Ye Olde Shite Haus

When my husband and I bought our house five and a half years ago, we were, like many first-time home buyers, horribly clueless.

Oh sure, I’d spent three months glued to HGTV. But back then, I wasn’t paying attention to (or they didn’t even have) shows like “House Hunters,” “Property Virgins,” “Holmes on Homes” or “My First Place.” Nooooo. I was watching useless crap like “Divine Design” and “Color Splash” — shows that provided approximately zero help in the home-buying process.

But I learned oh-so-much about faux finishes for bathroom walls!

We felt a tremendous amount of pressure to buy immediately. We were moving for our jobs and it was the peak of the housing market. It was the era of multiple bids and pending contracts within hours of a house being listed. Our boss had us convinced that we needed to BUY BUY BUY or we’d be living in a VAN down by the RIVER.

And of course, we knew everything so we didn’t dare ask our elders their opinions.

Our Realtor was of no help, either. She was acting as the agent for a bunch of us at the same company and was just raking in the commissions. She didn’t give a shit what we bought — we were just a guaranteed check in her bank.

Anyhow, the  house we bought was the last of eight we viewed. We kind of had an idea that it needed some upgrades, but weren’t too concerned because we loved the location: close to downtown and our jobs, 15-minutes to the beach, quiet street in an established neighborhood. We figured you can always change the kitchen, but you can’t change the location.

Boy oh boy, were we clueless. Because a new roof is fucking expensive, yo.

Problems started before we even moved in. The house was tented for termites. They said something about some damage to the doors and shed. A leak in the patio that never quite stopped. A pool pump that blew out before our first year was up. A roof that, we realized too late, was horribly outdated and very expensive to upgrade. Kitchen cabinets that fell off the hinges. A pool screen that tore at the slightest breeze. Plumbing issues. Terrible energy efficiency. Damp closets. Dented gutters.

The list goes on.

Over the years, our house has fallen into a state of . . . well, shit. Less than a year after moving in, we lost our high-paying jobs that got us into this mess in the first place. We really started living leaner and couldn’t scrape up money to do renovations as we’d hoped. We did what we could, but the toilet wouldn’t fill back up. The sink constantly clogged. The windows wouldn’t lock. The kitchen sink drained into the dishwasher. And was that Styrofoam acting as a shade on the hall lights???

Why hadn’t we noticed this stuff when we bought the place? And, more disturbingly, why hadn’t this come up in the home inspection? Why hadn’t the Realtor clued us in on these very expensive house repairs and upgrades?

Then I got pregnant. With twins. I went on maternity leave at 28 weeks. I didn’t deliver until 38 weeks and stayed home for nine weeks after that. We forged by on my disability pay.

We’ll make it, we thought. The cars are just about paid off. We have no credit card debt. We’ll budget.

Then my job was downsized and we couldn’t afford full-time daycare on a part-time salary. I was basically forced to quit and stay home with the kids, instantly bringing our income down by almost half.

Oh yeah, and the market and economy took a gigantic dump and our house lost about 70% of its inflated value.

So here we sit, with our house on the market as a short sale and an ever-growing list of things wrong with it.

For example, on a single day this week, the following happened:

• The kitchen sink clogged, backed up into itself and overflowed the dishwasher, spilling sulphuric swamp stench all over the kitchen floor and forcing me to call a plumber.
• The roof started leaking in the middle of the house. During rainy hurricane season. In Florida.
• A large chunk of one of our trees blew off during a storm and landed just feet from our new minivan.

Sometimes, I’m convinced we have some kind of hex on us. Back in 2004, Hurricane Frances hit our rental house in Gainesville, downing a tree onto the back part of the house and flooding the entire place. The house was declared uninhabitable. We lived in a hotel for a week and had to find a new place to live.

Oh, and I drove Chris’ new car into a pseudo-lake-thing that had formed as a result of the hurricane flooding.

It was epic.

Anyhow, I’m freaking out that this house won’t sell. I mean, who the hell buys a house that has rain dripping onto the sofa and a front door that barely opens because of termite damage?

And if the house doesn’t sell soon, that means serious upheaval when I’m either massively pregnant or horomonally unstable after birth.

Either that or foreclosure. Which would be a real blast!

So yeah. I hate bringing this stuff up because it just is what it is. We made a pricey mistake, we learned a lot and we’ll hopefully do better next time. Nothing we can do now but hope and wait and clean the house when someone wants to see it — which is a pretty hilarious concept when you have twin toddlers destroying everything in their path.

But in the meantime, can someone figure out what the hell this curse is that we’re carrying around and let me know what kind of chicken semen I need to eat to get rid of it?