winters, we froze our butts off. "It's a big house, babe!" Shawn would say. "It takes a while to heat a house like this!" I'd close off rooms and turn the heater up to 90 degrees. I surrounded myself with those cheap little electric heaters and still froze. It was warmer than our rent house but I still complained to Shawn. "Mom and Dad have a big house and their house is warm!"

By the second year, we had developed a roof leak in the kitchen. We had the house surveyed, we were told that the roof had 2 layers of singles and would need to be replaced in about 5 years. We thought we had time.

It was also about this time that Shawn had crawled under the house for one reason or another and discovered that we had the cheapest plumbing money can buy. There's a maze of abandoned pipes down there, all of it, sadly deteriorating.

The leak in the kitchen got worse. It never rained so much in Texas except during those few months when the roof leaked. I covered the floor with every towel we could spare and when I ran out of pots, mugs and cups littered the floor.

Upon inspection, the water in the cups was an ugly yellowish-brown. The dog would try to drink it so I opted for tall glasses. I collected whatever I could find, whatever anyone didn't need anymore to collect the water.

We had every roofer in town, and few out of town, give us numbers that we couldn't bear. We put it off until we couldn't anymore.

One night, it was late and we getting ready for bed. It had been raining all day, so I emptied the pots and cups before we retired. It rained hard and steadily and we lay under the covers.

CRASH!! We heard it at the same time and instantly leapt from the bed simultaneously. My socks skidded on the rug as we reached the kitchen. For a second, we stared in awe.

The drywall on the kitchen ceiling had caved in! It lay all over the floor in big chunks and tiny pieces! "The dog! Where's Prissy!" I hollered. Oh, my tiny Chihuahua, where was she? We frantically threw off chunks of sheet rock from the pile and a thought hit me in the head like a brick.

I ran to the back door where the doggie door was located. I flung it open and looked out to see nothing but dark night and rain. I looked straight down...

There was my dog. She stood there, directly on the outside of the doorway, shivering and soaked to the bone! "Ohhh," I whined. "Awwww," I coddled. I scooped her up in my arms and held her so tight! I thought she'd been crushed by the ceiling!
She was so pathetic just standing there in the cold rain looking up at me. She didn't know what had happened or what to do!

By the time we'd cleaned up everything and comforted the dog, we were laughing about it. There's actually a glob of plaster that hit the wall I have yet to clean off. I like to think of at a souvenir.

In November of 2004 the heater was making a strange noise. Now, down here it doesn't get cold like up north. But you have to realize that when you are used to heat all the time, a little cold is COLD.

BOOM! There was a noise like a car had landed on the roof. I actually bundled up a little and went outside to check the roof. I looked all around and found nothing. When Shawn came home he figured out the problem.

The air was not getting through the ducts. It was sort of "stuck" and would all of a sudden get forced through; that's made the explosion noise. Think of a pipe clogged up with hair. You push more crap down that pipe, eventually it's gonna force it's way through, or back up and come rushing toward you.

So we did without. The maintenance guy Shawn works with said it would be Ok to run the heater but we were paranoid it might blow up. For several days we had no heat. I was probably crying at this time because we had spent three winters with no heat whatsoever and the last two with hardly any at all. We had just taken out a loan to pay for our brand new roof and we weren't sure how much it might cost to fix the heater.

Luckily, the pastor at my church is a Heating and Air Specialist. That's his day job, anyway. He and his crew set up my parents' house. I grew up with those old gas stoves. Our house was usually pretty cool unless you backed up to the stove. Anytime I was sick, I usually woke up on the floor directly in front of a heater. It wasn't until I was much older (and about right before I moved out) that Mom and Dad decided to get central heat & air. I also think that's worth pointing out that they didn't buy a dishwasher until after I moved out. (about 10 seconds later) I don't think I had even fully packed my things when they were looking at dishwahers in sale fliers!

Anyway, I was used to that kind of thing. When we bought our house, there was no vent in the bathroom but an old wall heater. Shawn had not grown up with with pilot lit stoves and refused to lit it. During our first winter in the house, I lit a match and turned on the gas to demonstrate how it was done. The blue flame popped up and I said, "See? Nothing to worry about!" However, I was very, very mistaken. Several of the flames did not "pop up." I called my dad.

