#Homeownership

[incognitopolls]

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[teashopcrafts]

Just the though of HOAs makes me laugh uncontrollably.

Use code JUSTBECAUSE for 20% off!

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[classycookiexo]

Understandable

[rarediamondbliss]

Been awhile … but sis knocking out some goals.

[lake-lady]

Guys...I'm finally a homeowner

[portraitoftheoddity]

House ownership so far

I moved in at the beginning of May and it's been.... a project. This house is earning the title of my problem child, lol.

So far, I have:

Seemingly gotten rid of the mice (fingers crossed)

Discouraged the scouting carpenter ants (FUCK OFF YA LITTLE BASTARDS)

Removed soooo many spider webs. (I don't hate spiders, just don't want 'em *inside* my house thanks.)

Cleaned up a truly apocalyptic quantity of mouse poop and sterilized so many surfaces. I needed a shop vac for the basement. I still haven't cleaned out one part of the basement that I'm dreading, and need to vacuum the attic.

Replaced all the locks, which involved a chisel to get the strike plates in a place where the deadbolts would actually connect

Caulked up so many holes

Got a plumber to replace the leaky water heater valve

Got a quote for new fencing (mom got bored and came over and tore down the rotted out segments of fence and pulled up the shitty wire fence out back, which I helped her roll up.)

Replaced the stove, since the mice had colonized the old one and rendered it unusable

As of today, I have adequate water filtration so the water comes out clear and is safe to drink! And I don't have to fill up from my parents' well or the town spring.

Tore down the wallpaper in one of the upstairs rooms (now my office) and repainted the wall

Repainted the living room/dining room/front hall where the walls were scuffed to hell

Installed doorbells

Deep cleaned the most disgusting side door I've ever seen

Got an EMERGENCY plumber because the bath faucet broke and wouldn't turn off at 10 at night. X_X

Assembled a medicine cabinet, but haven't hung it up yet

Assembled a new bookcase. Because priorities.

Called the electric company about getting the rotting trees removed that are in danger of falling on THEIR power lines that run through my property (need to follow up)

Have a basement guy working on stabilizing the foundation from the inside by sealing up the crack and adding carbon fiber supports

Put down a deposit with a landscape contractor to install drainage to lessen further foundation issues from water pressure flowing down the hill I'm on

Repainted the guest bedroom, and assembled a bedframe for it

Installed hook latches for the upstairs doors whose knobs don't latch because they're 75 years old

And honestly I feel like I've barely had the chance to touch anything since I am also working full time and freelancing part time on top of that and my job is nuts right now. I have a whole color coded spreadsheet of everything I need to do. I want to repaint both bathrooms and the kitchen, I need to hang the damn medicine cabinet, I want to build a pantry cabinet in the kitchen so I can turn the front hall closet I'm using as a pantry into a hall closet, I want to set up the basement as a chill out den, and there is sooooo much work to do outside I'm trying not to freak out about it because apart from keeping the lawn mowed, I'm trying to relegate most of it to "next year's projects."

I'm so tired.

[some1s-sista]

Sunday and Chill

Another hot one but tonight’s storms may be bringing some relief

First 5 star review of The Smokehouse!!! Huzzah! First guest gave it a 4 cuz the brand new water heater broke. FM And one guest who stayed in the smaller Bunkhouse gave it a 3. He gave us a glowing written review then just 3 stars. I was literally confused. But my overall rating is now a 4 and I want it higher but I think we’ve worked out all the kinks so that should come soon enough.

A/C was fixed in the house (circuit breaker) so it’s all normal upstairs now. No couch sleeping tonight.

Oh. I left this guy home made cookies. I’m not above bribery.

[betterbooktitles]

Guillermo del Toro owns a second home that only has his stuff in it. Though the 59-year-old filmmaker is married with children, he keeps an entire second house to himself and fills it with frightening sculptures, inspiring pieces of art, toys, books, and movies, all of it his own curation. There are no kid’s drawings on the fridge, no side tables picked out by his spouse. It’s his personal playroom. He does most of the upkeep himself after a housecleaner broke the finger off one of his statues. He refers to it as a “man cave” or the “Bleak House” and often spends time alone writing there. Del Toro claims his wife likes it and has always supported his childhood dream house. She also prefers that his horrifying decorations don’t impede the aesthetic taste of the home they share as a family.

