Saying Goodbye to the Crusty House

Let it be known far and wide, we no longer own this house!!!  I can't even put into words what a relief that is to say!

Now that it's SOLD, I feel like I can officially write a summary about our five years in those drafty walls...

2007
-purchased house in March

-THREE FLEA INFESTATIONS.  I remember feeling fleas crawling on me in bed, biting me.  You do not want to know what that feels like.  And exterminators are expensive.  (they came 3 times)  I'm a little allergic to flea bites, I had one that grew to the size of a quarter.

-SURPRISE! Propane costs almost double what natural gas costs...coldest, most stressful winter of my life.

2008
-SURPRISE! Well water went bad.  It came out of the faucet orange, gritty, and stained everything it touched. (we couldn't afford to fix this problem for around a year, it was very expensive.)

-SUMP PUMP DIES.  This caused our basement to flood...several times.  When you have a wet basement in Ohio, you get mold and INSECTS.... which leads us to:

-CENTIPEDE & WOLF SPIDER INFESTATIONS.  Eden was born this summer, and I remember nursing her on the couch late into the night, waking up to see a wolf spider the size of my hand about 20 inches from my bare feet.  It was in the doorway, blocking my path back to my bedroom.  I had to leap over it with newborn in hand, and wake Jarom up to kill it.  He threw a rug on it.

And if you've never seen an Ohio centipede, you are truly blessed.  Just imagine 10 medium wolf spiders all stuck together in a row.  Now imagine one bolting out from under your couch at lightning speed.  Let's just stop imagining now, I'm starting to creep myself out.  They are so hard to kill, but even harder to live with.

-CHIGGERS & TICKS.  Since our yard was constantly wet (run off from the well), we had bad, bad chiggers every summer.  A chigger bite is like a mosquito bite x5, that lasts 2-3 months, itches like FIRE, oozes, and scabs over.  They like skin creases.  Do I need to expand on that?  I stopped going outside.  The kids never really learned.

The ticks were mostly in the pasture, but if the grass was long in the yard, they were there too.  I also found them in the house several times...and on my kids (3 times).

2009
-SNAKES.  We found snakes in our basement this spring.  Do I need to include more details?

-HORNET INFESTATION. Yes, you read that right.  I don't know how they kept getting in, but I killed at least 1-2 hornets in my house every week that summer.  UNNERVING.

-MICE & VOLES.  This is when the mice really started to show up a lot.  I actually think they were cute, but I was majorly grossed out finding them in my kitchen drawers.  (gag)

The voles were interesting.  They aren't very scared of people, and would just wander around the kitchen floor like they owned it.  But they didn't own it, so we would catch them and toss them out the door.  (I started feeling like we were on a five year camping trip at this point in our journey...)

2010
-LADYBUG INFESTATION.  This was the least offensive insect problem.  I remember laying in bed alone (which is often during residency), counting about 7 ladybugs crawling on my ceiling.  They were everywhere, all the time.  But ladybugs are cute, and by this time I had nerves of steal.

-FRUIT FLY INFESTATION.  No matter how clean I kept my kitchen, I had swarms of fruit flies this summer.  To get rid of them I would put cut-up fruit in a jar, and tape a paper funnel to the top.  They could get in, but couldn't get out.  Then I'd shake it outside, and wait for it to fill up again...which it always did.

-WELL STOPPED GIVING WATER.  This is a problem.  Artesian wells change constantly.  We had problems every spring and fall...no water, low water, dirty water.  This summer we spent thousands fixing it, and a large chunk of our backyard was a muddy mess for the next year.

2011
-REPAIRS & REMODELS.  Ivy was born this year, and we put unbelievable amounts of money into getting the house ready to sell.  Which meant we had workers in the house all the time...and I had a nursing baby.  This was not pleasant.  But we survived.

In all, we had to replace:
carpet & vinyl
2 porches
2 exterior doors
2 interior doors
several walls/ceilings
1 bath tub
1 toilet
3 bathroom sinks
1 kitchen sink
granite counter tops
4 windows
a lot of electrical wiring
hand rails for stairs
...and probably more that I'm forgetting.

2012
-KITCHEN FLOOR MOLDED.  There was a slow leak in the kitchen sink, which caused the floor to slowly bubble and warp over about a month.  We had just had this expensive vinyl installed a couple years earlier, but we had to have it all pulled up and replaced.

-GIANT ANT INFESTATION.  This was the year we were invaded with enormous ants, everywhere.  I don't know why they came, where they came from, or why the eventually died off...but they were EVERYWHERE.  And they were HUGE.

-We had an offer on the house this summer, but it fell through as soon as the home inspector gave his report.  So we dumped a few more thousand into the remodel.

-We moved out in June of 2012.  

-We had a total of FIVE closing dates set up to sell this house, all of which fell through (except the last, of course.)  

2013

-BURGLARY.  A thief broke into our vacant house in January,  snapped off our new (expensive) doorknob, STOLE ALL THE COPPER PIPES, broke the (expensive) water heater, the (expensive) water softener, and the kitchen sink disposal in the process.  But he was a kind-hearted thief, for he did have the goodness to turn off the water before he committed his crimes.  Otherwise the house would have flooded, and probably fallen in on itself.  

-WE BECAME LANDLORDS...for two weeks.  Our buyers graciously volunteered to rent the house for the two weeks between the pipe replacement and the actual closing date, just to protect the poor old house!  I honestly didn't want to at all, because I was sure that if they actually spent two weeks living in that house, they would break contract and run!  (they probably should have)

-SOLD.  They actually bought it.  We sold it for a painful loss (which we'll be paying off for a long time), but as of this month, we no longer have to poor money into that crusty, crusty house.  It is our problem NO MORE.  

And now we're up to date.  And it feels really good.  

Now we live here:

We like it here.  Do you know what I like?  I like having no bugs or spiders to look at everyday.  And there are no holes in the walls or floors.  And everything is creamy white.  Everything feels new,  and I simply cannot get over the fact that there are no bugs here.  Not even in my garage.  I cleaned the garage out in the fall, expecting to find dozens of wolf spiders, but there weren't any.

And see my cute little babies down there?  I don't worry about them being eaten by anything while they sleep.  There are no chiggers in our grass, no ticks, no man-eating spiders.  It's kind of how I remember Idaho when I was a kid...you could just walk barefoot in the grass with no worries.  Idaho is really nice like that.

We plan on living in this tidy little rental for a long time.  We outgrew it before we even moved in, but we're making it work.  It's a 4 bedroom house, but we changed the master bed room into a sort of family room...it has the TV,  piano, toys, and a couch.  We can barely fit the whole family in there at once, but we needed the living space.

So it's actually only a 3 bedroom house...which is complicated when there are almost 7 people in your family.  But I don't even care.  It's clean, cozy, cheap, and predictable.  If something breaks down, we don't even have to pay for it.  After what we've been through, that is an amazing feeling.

We're actually in the process of buying a property down the road.  We'll eventually build our dream house on it, but I'm in no hurry.  We'll just plant some trees while we wait for the dream house to appear, and by the time it does, the trees will be tall enough to give us some shade.

That sounds like a really good plan.  :)