"Hmmm," he said thoughtfully. I thought he was a good choice because he had ripped out the old wall unit in their bathroom several years ago. He installed a cool newer model with a dial and everything.
"It's probably that it's clogged with dust or something," Dad said. I explained that some of the flames were blue and short, the others, bright orange and very tall. "No," he said, "They should all be the same height. Turn it off and try to poke something down in there to unclog it."

"I'm not doing that!" I explained. "That's crazy!!" So Dad said it would be Ok if I turned off the gas. I peered at the bottom of the heater. "Um, there's no shut-off valve," I mused.

"What?! There's no shut-off valve? Are you sure you're looking in the right spot?"
"Yes! There's no line, no valve, no nothing! Just this rickety heater!" I exclaimed.
"Well, in that case..." Dad started, "It must be in the wall."
Huh? He said that's the only thing he could thing off. If we ever had an emergency, we'd have to call the gas company to shut off the gas and rip into the wall.
Oh.
So we didn't have in the bathroom. Period. Excited that we might not have to skip showers anymore upon moving in, we were somewhat disappointed.
Ok, back to November of 2004. Pastor David came over and assessed the situation. He said our heater was old and needed to be replaced. Whoever installed the ducting was an idiot. The ducting was much too small. The blower was much too powerful. Hot air was being produced but could not make it to the vents, thus the explosion of air being forced through. We were basically heating the insides of our walls, but not our home.

What to do? All new ducting needed to be installed and the heating unit as well. Does this mean we can heat int he bathrooms? Possibly! Yeah!!
For three days David and his crew were in the house ripping out this and installing that. Shawn took off a couple days to help and I took that off that Friday to do what I could. (mainly, follow everyone around with a vacuum sucking up bits of sheet rock from the ceiling)

Ducting was run through our 2 closets in the bedroom, along the wall and into the master bath. Shawn had built a fir down (a box on the outside of the wall) to hide the huge foil tube that ran along the wall. We had in the bathroom! No more freezing showers! No more running from the bathroom to the electric heater!

What about the den? Ah, that goes back to the roof. The den was a add-on. Whoever built it, did so with a totally flat roof. That's right, it's perfectly perpendicular to the walls. No pitch, no angle, no anything. Getting our roof done cost an arm and a leg because of this. It also cost us the loss of no heat in that room. Ducting could not be run into the den because there's no attic space whatsoever. Most houses have some attic space. Ours is not one you could walk around in, but there is about a foot of space a thin person could belly crawl in. Of course, once you reach the end of the pitch, that space is gone.

So I argued that the ducting could be be run along the wall, just as they did in the master bath. Shawn explained to me that it could not be done because of the laundry room being adjacent to the den and the original brick wall, and.... Well, I don't know, he just said it couldn't be done.

So we use the den for storage. It's boiling hot in the summer and freezing cold in the winter. Also, the previous owners had pets, I think and it still smells funny in there. We haven't has the cash to rip up the carpet and I don't even want to think about moving all the junk to shampoo the rug!
David was very sweet to us when it came time for payment. He probably gave us the best price that anyone could. There's something to be said for a pastor that does a job for you and that is that he will be extremely honest. I thanked him and told him how refreshing that was. We had so much BS offered up to us when we were pricing roofers (you wouldn't believe!) that it was nice to hear something so honest.

David even offered us a loan. "God has blessed me in many ways and if you don't have the money right now, we could work something out. Maybe you could pay me $50 every week or so when you come to church," he said. We felt funny about that. That's just us. We've never borrowed money except from the bank. I explained that to David and he understood.

We took out yet another loan and paid David. I told Shawn that we'd be in debt for the rest of our natural lives anyway and he responded by saying, "We had to do it."

So we have heat! For about a year we had a huge hole in the wall of the hallway where the old heater was ripped out and the new one was placed. It was really a matter of Shawn just not having time to getting to it. (typical guy, you know) The heating unit was exposed for all to see and we explained that we spent so much money on it that we felt it deserved to be shown off.

In twenty-seven years about $100,000 in interest and this here Money Pit will be ours! I hate to say it but when you buy a house, you have no idea what you're getting into. You have some idea, but really it doesn't compare. The kitchen has old pink counter tops so when the light reflects it, everything looks pink. I burn most suppers on purpose just to be safe. A few months ago we went 2 days without toilets and had to get 2 brand new ones. The old windows are drafty and our taxes go up, without a doubt, every year. There's floor joists that need to be replaced and pipes that are rotting.
But you know what? It's ours. All ours! And no one can take that away from us.
Except the bank. But who's counting?