Everyone told me that it’s a lot of work to own a house, but I blew it off because I’ve been renting them and dealing with scheduling maintenance, etc on behalf of landlords for many years. “How bad could it be?” I thought.
Well, no one explained that Daylight Savings Time means that you can’t rake your leaves after you get home from work! I knew I would be doing a lot of work on the weekends, but I didn’t realize it simply wasn’t possible to do many things because of the early sunset. I guess living in a rowhouse without a yard really spoiled me.
My parents have a HUGE yard so I thought the leaves were a unique issue to a larger property – nope, my lot of <4000SF and only three trees has A TON OF THEM. It’s unbelievable!
Also, when people told me that houses cost money, I didn’t totally understand that the stuff that actually costs money is all the dumb yard stuff you have to buy. Here are some things you need when you own a house:
– a lawnmower
– a ladder that you can lean against your house to get on the roof
– an offset for that ladder so that it’s not leaning against your gutters
– a leafblower
– a shovel
– a hose
– attachments for your hose
– a shed so that your lawnmower and leafblower won’t get wet
– a rake
– garden shears
GOODBYE ALL MONEY! Forget about furniture! Also, have fun replacing all the kitchen stuff that you totally forgot belonged to your roommates, they charge like $9 for a single spatula at Target, thank goodness I work across the street from a pretty serviceable Marshall’s! I have never been more grateful in my life that I took this job, 2015 Anita was hella smart!
Oh, also microwaves cost like $70 and they sell like hotcakes on CraigsList unless you wanna drive to the suburbs for one!
On the plus side, a new TV is only $200 until our new president starts a trade war with China, LOL. Also, apparently I get free HD cable by hooking up TiVo, $20/month for cable guide functionality, federated search across Netflix/Hulu/Amazon (yay, Amazon streams to my TV! Not the case with my Apple TV, which I’m keeping to broadcast from my laptop since I have a Dumb TV), and DVR is a pretty good deal, shout out to my boyfriend for giving me a $350 box, I’m never getting off the couch again
jk, I’m off my couch every weekend dealing with the never-ending leaves, and tree #4 (the world’s cutest Japanese maple) hasn’t even started yet! I cannot wait to get rid of as much lawn as I possibly can next spring! Raised beds and gravel paths, here I come!
In the quest to get rid of my lawn, I had my utilities marked. Here is another fun trick: because I was in Iceland, I didn’t harass the title insurance company to actually do the house location drawing that I requested over email! I figured, hey, no big deal since not having one didn’t jeopardize closing! Boy, what a dummy I was! The gas company marked my gas line and hooray, it looks like it’s on my neighbor’s property! My brilliant mom figured out that that looked wrong, and sure enough, it looks like 2 houses to my northeast are encroaching on the property to the west, great job everyone for making me wonder if there is something wrong with his fence! Definitely looking forward to spending another $1000 to have the boundaries marked by a surveyor, hopefully my neighbor to the rear can go in on this with me somehow. It never ends!
Okay, enough complaining (about OWNING A HOUSE, AKA “the greatest thing in the world OMG”)
here are some pictures
this is my friend (and roommate!) preparing a Thanksgiving feast while my parent’s fox terrier looks on in hope
this is the huge ventilation fan in my attic, as viewed from the pull-down stairs in my downstairs hallway
this is the train I ride to work
this is the amazing ice cream truck
this is the park next to my house. I appreciate that my neighborhood is always appreciably cooler because of its proximity to the river, which situates it in a microclimate about 4 degrees cooler than the city center. there is also great fog.
this is the enormous weekly farmer’s market!
some photos from the historic house nearby – it’s nice to walk and get ideas for my garden!
my awesome doorbell that vibrates!
a little memento from the home’s first owner: she used nails to organize things in all sorts of clever places (the attic is also full of them on the beams). this is the interior of a cabinet in the laundry room.
this is a local bar/restaurant that, like my house, has not changed in decades. I love going home at night to a small town!
I love the house! I’m so happy that it came into my life! It’s a nice feeling to be settled and to be able to do obnoxious stuff like installing furniture you never want to move again! My boyfriend and family have been so helpful, it would be unthinkable to do this alone! Everything is grand and I hope to invite everyone over the first weekend in January!
My high school reunion was this weekend and it was swell, I can’t wait for the pictures, and I’m also looking forward to organizing housing for visitors to DC during inauguration, and kicking it Bibliodiscotheque style once again, at long last, on December 19. Very happy to have 1 project behind me and 2 to look forward to between now and the end of the year!