Having an entire home as a creative man cave that I am entirely in charge of would sound perfect to me if it weren’t for the fact that owning one home has become a nightmare even the best horror director could not fully capture on film.

I know I am lucky. The stats on Millennials owning their own homes are (if you will) bleak. But whatever I thought was irritating me in the city wasn’t nearly as bad as the physical and mental work required to live in a house. It drains bank accounts and my will to do more than one thing per day. When I was young and lived in New York, I scheduled my days like a CEO or politician: meetings, lunches, podcasts, and stand-up shows all crammed together to the minute as if I could teleport between venues. Now, if Wednesday morning includes a Home Depot run and a painting project, realistically, I’m not doing anything after that until Saturday. The laundry list of what needs to be fixed or maintained in the house grows every day. In the winter, there are rooms I simply don’t use because of a draft I can’t fix. In the summers, the yard becomes something we have to actively fight against lest new trees and mushrooms and 6-foot tall weeds that resemble stalks of asparagus take over everything. The current issue is a dead tree blocking a path to the backyard because wisteria vines are pulling it to the ground. It’s the fastest I’ve ever seen a plant move outside of Evil Dead.

Though we struggle to keep up with our checklists, my wife and I have ambitions for the house outside of general maintenance. We’d like a bigger kitchen, a functional garden, and a fence that looks like a stiff breeze wouldn’t knock it over. The house is fine without these physical flourishes, but the fantasy is always there, nagging whispers in the brain of how nice it could be given unlimited time and resources. That nagging gets into my head about a whole house devoted to my creative dreams.

When I fantasize about what I’d like most if money and time were no object, I find myself thinking about a home theater. Unfortunately, money is an object, and the “fun budget” was consumed by the “necessities budget” a year ago. We already replaced the furnace and AC, dug up tiles in the den, painted nearly every room, replaced doors, one of which was rotting the wood at the edges because it hadn’t been replaced since 1986, the year I was born. Still, the list grows. A dedicated line to the kitchen needs to be added by an electrician so the fuse doesn’t blow whenever I use the toaster and the electric kettle at the same time. The fence and what it nominally protects behind the house needs to be reworked before bunnies consume everything that isn’t a weed. The ancient carpeting needs to be ripped up, bathrooms need to be redone by professionals so my body can actually fit comfortably inside one. Walls need to come down to make living spaces seem less like hallways, and the bay window on the second floor that appears to be melting toward the ground needs to be addressed by a professional architect before the wind rips it off the bedroom wall like a giant scab. After all of that is finished, I’d still need to move into a newer, much bigger house if I want to have a home theater. 

Where did the yearning for a private theater come from? Unlike Del Toro’s childhood fantasy of having a house all his own, my wish for this extravagance came much later. I was 30, and I remember exactly how the seed was planted: Zillow. I spent hours on the site, letting the mortgage/insurance calculator tell me what I could afford for the same amount I paid in rent in Brooklyn. On my phone’s screen, I saw a $400,000 mansion in my wife’s hometown outside of Pittsburgh that was the most beautiful house I’d ever seen. It had high wood ceilings and multiple fireplaces to make the whole giant house feel like a cabin. I had 8 bedrooms and a home theater. Imagine, I thought, how good a movie must be in a theater in your own home. Imagine the parties with friends. Imagine movie nights where you force your kids to watch Back to the Future for the first time in a close approximation to the space where you saw it. Playing an old cartoon and a few YouTube’d trailers from the 80s. A little popcorn machine in the corner. Speakers that are way too loud. The dream.

I’ve realized recently, however, how silly the longing for a home theater is for me specifically. I don’t like watching sports at home. I need the atmosphere of screaming people either in the arena itself or in a bar. I need the game to be live. I need to be out among strangers or friends. I feel the same way about movies. I need other people with me, laughing, crying, gasping, clapping. 

Read the rest here.

[bitchesgetriches]

The Rent Is Too Damn High: The Affordable Housing Crisis, Explained

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[allthecanadianpolitics]

It will take Torontonians making a median annual income of $91,858 about 25 years to save for a down payment on a house, according to a new housing affordability report. But, the report also notes the real estate market is seeing improvement in affordability.

The National Bank of Canada (NBC) released its housing affordability report for the first quarter of 2023, where it analyzed the condo market, as well as other dwellings and the real estate market as a whole in 10 major cities across Canada.

