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sureiIt all started when the microwave went kaput.
We use our microwave every single day, so replacing it was absolutely necessary. And we did. And in the process, I noticed a refrigerator, which turned out to be completely wrong, but still got my parents (especially my mother, but me too, we all agreed) on a fridge kick. And so we replaced the refrigerator. It arrived yesterday, and we had to take off half of the doorframe between the living room and the kitchen in order to fit it in. (Which we wanted to do anyway, but still. That does need to be fixed. We've got raw wall exposed right now.) And we knew -- have known for a long time -- that the oven needs to be replaced sometime in here, because we had to re-calibrate it several years ago, and now we can't trust it to cook things right at all. But.
The kitchen sink is broken.
And the part which is broken, is broken clean through on one side. It's made of lead. And its got non-regulation/code/whatever threads, which means that it cannot be replaced.
Never mind that lead shouldn't be anywhere near anything that could be ingested. Never mind that epoxy isn't guaranteed to actually hold for long under the kind of pressure that kitchen sinks fall under, super-glue won't do the trick, and gorilla-glue is toxic. The part is broken and irreplaceable.
The whole sink needs to be replaced.
Now, Dad hates that sink, so yeah, we wanted to replace it eventually, but still. It's like this is the year when everything falls down around our ears. Me? I hate the people who built this house. In 1961. And cut corners while they were at it, which means the house was never fully up to code, and is a hazard at it. (Electrical boxes without covers. Wires left lying out in the open up in the attic. Mostly ungrounded wiring, at that. Hello, fire hazard. Also, the attic is completlely uninsulated, has no flooring, has roofing nails sticking out where you could implale your hand or head on them just trying to not fall through the ceiling, and the windows are none of them the same size and had to each be custom-fit when we decided we wanted, y'know, double-glazed windows instead of the single-glazed four-pane ones that they built the house with (which that part I understand, I mean, 1961. It's the irregularity that annoys me).) I don't hate the house, it's my childhood home and hopefully my inheritance and the neighborhood is really, really nice in that the crime rate is through the floor, insanely low. But sometimes I'd really like to strangle the people who built it.
In the end, given that it'll probably cost as much as the house is worth to bring it up to today's code, there's really only two reasons, excepting my sentimental childhood-home thing and the fact that moving is utterly sucky and Dad hates it with an oh-god-why-are-you-eating-me-slowly dread, why we don't just get a new house.
1. The mortgage is paid off.
2. This house is within walking distance of Mom's work, the car repair, the pharmacy/drug store, the family practice, the optometrist's office, the library, and a grocery store. Among other things.
But. We haven't even had time to do Christmas shopping. It's twelve days away, and we have no tree, no presents, no room because of all the shifting things around to replace necessary appliances when they die on us. And we're hosting it.
Hate the people who built this house, the crummy luck right now. Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaate.
We use our microwave every single day, so replacing it was absolutely necessary. And we did. And in the process, I noticed a refrigerator, which turned out to be completely wrong, but still got my parents (especially my mother, but me too, we all agreed) on a fridge kick. And so we replaced the refrigerator. It arrived yesterday, and we had to take off half of the doorframe between the living room and the kitchen in order to fit it in. (Which we wanted to do anyway, but still. That does need to be fixed. We've got raw wall exposed right now.) And we knew -- have known for a long time -- that the oven needs to be replaced sometime in here, because we had to re-calibrate it several years ago, and now we can't trust it to cook things right at all. But.
The kitchen sink is broken.
And the part which is broken, is broken clean through on one side. It's made of lead. And its got non-regulation/code/whatever threads, which means that it cannot be replaced.
Never mind that lead shouldn't be anywhere near anything that could be ingested. Never mind that epoxy isn't guaranteed to actually hold for long under the kind of pressure that kitchen sinks fall under, super-glue won't do the trick, and gorilla-glue is toxic. The part is broken and irreplaceable.
The whole sink needs to be replaced.
Now, Dad hates that sink, so yeah, we wanted to replace it eventually, but still. It's like this is the year when everything falls down around our ears. Me? I hate the people who built this house. In 1961. And cut corners while they were at it, which means the house was never fully up to code, and is a hazard at it. (Electrical boxes without covers. Wires left lying out in the open up in the attic. Mostly ungrounded wiring, at that. Hello, fire hazard. Also, the attic is completlely uninsulated, has no flooring, has roofing nails sticking out where you could implale your hand or head on them just trying to not fall through the ceiling, and the windows are none of them the same size and had to each be custom-fit when we decided we wanted, y'know, double-glazed windows instead of the single-glazed four-pane ones that they built the house with (which that part I understand, I mean, 1961. It's the irregularity that annoys me).) I don't hate the house, it's my childhood home and hopefully my inheritance and the neighborhood is really, really nice in that the crime rate is through the floor, insanely low. But sometimes I'd really like to strangle the people who built it.
In the end, given that it'll probably cost as much as the house is worth to bring it up to today's code, there's really only two reasons, excepting my sentimental childhood-home thing and the fact that moving is utterly sucky and Dad hates it with an oh-god-why-are-you-eating-me-slowly dread, why we don't just get a new house.
1. The mortgage is paid off.
2. This house is within walking distance of Mom's work, the car repair, the pharmacy/drug store, the family practice, the optometrist's office, the library, and a grocery store. Among other things.
But. We haven't even had time to do Christmas shopping. It's twelve days away, and we have no tree, no presents, no room because of all the shifting things around to replace necessary appliances when they die on us. And we're hosting it.
Hate the people who built this house, the crummy luck right now. Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaate.