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If By Yes

Tag Archives: house

Run from the paint, children, RUN!

26 Wednesday Aug 2009

Posted by IfByYes in The House Saga, We Are Family

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

decorating, floors, home, house, mothers, painting

Guess what! We got our house last Thursday. Isn’t that GREAT?

Except that the walls were painted a stark grey that made the place seem as warm and welcoming as Alcatraz. The kind of colour that the landlord clearly must have picked because he wanted to communicate to his tenants “THIS IS NOT YOUR HOME AND YOU DO NOT BELONG HERE.”

INTERNMENT-CAMP GREY IS ALL THE RAGE THESE DAYS, RIGHT?

INTERNMENT-CAMP GREY IS ALL THE RAGE THESE DAYS, RIGHT?

The message must have been heard loud and clear, because the tenants had made their best efforts to scratch and mark and damage the walls in as many places as possible during their tenancy. One wall was SO marked and dented that all my friends exclaimed on it when they arrived. The greatest part of Saturday was spent spackling, sanding, and washing the walls. Friends who showed up to paint ended up having spackling trowels handed to them, and spent the subsequent hours on their hands and knees, trying to make the walls look more like walls, and less like swiss cheese.

As the day wore on, though, the dingy and unwelcoming house which we had just bought began to take on a new and cheerful feel. Slowly, my personality was spreading through the place, with tendrils reaching from the kitchen, up the stairs, and into the bedrooms.It was transforming from internment camp to… home.

From grey kitchen to sunny kitchen

From grey kitchen to sunny kitchen

Up the stairs...

Up the stairs...

Stairwell

Past the landing...

Then… everyone stopped for the day. People had to go home. Only half the painting was done. I had to teach a puppy class the next morning. Three people pledged to come back after I was done class, and they did. But when they called it a day, there was STILL more to be done. I began to fall apart. It was all so overwhelming. The flooring guys were due to come in that coming week. We had to move the next weekend. There were still some Alcatraz walls and I wanted them gone. The only room I had given permission to ignore was the future baby’s room – decorating a nursery in advance of any kind of pregnancy seems like counting chickens before they hatch. The painting jobs stretched on and on… I would never be done. One day, old and toothless, I would totter into the bedroom and announce

“I finished painting the bathroom today.”

“WHAT?” Perfect Husband would holler, adjusting his hearing aid.

So Monday night after work, Perfect Husband and I went back. I started on touch-ups downstairs while he gathered up drop cloths from the stairs to move into the bathroom. He found green paint spots on the stairs.

“Fuck!” he said, “how did that happen?”

He ripped another drop cloth off of the floor. “FUCK!” And another… “FUCK!”

They were everywhere. Paint splotches on the stairs. In the upstairs hall. The master bedroom. The computer room.  Yellow and green.

I once had a dream that shining yellow paint was oozing through the ceiling, landing in splotches at my feet. I knew that if it touched me, I would die. I ran to my parent’s room, seeking safety in my mother’s arms.

“It’s too late,” my father told me, “it touched her. She’s dying.”

Now it seemed like it was back, magically appearing under drop cloths, poisoning my new home. The downstairs floors were all slated to be replaced, but I had preferred to leave the carpet upstairs, so that little sock feet could run down the stairs in future years without slipping. Perfect Husband scrubbed grimly at the stairs while I miserably touched up thin spots on the walls downstairs. The paint didn’t want to come up. I faced the horrifying realization that we might have to redo the upstairs floors, too. Another two thousand dollars. A rush to either pick up new carpet, or a last minute decision to risk small people tumbling down the stairs by extending the laminate flooring up the stairwell. Then we would have to get the guy in to measure it, and convince him to install it before we moved in on Saturday. It was too impossible, too terrible for words.

“We’ll look up a way to get it out,” Perfect Husband assured me.”Now let’s paint a bathroom.”

So we did.

So we did.

The next night I called my mother AND my decorating-expert friend and moaned to them for a good hour and a half. Finally I had to face the fact that:

a) I wasn’t going to be able to sleep until I KNEW that I could get the paint splotches off the carpet

b) that it was becoming ridiculously late and

c)… I wanted my mommy. If Mum were within 500 kilometres of me I know she would have been there, armed with special paint removing solutions and a scrub brush, got down on her knees, and not risen until my carpet was saved. But she’s SIX THOUSAND KILOMETRES AWAY. I’m married and a homeowner. I’m supposed to be all grown up, but once again I just wanted to run from those paint splotches right into my mother’s protective arms. For the first time it really hit me how badly I miss having my mother at my beck and call.