The bank factored how long it takes a median-income household to save up for the cash down payment, which is measured by the number of months needed to save for the minimum payment at a savings rate of 10 per cent of its pre-tax income.

Full article

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

[bomberqueen17]

the home stretch

Went over to the house yesterday morning and Jim was there sawing a hole in the exterior wall.

Not alarming at all once I remembered part of this remodel that i'm really excited about is that we're getting an actual exhaust hood for over the stove. Not one of those ones that goes through a microwave either, a real exhaust hood that goes to the outdoors. (The real ones are mounted 30" above the stove top. Microwave ones have to be lower so you can reach the microwave. i can't stand cooking in such a constrained space like that. No thank you. Keep my microwave separate!)

He had sawed out a big chunk of drywall on the interior too, and replaced it with plywood, which is much sturdier to screw mounting hardware into. At my request, he'd extended the plywood down a couple more inches (it'll be covered by the tile backsplash so it won't even show!) so I can screw a couple of heavy-duty mounting hooks in there and have a place I can hang both my cast-iron skillets when they're not in use. I don't like leaving them on the stove (my mother's approach) or stacking them on a shelf (dude's approach) because one is untidy and the other requires me to lift every piece of cast iron i own at once to access any of them. (I also have a square griddle and a Dutch oven and also a tiny skillet which Dude uses all the time when I'm not around and neither of us uses at all when I am around, because it is very much a Cooking For One mini skillet LOL.)

He paused to show me the deer hunting hut he'd meticulously constructed for himself while he was on Christmas break and then artistically had painted camoflage. ("My friends were like omg how long did that take you? I dunno, I wasn't counting, I had a blast. Had a beer in one hand, spray paint can in the other, I just let it take as long as it took. It's like arts and crafts! Who's keeping track of the time?") It did look great. As he was swiping his finger accidentally slid onto the later bits of the camera roll and it showed me the deer he'd gotten on the last day of hunting season. "Oh! I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make you look at that," he said, and then looked at me and laughed, remembering I had told him I work in a slaughterhouse. "Right, you don't mind that kind of thing, but still." It was a nice big doe, cleanly felled, nothing to object to there.

I went and called the appliance company, who'd said they'd deliver my dishwasher and vent hood on new year's eve probably. They seemed confused that I'd called, and then were confused when they discovered that indeed both my items were in stock and should have been delivered. I said I figured the holiday had confused things (genuinely, probably the vent hood had come in on NYE like the salesman had thought it might, but I bet somebody had the day off and they weren't on the ball about calling people) so I just wanted to call and find out if anything needed sorting. They told me they'll call me today to tell me the two-hour delivery window. So I'm getting my dishwasher today! Pumped. It's gonna go into the living room to start with but like, y'know, that's fine.

The counters are going in on Thursday. Hopefully, Jim said, the counter people could do it in the morning, because then he could start on the tile that afternoon.

Ah they've just called, my delivery window for the appliances is 11-1. OK cool.

The plumber can't come until Monday. But then once he's been there I'll have my stove and sink and dishwasher. And, Jim says, that means the final, last little button-up details will be done on Tuesday.

"And then," he said, amused, "I can go back to the regular schedule, because the people who refused to have their houses torn up over the holidays will be clamoring to get the work done now. It's good you didn't mind." Which is precisely why we thought we'd gotten bumped up by two months, but it's funny to hear him so directly confirm it.

"I'm the luckiest person in the world," I said, "with my mother-in-law's house vacant walking distance away for this whole time, so it's been genuinely no trouble at all." And I am. She's coming back on Tuesday, so I figure we'll move back into our house over the weekend, and I'll deep-clean her house and (sighhh) put all the beautiful sewing equipment back where I found it. I won't really miss her fancy modern sewing machine (which she just got and is third-hand and I don't think she knows how to use either) but her old workhorse straight-stitch machine is a beautiful, unfussy beast I've really enjoyed spending time with.

OK i gotta get off my ass and go get the grocery shopping done so I can go sit in my house for the delivery window. I saved plenty of things to do, don't worry. I'm starting to put stuff into the cupboards, made Dude come sit with me over the weekend and give his opinion-- he's been busy at work and has had no attention span but I refuse to take his "idk just put stuff wherever" at face value, he spends more time in this house than me and i will NOT have him after the fact annoyed with how I chose to organize things. So he did give opinions, finally. And I need a few more lazy susans and storage baskets and half-shelf-rack kinda thingies here and there but I'm getting there.

