(Not Quite) Out to Pasture: Home Sweet Home

A COLUMN BY: CURTIS COMER

Ah, home ownership! There’s no feeling like owning your own house.

Especially when something goes wrong.

For years Tim and I were what I like to refer to as “serial renters.” We would rent an apartment and, when something better came along, we would ditch the old for the new and improved. (Or, as in one case, find another apartment simply to flee a psycho neighbor.)

I’ve refrained from actually tallying up how much money we paid in rent over time. Personally, I began renting around the age of nineteen and, because rent increased along with the size of the apartment and its geographical location, figuring out how much money I wasted on rent would prove a daunting task. Besides, why beat my self up at this point in time?

When we purchased our two- story, three bedroom brick house a couple of years ago, it wasn’t exactly the house we had imagined owning. While our house is charming, with all of the features we had hoped for (sunroom, fireplace, hardwood floors and a garage) it isn’t the imposing, three-story and thirteen -room Victorian that we thought we would end up owning.

Funny how finances can put a damper on things like that.

And, after our first heating bill, Tim and I were actually grateful that we weren’t able to buy the mini-mansion of our dreams.

Forced into a more modest choice of abode, we finally found our house, situated on a quiet, tree-lined street just off of Tower Grove Park. The house, built in 1920, had ample room for me and Tim, our cat and lovebird. With three bedrooms, we had room for guests as well as space for an office and the large, fenced yard was perfect in size for our modest gardening plans. The only problem that was immediately obvious was a lack of bookshelves. Tim and I are avid readers and, without bookshelves, faced the daunting (and expensive) task of buying shelves to house our collection of books. Since the apartment that we were giving up had built-in bookshelves, we decided that that would be the best thing to do in our new house. And, since we owned the place, it was refreshing to know that we didn’t have to get anyone’s permission to build them. As luck would have it, one of our friends was a carpenter and so we hired him to build the shelves. We spent a mere four hundred dollars, which included materials and labor, a small price to pay. Still, it was our first lesson in owning a home: if we want to improve something or if something breaks, we have to pay for it. No more calling the landlord.

This realization frightened me a bit, I have to confess. I mean, not only do I rarely have enough money in my account to pay for “emergencies,” I am absolutely incapable of doing home repairs myself.

A few months after moving into our house the spring mechanism on the door of the dishwasher broke. I promptly went online and looked into this and was happy to learn that the problem could easily be fixed. There was a warning, however, that the dishwasher had to be disconnected from its power source to avoid electrocution. That warning was enough to keep me from trying to fix the problem. I mean, yours truly doesn’t mess with anything electrical, no thanks. I’d rather not electrocute myself, as silly as that might sound. My brother in law, Mark, put it in perspective for me.

“The way I see it,” he said, with his southwestern Missouri drawl, “fix the important stuff first. As long as the dishwasher works, worry about the door later.”

I liked that. Sort of a hippy way of looking at things, sure, but he was right. The dishwasher works and nobody can see the broken spring deep within its door. Why stress over it?

Tim and I are good at cosmetic touches. We can paint a room, decorate it and landscape our garden out the yin yang. (Go ahead, insert Gay Joke here. You know you want to.) But, when it comes to electrical or plumbing I’m all big, gay thumbs. Don’t even get me started on car repairs.

Just recently, a new problem arose, one that had us both at the end of our wits. For some reason, our upstairs toilet began to leak and a steady stream of water flowed through the ceiling fan in the kitchen below. Undaunted, we first went to the hardware store and bought chemicals to pour into what we believed must have been a clog, but the leak continued. I went online to research toilets and was told, via one website, that often all that is needed is a good plunging. When that didn’t work we bit the bullet and called a commercial plumber, who told us that a) we would most certainly have to cut a hole in our kitchen ceiling to find the source of the leak and b) since we were probably dealing with old pipes that would need to be replaced, we were looking at nearly one thousand dollars worth of repairs.

It was at this point that I began to seriously question our decision to buy a house. I mean, me painting the deck to cover up a bit of dry rot was one thing, but shelling out a thousand dollars to keep toilet water from running into our kitchen was entirely another. What were we thinking? I suddenly yearned for the days when we could call our landlady, who would have someone out to fix the problem within a day or two and the repair didn’t cost us a cent.

Fortunately, while talking to our friend, Lisa, we learned that she knew a lot about home repairs and was willing to come over and have a look. What she found was that the wax seal under the toilet and been blown, probably from my vigorous plunging (thank you internet!), but a replacement seal would only cost me five or six dollars. Furthermore, I was able to see that the pipes beneath the toilet were new, another great relief. She patiently showed me how to replace the seal and, once it was done, a sense of normalcy returned to the house. (And, I might add, without cutting a hole in our kitchen ceiling or draining our checking accounts!)

I suppose there will always be things for a homeowner to learn, and I’m willing to learn, if only because I truly love our house. And, if the task at hand proves too daunting, I know that I can always call Lisa.

You can email Curtis Comer at Greenwitchsf@aol.com