1y ago

the Perks of ownership...

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My wife and I bought a house with two GIANT trees in the backyard. At least sixty feet tall, four feet across. They were probably planted when the house was built in '72.
One month in, one of them dies. It cost $2,700 to remove it and leave the stump.
Then in March this year the OTHER ONE FUCKING DIES TOO. We went ahead and had the stumps ground this time. $4,400.
I spent $7,100 to have a backyard with 0 trees and 2 mounds where I would rather have trees. Fucking NOTHING to show for all that money. Those trees were gorgeous. I was pretty devastated when we had to have the second one cut down.
Apart from the trees, we have had:
A 50 year old toilet flush valve break ($35 plus the time it took me to repair the toilet because I do not want to figure out how to get rid of an old toilet);
The garbage disposal fail ($300 for a new disposal; $450 for the plumber because I got in over my head);
The gas valve on the heater break ($840 plus a weekend of it being 45° in my house before anyone in town could come with the part)
A garage door that hangs up as it closes. I'm gonna ignore that one for as long as I can and just pull it down while it closes for now. Maybe I'll get the hardware to convert it to a manual door while I'm young enough to pull it up and down.
I'd still rather own, but man, the cons go hard.
- Home ownership is for people who DIY.
  I've fixed enough things myself to realise that most things are broken because the previous owners also fixed it themselves.
  
  Me starting a project “What kind of alcoholic simpleton set up THIS CONTRAPTION?!? This is why we need professionals”
  Also me, finishing a project “I’m done fiddling with this godforsaken piping. That’s good enough, leave it for the next person”
  And thus the cycle continues anew
  
  My rule is that it goes back less fucked than it came out
  Sometimes it's not by much, but it still happens
  Which is why I'm pissed my FIL redid my kitchen light switch without me there: it came out broken, went in the way he likes, and now half my kitchen doesn't work and I cant figure out the fucking arcane bullshit the original guy did to fix it
  
  This is why I jumped at the chance to buy my parents' old house when they moved out. Not only were they giving me a good deal, but I knew how my dad took care of the place and that I wasn't buying a fire hazard or worse.
  
  I weep for whoever bought my parents old house. My dad left so much half-assed shit that's going to break again for them to find. Hell he's already done a number on their new house and that's just what I can see walking through. I'm probably going to inherit that one...
- The worst past of renting is the Landlord. The worst part of owning is being the Landlord.
  
  I like not having to wait for the landlord to get off their ass.
  
  Man, I'm still waiting for mine...
  If only I wasn't my landlord...
- Our walk in shower on the 2nd floor leaked to the first due to the membrane being compromised. Found out there is no easy fix and had to completely redo the shower. It was 9k. T_T
- You got the control over the quality of stuff you own Not so much on rented
- The garbage disposal fail ($300 for a new disposal; $450 for the plumber because I got in over my head);
  This seems a little outrageous. Garbage disposals are about $150 new, and I have no plumbing experience and can swap one out in less than 15 minutes. Unless you seriously damaged some pipes or the plumber was getting double time I have no idea why it would cost that much.
  
  I did fuck up the plumbing. Like I said, got in over my head. All the old pipes were cemented in and the disposal didn't match up to the existing plumbing. I should have thrown in the towel sooner, but "too late" was when I, the dumbass with a sawzall, chose to admit defeat. He was here a solid 2 hours cleaning up my mess. I can fix most stuff, but sometimes, it just goes the wrong amount of sideways.
  As for the disposal, if we were gonna replace it, we were gonna get a GOOD one. It's a 1 horse and it's probably overkill, but I'd rather spend the extra on a higher quality machine. We both spent way too much time living with shit tier appliances in cheap apartments.
  Fortunately, the plumber was a total bro and replaced all the cemented fittings with compression fittings. So if the next one doesn't perfectly fit, it'll be as simple as loosening everything up and adjusting it all.
- Sucks about the trees, but your other repairs you’ve made don’t seem too bad. It could’ve been worse… trees could’ve been neglected and fallen on your property.
- A 60ft tall 4ft wide tree costs $4k to remove in your neck of the woods? In my area, it costs that much to remove a tree a third of that size and I shopped around and got multiple quotes too 😣
- I followed some arborist's ch on YT for a while and man, people really butcher trees when they don't know what they're doing. It's quite sad given how much a tree affects a property's price, I feel bad that you effectively got ripped off like that. I don't think many appraisers would know their shit either so that sorta thing is just being SoL I guess...
  
  I'm pretty sure the horrendous drought we had last couple years and the 105-110 degree summers did them in.
  We're the second owners so the lady who lived here before us had to have loved those trees. She and her husband built this place and raised their kids here. She continued to live here until he died. She seemed genuinely elated to be selling to another young couple looking to build a family instead of some corpo or landlord or flipper. Nice lady.
  I don't think anyone caught that first tree was probably dying at closing. Oh well. It sucks but what're you gonna do? As for the second one, the last few summers have been brutally hot and dry. We didn't do anything to the trees. We did cut back on watering the lawn because of the drought. I think the poor old thing just couldn't take it anymore.
  We're in Oklahoma, and the Eastern Redbud is our state tree. One of the neighbors has one, and when it starts seeding again, I'm going to ask if I can collect some seed pods so we can try to get a few going. They're really hardy here and a local tree should produce seeds that are best adapted to the local climate. I miss those two trees, but for those couple weeks a year, when the redbuds are in bloom, I think the beauty of that will be an acceptable consolation.
  
  Those trees sound like a neighbour might've poisoned them once new people moved in. Just sounds suss to me the timing etc
- I don't know if it's because prices are different where you live, but around here, you totally got hosed on the trees. Admittedly, we didn't get the stumps removed, but we've had multiple very large oak trees cut down (they predate the house by many years and the house was built in the 1980s) and they cost around $1000 each time.
  
  There's a lot of variables, not the least of which being the specific people you hire, how busy it is in your area at that time for them, and the specific site (can they access easily with their equipment, are there easily damaged buildings nearby, etc.).
  The last time my parents had tree work done, my dad was getting estimates in the range of $2,500-4,000 per tree, for a total of 4 trees.
  Then one guy came out, took a look, and says, "$1,500."
  My dad is thinking that's the best price he's likely to get, but still wants to see if the guy has any wiggle room, so he says something like, "Is there anything you can do on the price if I want to get all four done at once?"
  And the guy just says something like, "I was planning on doing all four at once. If I gotta come back a second day, it'll cost a bit more. Maybe $1,800 in total for the four of em. But I'll only need one day as long as I can get here early and put a full day in."
  When my dad realized the price was for the entire job, he basically just said, "How soon can you do it?"
- Be glad you don't live in a high cost of living area, my first thought was envy of how cheap that was for you.
- For the garage door one: maybe try to lube the wheels on the guidance. It most likely registers some too high resistance and thinks a object is in the way.
- Getting rid of a toilet might be easy. My trash company accepted one as my once a month "large item". I just had to dry out all the water and bag it up with the tank and bowl in separate bags.
  Upgrading to a modern toilet with a good MAP score was a huge upgrade and not terribly expensive compared to other projects. I think we've plugged it maybe once since we got it? The old toilet needed to be plunged regularly.
  If you decide to take it on just give your trash company a call first and see what their policies are.
  
  A lot of people break up the toilet and put it in their normal trash in pieces. I paid $100 for a junk collection company to pick up my 35 year old toilet.

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