[shego1142]

I know yall probably know about poverty and generational poverty and what not but I just want to vent….

Because like… the things people don’t like know about generational poverty unless they’re experiencing it is just how… trapped you feel… weighed down by absolutely everything.

See I honestly think something may be up with our gas line

Which is a terrifying thought.

Now, idk if it’s a leak per se (though we’ve got the windows cracked just in case) but if we turn on our stove the gas smell is really strong, the flame flairs out of the sides of the stove, etc.

Shit that shouldn’t be happening.

Shit that is really fucking dangerous.

We know this is dangerous, we’re not stupid.

We know we should get it fixed.

But here’s the thing, okay?

The floors are just base boards, they’re falling in and there’s holes everywhere.

There’s rats that we’ve tried every trick in the book to get rid of, short of hiring an exterminator. We’ve borrowed traps, had traps “gifted” to us, tried poisons that friends and family have bought for us, etc. It cuts them down but they come back.

All of our food is in thick sealed plastic containers and yet they’ve eaten some of the containers open. They even ate our soap and makeup and cleaning supplies and that didn’t seem to stop them. (Our soap and cleaning supplies are now in plastic containers too but idk how long it will deter them, and the makeup is thrown away)

We have shoddy wiring in the house, done by my own grandpa back in the 70’s when they first bought this place.

Our roof has cracks in it that have failing patches, done by a family friend.

Our AC doesn’t exactly work very well and it’s been reaching 100°F weather (with 70% humidity no less) and to fix it we’d need $10k at least, but we’d also need new flooring, so it would likely be more than that…

Etc.

And like, it’s not that the house is dirty, but that it’s falling apart.

And here’s the deal… calling someone who knows what’s what about houses to check the stove means calling someone who is going to inspect the whole house, someone who’s going to say:

“hey uh, your gas is messed up and your electricity is messed up and so’s your plumbing… Your floors are bad… we have to condemn this house and if you can’t pay to fix it up then you’re going to lose it.”

And it’s not like we got this house and destroyed it by a lack of maintenance, this house is like, 50+ years old, and has been my home since I was born.

My grandma and I couldn’t take care of everything because my grandpa had Alzheimer’s and he was going downhill and it was me and her caring for him.

My health is really bad and I can’t work a regular day job because of it, but I haven’t been able to hire a lawyer to apply for disability, so we’re living off one income and whatever side gigs I can do from time to time.

We don’t have the money to pay the mortgage, buy groceries, pay the home insurance, the gas bill, pay medical bills, buy pet food, etc and also then pay for our house to be inspected and potentially condemned for things I didn’t even do in the first place, things that came before I inherited this house…

My whole family has been poor my whole life, from my great great grandparents to my parents, etc.

It was always “you don’t pay for a professional to fix it, you either fix it yourself or get a family member or a friend of a friend to fix it”

Which means that if we ask a building inspector to tell us what’s wrong with the house… well… it’s going to probably be everything. Because this house has never been “professionally” fixed, it’s only ever had family members and friends of family members slap duct tape over glaring issues and say they’ll only charge you a glass of sweet tea.

Which means it’ll probably cost nearly the entire value of the house to fix tbh.

I just feel like I’m on a ship that’s sinking and way more water is coming in than I could ever manage to get out. I keep trying to patch the leaks but the materials just not available, and besides, if I stop bailing out the water for even a second to go and try and patch the leak, I’ll go fully underwater.

And you know, it’s not fair. It’s not right that it’s like this. This is our home and we love it. This has been my home for years and we love this house, this land, the trees and plants that grow, everything here is loved. It’s cared for. We try to take pride in it.

But you wouldn’t know that because we’re too busy trying to bail out that sinking ship. We’re too busy from constantly working and cleaning and repairing.

It’s not okay that it’s set up that way. We need help, we need community. We should be able to call someone and be like “Hey, we love this house, we’ve never been late on a payment, we’ve worked our butts off to try and keep things going, but we need help. Can you look at everything this house needs to function and be in good condition and help us get those things?”

Like, hell a payment plan option would work, wouldn’t it? Why isn’t that the done thing?