But my mother couldn’t come save me, so instead, I set out at ten o’clock at night armed with nail polish remover, oxyclean and rubbing alcohol (all scrounged from the bathroom cupboard) to try and remove paint from carpet. Perfect Husband stayed behind to continue packing. Alone in my new home that night, I learned two more things – I may not be my mother, but I could get paint out of a carpet and… hire professionals next time.

215,000 dollars later…

21 Friday Aug 2009

Posted by IfByYes in The House Saga

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

house, mortgage

We own a house.

Now we just have to paint it.

…And put in new floors.

…And the back yard is a mass of weeds and crawling with ants.

BUT WE HAVE A HOUSE.

See? Even counsellors don’t want to help me

22 Wednesday Jul 2009

Posted by IfByYes in Me vs The Sad, The House Saga

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

depression, house, Perfect Husband

While Perfect Husband and I try to figure out the GP situation, he called the benefits people from his work and got them to sign me up for a counsellor. Six sessions are covered. They gave me the name of someone near to me, said they’d fax the info to her, and that she should get back to me by Monday.

…still have heard nothing.

On the bright side, did I mention we have a house? Paint swatches and flooring places, here we come.

We now interrupt your regular programming for this very important news bulletin

01 Wednesday Jul 2009

Posted by IfByYes in The House Saga

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Tags

house

A house.

… I has one.*

*subject to building inspection, reviewal of strata bylaws and strata council minutes, signing away of our first born child, etc.

Pride goeth before the mortgage

30 Tuesday Jun 2009

Posted by IfByYes in The House Saga, We Are Family

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

house, mortgage, parents

Okay, so the seller counter-offered… they won’t go a penny below what we offered, never mind any cash back for renovations. Which means if we want to do renovations, we have to offer MORE money and ask for cash back.

…or we can take the free money my father keeps trying to lend us.

It goes like this:

Me: Dad, we’re going to get a mortgage and buy a house.

Dad: Can you afford it? I can’t help you, you know. We’re in an economic downturn! My stocks have cut in half! I can’t help you! You’re on your own.

Me: That’s fine.

Dad: O_o Really?

Me, to Pefect Husband: He always says stuff like that at first, and then when I don’t actually ask for anything, he starts offering more and more.

Perfect Husband: We can do this without help anyway. We have enough of a down payment.

*time passes*

Dad: Okay, I can lend you a little money. Like, I could help with the down payment and closing fees a little. Like, a couple thousand or something.

Me: We have a down payment, Dad, it’s fine. Depending on how big our mortgage ends up being, the money for the lawyers fees might be helpful. But that’s it.

*time passes*

Dad: I want to give you money to help you out.

Me: It’s fine, Dad. We have the downpayment. If you can help with the closing costs, that would help our cash flow, but that’s about it.

Dad: But… I want to give you money! Let me talk to your husband.

Me: I don’t think he’d be comfortable taking a lot of money from you, but here he is.

Dad: Let me give you money. I want to help.

Perfect Husband: Thanks, but we’re mostly ok. I said I would take care of your daughter, I don’t want to ask you for anything.

Dad: But… but… I can give you some money!

*today*

Me: They won’t go a penny less than 215. We’re going to have to increase our mortgage amount if we want to put in new flooring and paint.

Dad: I can give you 10,000 dollars. Please let me give you 10,000 dollars. Really, I won’t miss it. Will your husband accept 10,000 dollars? He can pay it back if he wants, but I don’t need it back.

Me: I don’t know… we can always live with bad linoleum and berber carpeting for a while.

Dad: 10,000 dollars! I has it!

Me: Well… you’ll have to walk to Pefect Husband. His pride’s on the line.

Dad: I respect him even more now! Let me give you lots of money!

So I’m going to have him talk to Perfect Husband tonight. Do we save our pride, and get a higher mortgage, or do we take the gift?

Hi, I’m your new landlady. Now get out.

29 Monday Jun 2009

Posted by IfByYes in The House Saga

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

house

Okay, we made an offer today on the place that needs the renos.  Let’s hope they take our offer. Cross your fingers that no one else makes another offer in the next 24 hours! It’s been on the market for a year. I’ll be ticked off if now is the time that everyone decides to make offers on it.

The big catch is that this place has tenants. So if the offer is accepted, and we remove the subjects without any problems, then our first official act as this family’s new landlords will be to serve them with 60 days notice. From our tour through the place, it looks like two children and a baby live there, with one or maybe two adults.

How lucky I will be, if I get to be the one to kick them out of their home.

