Frustration

I have a love/hate relationship with my house. All 2,000 sq feet of it. And all 13,000 sq feet of yard. It's funny, as the very things I love about it I hate at the same time.

When I first saw this house, I knew it was the one I wanted. It was really such a spontaneous moment. We had just signed a new lease at our apartment, just gotten Rajah. I thought, Sammi and Rajah could REALLY use a place to run around. One day I just said, "Let's go look at houses. Just for fun, see what's out there." We looked at quite a few houses, but the problem was finding something suitable that was in our price range. When I say suitable, I mean nicer than our apartment. We found a bunch in our price range, just none that really excited us.

We really just walked through this house on a whim. I saw it online, saw it was in our price range, but there were no pictures, so we thought we would drive by. What really piqued our interest was that the sign out front said it was a tri-level. Well, there was no way I thought, I have to see this for myself. So we called for a walk through.

Walking into the house, I loved the tile entry way. You look to the left and there was this office/family type room with hardwood floors, which I loved. Go to the right, a bedroom. There was this ugly blue carpeting, but whatever. It was a room. Go up the hardwood steps, and there was a hallway with a bedroom on the left and right side and bathroom in the middle. The bathroom had a nice vanity and a whirlpool tub, which I loved.

Back downstairs from the entryway there is a hallway that leads to another bathroom and large laundry room, which I loved. A large dining room area and small, but nice and newly remodeled galley style kitchen. Not my dream kitchen, but it was definitely REALLY nice. Step up into a living room which has a sliding glass door the the large backyard. The back yard has a shed, a playhouse, and swingset. Oh yeah, did I mention it was big and fenced, perfect for the dogs?

I put a lot of work into making this house more my taste.

*I (along with my mom and brother) supervised/ripped off all the wall paper in Chloe's room, my room, and the office/family room.

*We repainted. We then ripped up all the carpeting in Chloe's room, my room and the downstairs bedroom. (I really did do all that myself). We got a floor sander and refinished all the hardwood floors. We stained and polyurethaned the floors.

*We pulled up the indoor/outdoor carpeting from the dining room, hallway, and put down laminate wood floors. We got rid of this hideous vinyl molding and put up new, and repainted the dining room and hallway. I worked really hard to strip and prime and paint over this hideous wood panel in the room.

*We converted from a well system to city water, as well as from septic to city sewer.

*We converted from baseboard heating and window air conditioning to central air and heating.

Those are the major improvements.

So now why do I hate it???

1) No dishwasher. This wasn't a big deal at first. But I hate doing dishes.

2) The house is so big. And Chloe can make a mess of it super fast. Then there's the laundry. Which while I admit would be the same no matter what, it just adds to the burden. So every night after Chloe goes to bed, I have to do dishes, laundry, pick up the kitchen, living room and dining room. I say pick up, because I don't really clean. After doing that, I really don't feel like doing much else. I won't even go into the last time the rest of the rooms have been cleaned. I won't even go into trying to pay bills, etc.

3) The yard is so big. It's awesome for Chloe to play in, but a headache with the upkeep. Right now I'm paying my brother to come over and mow, but still. I think its been over a year since any weedeating was done.

4) There's no place for Chloe to ride a bike, tricycle, etc. I have a driveway, but its gravel. Plus I live on a very busy road.

5) Neighbors-There's not really anyone for Chloe to play with. My next door neighbor on one side is eighty something years old and on the other side or 20 something guys with no sense of responsibility who spend every possible second trying to hit on me. (But they did send me a mother's day card, which was awesome) I'd really like to live somewhere where we can get to know the neighbors and Chloe would have someone to play with.

6) My (somewhat) newly converted heater/air conditioner does not work. I spent all winter freezing my @ss off, and now I'm sweating my @ss off. Seriously. No joke. It's actually hotter IN my house than outside of it. And it's currently 82 degrees outside. It's the kind of hot inside where you just can't bring yourself to do anything because of how hot it is. This is definitely a problem, as see #2.


So what is the solution????

Sell my house.

Perfect, right? Wrong.

Don't get me wrong, that's REALLY what I want to do right now. I want to sell my house, downsize, and move on to a new chapter in life and find a house that better suits our needs.

The problem?

1) Not enough equity in the house. We took out a home equity loan a few years back. If I could sell it myself, there wouldn't be a problem, I would actually come out ahead. The problem is that its definitely a buyers market and if I were to use a realtor, the commission and closing costs would take up all the equity. And forget my trying to keep the house in viewing shape.

2) It seems like a house in an addition would best match my desires/needs. The problem is that I don't want a cookie cutter home. I want a house with character. That's hard to find at a price I can afford.

3) At any rate, I wouldn't want to buy another house unless I planned on staying there for awhile. And I'm certainly not in a place to make any solid long term plans.

4) I could rent. But to get what I want I would probably end up paying a pretty significant amount more than what I'm paying now. And I know that people are going to say that I'm throwing money out the window by renting, but I'm throwing money away all over the place with this house too. And if I rent, I won't be responsible for all the repairs.

So I guess I'm not going anywhere. Mostly, I just want to not be hot and sweating. And cleaning all the time. :)