the money pit, part 2

My next house will be brand new. And perfect. A little character? Totally not necessary. I'd even take one of those looks-just-like-my-neighbors'-house on a tiny, treeless lot right now.

Up until this point, being the sole breadwinner hasn't been a big issue... Mark being available to take care of the kids just meant more time for me to take sessions. It all worked out, and it was working well. And then we bought The Money Pit.

I finally lost it today... just so sick of every little thing that is not only not right, but REALLY not right. Examples from just today, yes, one day's worth:

*A few weeks ago I noticed that one of the homemade-looking brackets holding up the garage door was hanging by one nail. Now, this is a contraption that holds a very powerful spring, and consequences if this fell and the spring shot somewhere could be dangerous. (My dad kept trying to tell me how he knew of a kid who "lost his face" when the spring came loose. Um, thanks dad, that really helps my already high stress level.) Today we had the overhead door guy come. He's replacing just about everything but the doors. And the total bill came to about 4 times what Mark and I were expecting.

*The second service person who came today was the plumber, because both toilets are leaking, when flushed, through the floor into the garage. Doesn't that sound lovely? I mean, there is nothing like dripping toilet water. Well, seems that proper subflooring was not installed under the tile, and therefore the toilet is shifting with each flush. There is one thing we can try, but my money is on the fact that we'll soon be looking at torn up bathroom floors and some new subflooring. (This is not covered under our home warranty because the lack of subflooring voided that.)

*Service person #3 was the electrician. One switch, when turned on, kept flipping the breaker... always a good sign, no? He did get that fixed, but when he looked into the other thing we needed fixed - a set of lights outside that were not working - he determined that there was probaby some faulty wiring in the attic. After the other two people had already been there today, and after I'd had my massive freak-out, Mark told the electrician we'd have to figure out the faulty wiring in the attic thing at another time. Of course, until then I'll be waiting for the fire caused by faulty wiring.

I'm heading into my slow season. Tax time is closing in. I seriously have no idea how I'm going to swing two mortgages, a studio payment, our high-as-a-mortgage health insurance, and the other little necessities, like, um, food and heat when we have gone THIS far over budget on the new house. I keep waking up in the middle of the night, utterly panicked and envisioning the five of us homeless. We didn't go into this blindly - we KNEW it would need some work... we just didn't realize that buying a 44 year old house would require quite this much work. Lesson to be learned? Buy NEW. No, don't even do that. Rent.

We'll be moving in in about 2 weeks. I just wish I could be a little more excited about it.... because right now, "excited" really isn't in my vocabulary.