I mean, I know why, the more houses that are taken from the poor means the more real estate that’s available for the rich, they’re already trying to make our whole neighbourhood into some corporate venture instead of a residential area. And besides, if they manage to make us homeless they’d be just as happy throwing us in jail for the “crime” of being homeless and poor and making money off free labour.

Like that’s why it’s normal practice not to help anyone keep their home when they actually have a home. The system is set up for you to fail unless your family is at least moderately wealthy.

It’s just such an unforgiving cycle. And I know I’m beating a dead horse with this vent. I know that like over half of America’s population is likely in the same shitty place we’re in.

It’s just… I’m so tired of being in cycles like these.

I’m too sick to work, too poor to afford to get on disability, and both too poor and too exhausted to go to the doctor to get proper treatment, and it’s just a loop.

I’m too exhausted to fix the house, too busy cleaning the house to rest, too exhausted to make money to have professionals help fix the house, rinse and repeat.

The house breaking down is very likely making me more sick, but I’m too sick to be able to get the house fixed.

My grandparents didn’t have money to fix the house, my parents don’t have money to fix theirs, I don’t have money to fix my house.

Every step forward is like ten steps backwards and I genuinely don’t know what the solution to all of this is.

I feel so fucking trapped. I don’t even have the energy to run a gofundme for myself to try and get the help we need, because it takes so so much to to actually get a gofundme up and off the ground, I have tried before and it’s always been a failure because I just literally never have enough energy for it.

We have so many things we’d love to do. We’d love to make this house into an eco-friendly, sustainable home, with solar panels and a huge garden. We want to make a farm stand with fresh eggs and vegetables and fruit and let it operate on an honour system, so anyone who needs food can take what they need and pay what they can, yes even if it’s $0. I want to crochet hats and mittens and set those out too, for sale or just for those who need them…

We want so badly to take care of our community… but it feels like our community isn’t there to support us, not because people don’t want to support one another but because we’re all trapped or are being prevented from supporting one another.

Because having a farm-stand means you need to buy business licenses… building a sustainable home means you need to buy a building permit.

Every step of the way feels like good intentions are wasted, road-blocked.

I can’t even begin to explain how many jobs I’ve applied to, writing, editing, working as a cook or a waiter, data entry, etc.

In school they told me I’d be able to do anything I wanted to. I was a “gifted” straight A student and as I’m sure many people on this site know, that’s not bragging. It’s the opposite. The school system, the system that is supposed to help me be successful in life, told me I would be, and now I would be lucky to make $7.25/an hour while living in a place where the minimum liveable wage is $35/an hour.

It costs $35 an hour for one person to live moderately comfortably in my town. And this isn’t an arbitrary number, it’s literally on our county’s government ran poverty assessment website.

And that’s not a thriving wage it’s a surviving wage. It’s Home, Food, Utilities, Transportation & Clothes.

It leaves no room for medical care, comfort, entertainment, etc.

So what the hell are those of us who are working for anything less than that, or those of us unable to work, supposed to do?!

And like I said, I know I’m preaching to a choir rn, I know everyone is experiencing some version of this. I just… I need to be able to express it from time to time. To talk about how unfair and ridiculous and needlessly cruel this is.

It’s so deeply flawed and evil that we’re unable to have legitimate health concerns inspected because we’re worried about the house being taken away from us.

It’s trash. It’s inhumane.

And if anyone has any like… suggestions or advice that would be great… I’m considering just having our gas service canceled by our gas company and buying a small electric grill instead… but our gas also powers our hot water heater so…

:/

[sovietkitty420]

[alphagodith]

a major downside to living in a nice neighborhood i never would have considered before i moved here is that people will just ASSUME you are stupid rich and then charge you out the ass needlessly, while also being extremely rude to you because they hate you for having something they don't. (even tho they may actually make more than you, since they don't ACTUALLY know your situation)

i am 99% certain that everyone else in this neighborhood makes at least 50-75% more than we do. the only reason we could afford this house in the first place was that it was very outdated visually, had intense water damage, and was foreclosed. oh and we got to waive down payment cuz military. almost everything in our home was bought heavily discounted or gotten free off the curb.

but nah the neighborhood is fancy and the driveway's big so OBVIOUSLY we are greedy assholes who can afford to throw thousands around like pocket change...