If this place doesn’t pan out, we’re going to have to start looking at either one levels, or two bedrooms (which, by the way, are really weirdly shaped in this complex) or… *shudder* condos.

New Plan.

28 Sunday Jun 2009

Posted by IfByYes in Polls, The House Saga

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

house, mortgage, Polls

Okay, so, now we’re planning on making an offer on another unit in the complex. This one has sat on the market for a year, probably because their tenants understandably make no effort to pretty the place up when you come to view the home, plus there is a hole in the wall and the lino in the kitchen looks like it comes from the days of the pyramids (those egyptians were famous for their advanced working in vinyl).

We figure that if we make a low offer, plus 10,000 which the seller is to return to us upon the mortgage going through (kind of a cash-back arrangement), we will be able to use that extra money to renovate a bit. Put in some laminate flooring, new linoleum, paint, replace the washer/dryer and so on.

Let’s hope THIS place doesn’t get popular too. At least it has a yard. It’s a bizarre, five feet above the ground outside kind of a yard, and slanty, but it’s a yard.

No house for you, the revenge.

27 Saturday Jun 2009

Posted by IfByYes in The House Saga

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

carbs wonderful carbs, house, life

So, after sitting on the market for 60 days, this place suddenly became popular. Someone else put in an offer too. Of course, we didn’t know what the offer was, so we upped ours to our maximum, just in case. Theirs must still have been better, because the seller went with the other offer.

Back to the drawing board!

Luckily my Perfect Husband has been feeding me almost non-stop carbs to alleviate my stress (and consequently his) and I’m disappointed, but philosophical about it.

In Which I Face the Crazy

27 Saturday Jun 2009

Posted by IfByYes in Me vs The Sad, The House Saga

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

depression, doctor, house, Perfect Husband, realtor, tears, whining

So, there’s a story which begins in a townhouse almost identical to the one we lost, and ends with me feeling sad in a paper gown.

It goes like this.

We went to see a couple more units in the same complex. Our realtor, perhaps feeling it wise not to show his face, sent his daughter (my coworker’s sister, who looks just like my coworker, except completely different) in his place. We liked her a lot, actually. The first unit she took us through was a hole compared to the Great Lost House. It had damaged drywall behind the front door, ancient and grimy linoleum, carpeting instead of wood flooring, and some truly distasteful back splash in the kitchen, featuring blue flowers. There are renters living there, which shows in the care they took to leave the house looking as un-presentable as possible. I also enjoyed the plaster cast of a pregnant torso in the baby’s room, featuring an outie belly button and lopsided breasts. Remind me not to do that, when I’m pregnant.

The next place was newly renovated, with a stove and fridge that were so new that their plastic was still on their handles, and their instruction manuals/warranties were still inside of them. New laminate flooring, too. Exact same layout as the Lost Place. Except… where the other place had had a tiny yard, this had a big wooden deck. And no crown molding, of course.

When we first saw the Lost Place, it had seemed like a wonderland. Given our budget, and the ridiculous cost of housing out here, our hopes had mostly extended towards a two bedroom one level place. Suddenly there was this three bedroom place, with two stories, and a yard, and it was in our price range.

Well, this place had the second story that I had coveted so highly. It had the lovely laminate flooring (actually, it was a nicer colour, too. Richer, not quite so Ikea). In fact, it had more laminate flooring, because the old place had carpet upstairs. This house had laminate upstairs too, except in one of the bedrooms – already painted blue, which is what I would want to paint a baby’s room some day.

Could I see or appreciate any of this? Nope!

All I could see was the absent crown molding, and worst of all, the missing yard. To someone who has a very beloved dog, and an endless procession of mouth-breathing, retrieving houseguests, a yard becomes a precious thing. I felt that our realtor had robbed us of our yard. Now we would have to take this stinky second choice, and I would be miserable forever, with no yard for the dogs. Miserable forever. All because of this one mistake. Couldn’t we just rewind? Why couldn’t we rewind?

“Well, I have no problem with this place,” said Perfect Husband to me, as we looked out the master bedroom window at the creepy, dark-windowed little child’s playhouse in the courtyard below.

“Don’t you?” I responded grimly.

“…Was that the wrong thing to say?” he asked.

“…No…” I said, “We’ll probably have to take this one anyway, so we might as well like it.”

But I couldn’t. I was fighting tears as we thanked Realtor Jr. I didn’t want Perfect Husband to know that I was reacting like a spoiled brat. However, when we stopped for groceries and I went to use the bathroom and came out with my face red as a tomato from a short bawling session, he gave me a resigned hug. I was still trying to put on a brave face, so I pulled away after a while, gave him a watery smile, and we went back to shopping.

