House Update

My gout has been bad enough over the past month that I'm not sleeping well, so that means I'm up and at the computer, and that means it's time for... a House From Hell Update!

Actually, my ranting had kind of died off until my friend Chuck told me that some of the funniest (in a dark humor kind of way) posts were the ones outlining my experiences in buying a money pit. While things have indeed gotten stable (to a point), and we don't have contractors in every day anymore, I'm amazed at the things that are still going wrong.

Right now, it's the kitchen. I'll say this now - we are running out of major appliances to have problems with. To make things worse, the "insurance" that the sellers bought that was supposed to ensure that all of the appliances (at the very least) worked correctly turns out to be barely worth the paper it was printed on. While the newly dripping garbage disposal appears to be headed for replacement (and it was less than six years old), the leaking refrigerator will *not* be serviced through First American Home Buyers Protection Corporation. It was a crap fridge anyway, but we were hoping to survive for a year before having to redo the kitchen. However, as the song says, I think the Lord is trying to tell me something. Given that my wife managed to come about as close to destroying the glass in the oven door as possible without actually requiring its removal (and I've heard five or six stories so far on exactly how *that* happened - I was in Eugene at the time), it looks like the only appliance that doesn't have a fork stuck in it is the dishwasher, and I'm sure that's just a matter of days.

I'd jump on the kitchen getting a complete remodel in the summer, except that we seem to already have a full plate of projects once the weather is better:

Replace the rotting back deck,

Repour the driveway (which looks to be getting pushed back),

Strip and recoat the garage - we may put in new storage units as well, as the garage is very tight - I managed to bump a vise and do $1000 of damage to Mel's RAV4 a month ago (this may be pushed back as well),

Put in drainage for the front walk, which turns into a lake right in front of our gate during moderate rain,

Replace at the very least the window in our bedroom and see if there isn't a major source of draft coming from the window seat area,

Shoot myself in the head. May be moved up.

I can't imagine how we would cope if we didn't have some decent resources to draw on. The bad news is that I'll be effectively cutting any gains I get over the next few years (and they were looking pretty good) just to manage what needs to be fixed *now*. I'm not even including major remodeling of the master suite, powder room, and upstairs bath. The list just seems to go on and on and on.

All things considered, I'm really a very fortunate man. Given some of the crazy stuff happening to people I know (kidney failure, loss of a child in the shooting in Illinois recently, various mystery diseases), I shouldn't really bitch. I'm told I'm entertaining, though, and if I'm not venting I'm just building up more stress that's manifesting in my month-old gout flare-up. Right now it's so bad that the Tylenol 3's aren't cutting the pain, the steroids are bringing down the swelling, and I don't see a specialist for ten days. It's days like this when I struggle to see past my own problems.

At least we've had nice weather.