Hate This House!

At this point in the lifespan of our years in this home, I am ready to just burn it to the ground and walk away, preferably with my children and maybe a garbage bag or two of my belongings. We have outgrown this awful house and it seems that it's falling apart before my very eyes.  There is no hope of selling this cursed place as we don't have the tens of thousands to bring to the closing table to fill the gap of what we owe and what we can get, and the idea of renting this place out and being a landlord makes our stomach turns.  Who in the right mind wants to be a landlord?  Who wants to get phone calls about the water heater or a leaky roof or have to maintain this dump between tenants while also making up the difference between what we can get in rent and what our mortgage, taxes, and insurance is costing us?  Who wants to do that?  Who is able to do that?

I loathe this house.  I hate the cheap vinyl floors that are all knicked up and coming up at the seams, and I hate the family room that is too small to contain a family of four plus a wall full of toys.  I hate the dining room that uncomfortably seats four and only four.  I hate the lack of basement.  I hate that we bought this place stupidly thinking that we would live here for only five years or so, and now we are stuck here for the foreseeable future until something miraculous happens.  I do not want to put another penny into this house that I paid too much for and owe too much on.  It makes me want to cry.

Now it seems that something else is added to the list, floorboards in the loft that slope ever so gently to what seems to be a divot, a chunk of low spot, in the actual boards underneath the carpet and padding.  Panicking, I called the builder who slapped together this place seven and a half years ago, and as we are six and a half years out of warranty, I was surprised that they actually came by to take a look at it.  It's not structural, he assured me, but I'd have to hire a handyman to pull up the carpet and probably patch the wood underneath to smooth it out and make it level.  If it was structural and in danger of collapsing, they might fix it.  Since it's just something that drives me crazy as I traverse back and forth in this room, the only advice they have is to just leave it or hire a handyman.  Who knows how much the handyman would cost?  Who knows what else he might find?

And so it's best to leave it until we have to move the furniture out of here anyway, or until we have to buy new carpet, or until we move (HA!) and it maybe (hopefully not) comes up on some sort of report.  But it's just another thing about this house that makes me hate it even more.

As I have an obsessive personality when it comes to these things, I was up in the loft yesterday with Alex, on my knees and pushing on that low spot and trying to feel exactly the way the wood was laying (or if there's even wood under there- maybe the carpet is just stretched tight over the spot and it's actually NOTHINGNESS supporting that one footprint of carpeting).  I'm pushing and feeling and then I look over, and there is Alex, on his knees next to me, pushing and feeling and giving me the biggest grin.  Alex has the best smiles; he busts loose a grin, and it's like rainbows shoot out of his face.  And he looks ridiculous, Alex on his knees pushing at spots in the floor- he looks like me.  For a minute, I stop obsessing and I grab my son who thinks everything is a wonderful sort of copying game, and I give him the biggest hug and kiss I can.  It's in that moment that I remember that a house is just a house and money is just money and issues are fixable and it's my children and family that are the most important things in the entire world.  F*ck the floor and the shitty vinyl and the lines in the drywall and the lack of square footage and the boys sharing a room and the dresser in the hallway and having to give things away because there's nowhere to store it.  Oh well that we're underwater by a huge ridiculous number that is more than Chris' annual salary.  I have some little boys to go play with.

But for real.  I do not like this house.