My house is 11 yrs. old. Apparently, that equals about 40 in human years because just as when I hit 40 and my body decided to systematically break down, my house and everything in it has decided to do the same. Before the summer started I thought, "Yay, no daycare payments so I can actually start to get ahead on some of this debt!" I guess I thought too loud because in a preemptive strike my 5 yr. old pool cleaner pump went out. Bam, $500. The main pump must've gotten jealous from all that attention so it died also. Bam, another $500. The fancy pool computer control board couldn't handle the shiny new pumps so it croaked for the third time in 5 yrs. Bam, $1000.
My house Air Conditioner unit sits right next to the pool equipment. It noticed the pool guy coming every other Tuesday and thought, "I'm a big, noisy, mechanical thingy that they can't live without and yet they haven't had any sweaty guys with name patches on their shirts come see me - time to gets me some o' that" PFFFT - evaporater coil bit the dust, or rust in this case as the genius that designed it didn't seem to understand the process of corrosion that occurs when two different metals are in contact. Since Al Gore has scared the HVAC industry into using new coolants that will melt the Polar ice cap at a slightly slower rate, we had to replace the whole shebang. Two sweaty guys with name patch shirts gave the ole' AC their full attention for an entire morning and one even fell down my attic steps to add to the excitement. Bam - $7000!
The pool stuff & AC are located over on the side of the house but I was stupid enough to roll the pressure washer by the shiny new pumps etc. so he could see them. He made it halfway through spraying one window before he quit. Cause and cost still undetermined as I believe I will hone up on my man skills & try to tackle this one before eventually taking it apart to the point that I don't know how to reassemble it and then have to take the parts to the lawn equipment repair shop. They know me there as I've taken in my lawn mower, er, pieces of my lawn mower, twice now. While I'm there I can get them to fix the fuel lines on my blower, almost forgot about that piece of busted equipment.
Not to be outdone, the grill thought - why should I be happily heating up his meals while everyone else is taking the summer off? So the brand new gas regulator went bad. My highly anticipated medium rare venison steaks grilled to perfection quickly became dried out pieces of pan fried shoe leather on the stove.
I almost forgot about the vehicles that decided that their belts were no longer in style and started squeaking to let me know they wanted new, more fashionable belts.My truck got tired of squeaking for months so it finally just decided to blow hot air instead of AC. When I still wouldn't pay it attention it just up and died in the middle of the road. At least I could coast into the entrance of my neighborhood. A 4 hour ordeal of taking out the battery, recharging it, reinstalling it, and restarting the car later I figured it was time to replace the serpentine belt and the broken AC compressor belt. After studying up on how to replace them on YouTube I thought I'd save myself a few hundred bucks. And I did, instead of the 5 minutes it took the guy on the video it took more like 5 hours, 3 trips to Autozone, and 1 to Home Depot, and about 50 cussing, tool throwing fits later both cars had new serpentine belts and tensioners and my truck had a new AC compressor belt. So I fired her up.....and the new $36 AC belt immediately melted into tiny little black smudges all over the seized up compressor pulley. I did manage to get it to the shop. Bam - $1100.
So whatever saving I thought I was gonna get from 2 months out from the strangulating tuition of Toddler Harvard were gone - and then some. Oh well, welcome to home ownership. Excuse me now as the dryer is calling me. It no longer dries. I wonder if I could just crack open the door & duct tape the hair dryer nozzle to hit the clothes as they tumble by.....?
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