Friday, February 23, 2007

First hurdle....hurdled.

I have to say, I am pretty happy with the whole homeowner thing, overall. I love that I am not at all concerned with my landlord, and that in considering what sorts of things I want to do with the house, I can do whatever I want, even if it means painting the living room day-glo pink and intalling black lights.

The biggest fear I had when I was considering buying was the thought of dealing with major repairs -- the nice thing about renting is that if something breaks, you just call the landlord and then, magically, it gets fixed at no additional cost to you (or, in the case of my landlord, you call and convice him that it isn't actually your fault that the well ran dry or the 70 year old furnace broke again, and THEN he fixes it.) When you own your house, if something breaks YOU have to fix it, even if it costs a thousand dollars. To be quite honest, that scared the crap out of me.

So yesterday when I realized the gas I was smelling was not, in fact, all in my head, and I called the gas company and the nice gas company man met me at my door, I was pretty much shaking in my Birkenstocks. Fortunately, the problem was minor, and less than a hundred dollars later I had overcome my first homeowner catastrophe. Let's hope they are all as minor.

Speaking of doing whatever I want to the house, I still have no earthly idea what to do with the house. Any decorating geniuses out there have any ideas?

2 comments:

KellyLee said...

Baby steps to freedom...baby steps to homeownership stresses. That is great that it was a cheap fix. That is my fear too, one day we wake up and we have a $3,000 catastrophe. I am glad we only need one kidney to live!

Holli said...

We haven't had any issues yet, but I think everyone has that fear of "will this be the day?" I try not to worry about it because I figure what will happen will happen regardless. As for decorating, I 've never understood those people who totally gut and then renovate a house without ever having lived in it. I have found that I have to live in a space for a while before I know what I want to do with it. Find out where the light comes in at certain parts of the day, get to know the views, the sounds, etc. We've been here since August and I just now feel like I know this place well enough to change it to my liking. Have fun decorating and know that it takes time (and unfortunately money!), but you will be so proud of the outcome because it is yours.