NOW PLAYING: The Joys of Homeownership

18 December, 2002
So we've moved into our new (brand new) house in the mountains. And no, it didn't (as one of my old buddies asked) come with a banjo included. We happen to like the area, and it didn't hurt that a friend had for the past few years been pestering us to move up there, either.

The process of finding and buying a home wasn't exactly what I'd call "fun," but it could have been a whole lot worse. With the interest rates at the lowest they've been in decades, we decided we'd better go ahead and do this. We looked at houses online and made lists of the ones we wanted to see in person. The Wife then drove up with The Boy and spent several days scoping out the places on our list, and those that made the cut we looked at together on the weekends. We had a fabulous agent who made the process as painless as possible. We found our new house, signed our lives away and really like the place we bought.

Sign here (and here, and here, and here, too...): I barely make it through the closing without getting a terminal case of Writer's Cramp.

The "moving" part was the toughest. Wifey did a great job of sorting, packing and organizing. I got to do the lifting, loading and driving of the trucks. Yes, "trucks," plural. I've taken two 24-foot diesels up the mountains now, and we still haven't quite gotten all our stuff out of the Old Homestead. I'm hoping the last of it we can cram into a small U-Haul trailer, so I don't have to deal with another truck, even if it's a small one.

It's not that I mind driving a big truck -- in fact, I rather like it. I spent the summer before I went to college driving trucks around North & South Carolina and Virginia, so it wasn't a new experience for me. But the trucks we rented had some really anemic diesel engines in them and, of course, engine governors. Not that I ever was in a situation where that was going to be an issue; the only times I ever even approached a governable speed was on long downhill streches of road with the wind behind me.

The first truck trip was the worst. When we hit the final six-mile-long, six-degree grade up into the mountains, my speed dropped like a rock down to 30 MPH and pretty much stayed there. I got over to the far right lane and stood on the accelerator to no avail. As I climbed, so did the water temperature in the truck's radiator, even though it was probably no more than 60 degrees outside. By the time I crested the Eastern Continental Divide, the temp gauge was in the red and I had lights flashing at me from the dashboard. If I'd had to go another quarter mile, I'd have been sitting on the shoulder with the hood up, steam pouring from the engine. As it was, once I started back downhill, the engine cooled off quickly and I was back up to speed. On a hot summer's day that truck would have never made it to the top without stopping.

Giddy-Up! No chance, buster. At least it was cool outside and we didn't have a really big mountain to climb...

Two weeks later we rented another truck, which had a Turbo-Diesel engine under the hood, but for some reason that didn't seem to matter when it came to the truck's top speed. The truck still wouldn't hit 70, even downhill. I was also worried about the climb up the mountains. The first time up I hadn't even thought about the potential for overheating, but this time I was eyeing that gauge like a hawk, worried about a repeat performance. The turbo turned out to be good for something, since the engine never got close to overheating (even if it didn't go any faster up the hill than the other truck did).

Anyway, we filled the basement with boxes and piles of stuff, which are still there but slowly diminish as we put things in their new places. We're thinking at this point we might have everything unpacked sometime in the spring (optimistic, I know). Then we'll get to work on the yard, which right now is pretty much one big (red) mud-hole. The builder said that they planted grass, then didn't get any rain for months. They re-planted, and the next two days it rained buckets, which washed all the grass seed away. That happened again, right before we bought the house. So there's some residual grass (and weeds) growing, but for the most part the yard is all dirt, covered in places by old hay left there from the previous planting attempts. I suppose that if you look at the "bright side," we have the opportunity to do whatever landscaping we want to at this point. There's certainly nothing we need to remove first to do it...

We've discovered why people are smuggling "real" toilets across the Canadian borders these days. The "low-flow" toilets that the Imperial Federal Government has mandated these days really are Low Flow. Going from a good old "one flush" toilet to a pathetic new "three-flusher" (or more) is like a slap in the face. These new johns are supposed to save water, but I know we've already pushed more water down our septic system by having to flush the dang thing 10 times every time we go to the bathroom than we'd ever have used with an old one. Who came up with this ridiculous water amount? Some tofu-eating environmental wacko that craps out a single half-ounce turd a week, it seems. Those of us with healthy bowel movements had better pack a plunger along with our favorite reading material, because it'll definitely be needed. And lest you think that this is just some "Man Thing," be advised that not only am I in second place on the overall "Plunger Count," but The Wife and I managed to stop up both toilets simultaneously. It was the first but, unfortunately, not likely to be the last time we've ever done that.

I understand that we can buy some sort of "turbo" for the toilet to help alleviate this issue, but I also understand those things cost 200 bucks, too. Sorry, but I'm not going to spend $400 so I can flush a toilet once instead of six times. So much for the "save water" theory. Just yet another instance of misguided government regulation, never mind that there even is a government regulation about how much water I can use in my own bathroom per flush on my poo... but I'm ranting (again).

Putting up the mailbox was another small fiasco. I had no idea what the specifics for how and where to put the mailbox were. Since we moved in on a holiday weekend, the Post Office was closed, so I couldn't call them up to ask. So I casually strolled down the road with my tape measure and checked out my neighbor's mailbox.

"Hmm, about 3 feet up and a foot or so back off the edge of the road. Good enough."

On one of our (many) trips to a local Home Improvement Store, I spied a box containing a white "no-maintenance" mailbox post that looked nice. It even claimed to have a "no dig mounting system" included.

"No dig, eh?" I thought. "That's me all the way." So I shelled out 40 bucks for the dang thing, completely forgetting the "Too Good to be True" rule, which turned out to be startlingly accurate in this case. What I got for my hard-earned cash was a white, hollow-molded plastic post (some assembly required). The "no-dig mount" appeared in the guise of a rotting 1x4x12-inch hunk of wood with a slight point on one end. I was to pound this thing into the ground and then attach the plastic post (upon which would be mounted the hefty rural-sized mailbox I bought) to that stake using two tiny wood screws.

Yeah, right.

Pathetic Post: No way was this thing going to do the job. I should have known better, but I'm stupid sometimes... Uncle Glenn offers me Moral Support as Ev scouts out the driveway.

A rig like that wouldn't hold up to the breeze of a passing car, let alone stand up to any respectable wind that blew through. So we gave the plastic post up as a Bad Job, and I returned to the store to do what I should have done in the first place: buy a big, heavy, treated, solid-wood mailbox post. I called my friend, who obliged by coming over with a post-hole digger and a maul (mine were still back at the old home). He dug out a fine 30-inch deep hole, and our mailbox is standing tall and proud at the end of the driveway (at least until some kid in a pickup truck zooms by and whacks it with a bat...).

We've still got plenty of projects to work on in the new house. Interior painting will be a big one; all the walls right now are painted in an unoffensive (and uninspiring) off-white, and that has to change. Curtains for the windows, finishing the unfinished basement, etc., etc., etc.

First Snow: ... and it won't be the last, but it sure was pretty.

But right now we're thrilled to have a new house of our own in the mountains and are looking forward to all of the happy times we'll have there.

previous | archive | now playing | next