Our House in the Middle the Street

It has been exactly two years to the day that the wife and I moved into our luxurious house. OK, it is not that luxurious. In that time I have made numerous trips to Menards and I have begun new rituals that only the joy of home ownership can bring. Such as, now every Sunday night I become the garbage man. I go around the house emptying the thirty garbage cans, Joyce has around the house. I condense them all and take everything out to the curb for Monday pickup. Still, as much as it might be a pain in the ass as far as the upkeep and what not I still wouldn’t trade it for anything.

There is nothing like owning your own house. Well, technically Washington Mutual owns my pad but still. After years of flushing my money away paying rent, it is nice to be able to go home to something that is yours. As much as I complain about cutting the grass or cleaning the gutters, it is in the end rewarding. They are my gutters, so I want them clean. It is my lawn so I want it to look nice.

Owning a house has also taught me a lot. I know now about sub pumps and the torque difference between a cordless and electric drill. I walk into Menards and there are about fifty things I look at and say, boy I could use that. The upkeep on a house is never ending and it seems there is always some task or something that needs to be looked at.

In our two years in the house we have put our own personal touches on it here and there but there are still a lot of things we would like to do. The question comes in at how long do we plan to lice in this place. My villa is the classic starter home. It has sold and re-sold a number of times in the last fifteen years. Still, I really like my house. I like how we get a nice breeze with the windows open and I love the shade the trees provide.

So, I guess that in the next two years Joyce and I would like to re-do the upstairs bathroom, get a new roof, update the kitchen and get a shed for the back. In the two years that we have been there we have painted the family room and spare bedroom, replaced the refrigerator, bought a nice new king size bed, (I couldn’t feel any better or I’d be sick.) put up some cork board and shelves in the garage and planted a lot of bushes. We also recently added a new cat to our domicile, that I am calling Maddux for now. (However with one more bad start we may have to re-think that name.)

All in all, the two years have flown by and I look forward to fixing up the rest of the house. I don’t really look forward to paying for all of the improvements but, that sense of satisfaction I will get taking a dump in my new bathroom is as they say, priceless.