We drove home in silence.

When we got in, he took the dog for a walk and I bawled heavily over my computer keyboard. When he came back in I smothered it. He could tell that I had been at it again, and his lips tightened as he fought between the conflicting emotions of wanting to kill Realtor Senior for making his beloved wife cry, and wanting to kill the beloved wife for being such a brat. He delivered irritable hugs, and I let him go lie on the bed while I retreated to the den. There it all became to overwhelming to be bearable, and I curled up on the floor, sobbing into the carpet and writhing in physical pain. Feeling like my heart was in a vice, I felt that I couldn’t bear the pain of losing the Lost Place. It just had to be undone, someone had to fix it, because I couldn’t handle reality as it was now, I just couldn’t.

After much sobbing into the carpet (hoping to muffle the sound), gnashing of teeth, rending of garments etc, I became aware of Perfect Husband’s presence. Turns out my vague attempts at muffling had been less than successful.

“I need to know why this bothers you so much,” he said. No doubt part of him was wondering what kind of tantruming child he had married – it must have been less than sexy to find me on the floor wailing like a frustrated two year old.

And it all came pouring out – how it hurts so much all the time, all the little sadnesses that weigh on me, and I feel like my friends don’t care anymore or listen to my problems any more, and my job is going nowhere, and I can’t seem to lose weight and how this had somehow just made everything too much… too much.

“Oh, well, if it’s just depression, that’s ok,” he said with obvious relief. Clearly he feels much more comfortable with craziness than with mere selfishness. Now reassured that I was simply a sad person pushed over the edge, instead of a spoiled brat throwing a tantrum, he held me tight while I sobbed and blew snot all over his shirt.

“It’s not depression,” I said, after the hyperventilating and uncontrollable wails had mostly drained out of me. “I’m just depressed these days.” I was aware that my argument was weak. But since I have had bouts of depressed mood my whole life (all the time in winter, and off and on when it’s not winter…) where I feel sad/near tears all the time, general hopelessness and so on, this feels fairly normal to me.  I have never wanted to actually kill myself or anything like that. Then he gave me a big lecture about how you don’t need to be suicidal for it to count for depression, and pointed out that this kind of depression is actually much more treatable than the other kind. “Psychiatrists love people like you,” he said, “they can fix you.”

I had a doctor’s appointment the next morning, to get my usual invasive probe… I mean PAP… and general yearly physical. We were supposed to be talking about me maybe having a baby sometime in the next year. I thought she might want to do a chicken pox titre on me or something. Perfect Husband made me promise to mention the depression to her.

After forty minutes in a waiting room, I was weighed (why does the doctor’s scale weigh me in at a good nine pounds more than my own scale/wii fit? Do you think they do that on purpose to demoralize you?) and then told to get naked and put on the embarrassing paper gown. Then I sat there for over half an hour, naked under my sad little paper gown, waiting for the doctor. My eyes were still swollen from the night before. I tried to remember everything I wanted to ask her about – my itchy ear, the pus blisters I keep getting on my toes, my family history of diabetes, the difficulty my mother had in conceiving me, the persistant irrational sadness… When she did come in, it was with rushed but sincere apologies.

She prodded my abdomen, inserted speculums, poked breasts and took blood pressure while muttering to me about folic acid. I told her what Perfect Husband had made me promise to tell her, and she seemed concerned but too busy to do anything about it. She suggested that I either go to the drop in mental health centre for a referral, or rebook another appointment with her.

“But I’m moving practices next week, so if you can’t make it for Tuesday…”

After a couple of “dears” and empty reassurances she hurried out before I could ask her about chicken pox titres, itchy extremities or anything else.

So, to sum up, I am accepting of the fact that I shouldn’t be this sad, but I still don’t know what to do about it. Self-medicating with chocolate last night helped, though, and we’ve made an offer on the otherwise perfectly fine place. Perfect Husband likes the deck better anyway, and pointed out that if we used some postage-stamp sized yard as a dog toilet area, it would hardly be a nice place for friends to come for a BBQ, or for a baby to play in.

He’s right, of course. He always is.

To sell your soul, please initial here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

26 Friday Jun 2009

Posted by IfByYes in I'm Sure This Happens To Everyone..., Me vs The Sad, The House Saga

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Tags

depression, house, life, mortgage, realtor

We just signed an offer on a place.

… yikes.

In other news, my Perfect Husband wants me to see someone about depression. Apparently, being sad most of the time and then experiencing several hours of uncontrollable, wracking sobs with very little provocation isn’t normal. Who knew?

More on that later.

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