"Little Miss (Not So) Fix It"

I always figured that the first home I bought would come packaged with a co-owning husband, a few kids, a yellow lab, and the traditional white picket fence. Well, life doesn’t always turn out the way one had imagined. And, as I am slowly learning, that is perfectly OKAY.

After many years of renting in NYC (because buying is so astronomical), I moved to Chicago with the hopes of being able to afford my own home. Well, last March I took the plunge and purchased my first condo. Let me just say, there is nothing more liberating for a single woman than to be able to own her own home. You may not yet be settled in a marriage, or have children to tend to, but every month you come face to face with your biggest commitment – your mortgage. The mortgage you work single-handedly to pay. And what I soon learned after signing on the dotted line, is that with each payment comes the added 30-year fixed bonus addition that I like to call the “joys of home-ownership.”

Like most first time buyers, after buying my condo I was financially wiped out. Pretty much flat broke. My former ING savings account was now known as my living room. Feeling overwhelmed and scared that I was taking on this huge responsibility solo, I told myself, “Well, at least I have a roof over my head and a hot shower!” Oh, wait, NOPE. My first shower in my new place was luke warm. My second, a bit colder. By my third, I was showering with the Eskimos. In an attempt to figure out what was going on, I called the building manager to ask if there were any other reported water temperature problems in related units. Her response, “No.” So, on my second day in my brand new home, I had to find a plumber. Overly desperate for a hot shower, I decided to just use my building’s plumbing company, which of course was twice as expensive. After hours of evaluation, the plumber told me that three temperature gauges were shot and had been for weeks. Apparently, somewhere in between the time of my housing inspection and my closing, the temperature gauges in the shower handle blew. Here is the kicker! My former owner knew these gauges were broken and did not tell me! Knock, Knock, Knock, my first official house warming present, a $1,490 bill from Lakeview Plumbing Company. Welcome Home Sista-Friend!

One by one, the joyous moments kept coming. A month later I am sitting on the couch watching Project Runway when I hear an alarming BANG come from the bathroom. I go in to find the side of my bathtub lying on the floor. F---! I attempted to insert the fallen side back into place, only to have it fall out a repeated five, six, seven more times. I finally couldn’t take it anymore. Without thinking, I kicked the damn side of the tub so hard I almost broke my ankle. (I could hear my mother's voice saying, "Smooth move ya dope.") Anyway, being the crafty (or not so crafty) “Miss Fix It” I am, I eventually decided to wedge a nearby cabinet up against the tub’s side until I could further deal with it. Now, ten months later, let’s not move that cabinet just yet...

The summer brought on a whole other set of surprises. First, it was air conditioning issues. For all of June I walked around my apartment like “Ugly-Naked Girl” in a 24/7 hot yoga class until I figured out that my filtering units were clogged. In July, my dishwasher decided to just fall out of its unit, followed by my kitchen sink having a massive leak. Then, one morning I woke up with a vision. An unstoppable vision. I was going to paint my bedroom.

All I can say is, “What in God’s name was I thinking?” The era of my life where I decided to paint my bedroom, was to date the only time I actually contemplated jumping out of my fifty-first story window (Or at least strangling myself with blue painters tape). Five trips to Home Depot, six paint color changes, two trips to the hospital for chemical inhalation poisoning, and three weeks of my life I’ll never get back ~ AND VOILA, I present to you a half painted cloud blue room!! I am embarrassed to say it still remains that way. I will NEVER EVER attempt to paint a room by myself again. Never. And, I am personally going to get that in writing. I seriously applaud all of you who can successfully paint a room and enjoy it. BRAVO!

I think my most favorite tale though of being a single woman homeowner comes from my experience (or inexperience) in dealing with electronics. In the past, everything from programming my blackberry, to working my digital camera has always seemed like such a project. So, when a friend here convinced me to buy a large plasma TV, I felt a bit overwhelmed. But...there I found myself one Sunday afternoon at Best Buy on a mission for the perfect television.

So here it goes, $3,500 poorer, and two techie-dorks from the Geek Squad richer, mission completed. It’s Showtime! There is banging, leveling, and cords everywhere. Not to mention two very LARGE holes in my wall where the TV is going to rest. When the television is finally mounted, it looks a bit “tilted” to the right (as I observe with a slightly bent neck). Geek #1 says that is the way it is supposed to be because the floor is uneven. There is also a large power cord hanging from below the TV. Geek #2 says that cord is supposed to hang down and what I need to do is jimmy-rig it to the wall and paint over it. I am so not the "jimmy-rigging" kind of girl, but not knowing any better, I took their word for it.

Several months later a few guy friends are over and proceed to tell me that the people who mounted my TV were lazy-asses and never pushed the power cord through the back of the wall. I felt scammed, exhausted, and royally pissed off. I just wished that I had a man to deal with this crap. (I know that sounds more than pathetic, but at the time I really felt that way). Anyway, I called Best Buy to kindly ask them to come back out to fix it, and they said it would cost me at least another grand. My response, “No thanks. I’ll deal with it.”

And that is just it. As with everything in life, single or not, you just sometimes have to deal with it. Rarely are situations ever perfect. Whether you have an on-call handyman or a library full of “Fix It” and "Dummies" books, there are no easy answers to everything. In the end, and in my attempt to find all the positives in this journey of homeowning, I have to first say that I feel very lucky to have the opportunity to own my own home. And, what I am realizing is that all the little “joys” are only short-term annoyances, not to mention totally fixable. Then, I hear my mother's voice again... she says, "You have to remember, it is all those little unique tilts, cracks, and leaks that make a house, a home."

Copyright jk/ssg'08