The Joys of Home Ownership

aka Ma'am, where is your husband?

We moved into our current house about four years ago. Before that, we had owned a townhome that was brand new when we bought it. As first-time homeowners, it was ideal because we really didn’t have to worry about much going wrong for years.

Photo by Sylwia Bartyzel on Unsplash

This time around, we wanted something a little different. We didn’t want to live on a street where every house looked alike. That meant we explored some fairly quirky houses.

• One had a glorious collection of death masks (sadly removed on our second viewing) in a leopard print (!) bathroom. It had a beautiful open plan at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac. Unfortunately the wood that made up the house was largely rotten and the foundation was sinking. Quirky = good. Sinking = not so much.

• We thought we had found the one with another gorgeous little house surrounded by trees and centered around a giant chimney and high-ceiling living room. That time we got a call from the home inspector while we were on vacation. He explained he’d never taken this step before but he’d found the walls infested with hornets and the roof rotting. Did we want him to continue? Major infestation = bad.

• One had a sun room that clearly was not in a position to get any sun, a staircase with optical illusion tiling that made it almost impossible to climb, and what we dubbed the murder basement. Not just a basement. A collection of tiny rooms with bars on the windows.

  

And so it continued. When we found this one, my husband and realtor both joked we were buying a kitchen and garden with some other rooms attached. It’s a bit of a Frankenstein’s monster with various owners having chopped and changed since it was built in 1958. It has little curb appeal with no real front door. But the living room has windows that overlook the back garden where there is a giant magnolia. Perfect for the dogs to run and play. And the kitchen is a dream for someone who enjoys cooking as much as I do.

We like our house. But, it is an older house and had changed owners roughly every two years until we moved in. Even now, our neighbors ask if we’re staying every time they see us.

And because it has had so many owners, records have gone astray. Plus the previous owner had a rather… creative/lackadaisical/WTF approach to home ownership.

So when the AC died a few weeks ago, we learned that although it was relatively new (5 years) he hadn’t bothered to register the warranty so it was not covered. We had a new AC unit installed last week. Fortunately, since we have a gas furnace it was not too expensive.

Next was the roof. We knew the flat part needed replacing but once we started getting quotes, each company came down the ladder with the same message. Long story short, we had been very lucky with all the recent storms because there were lots of loose and worn shingles.

And so as I type this, a new roof is being installed.

But that’s not the real part that has amused me this week. That has been getting the quotes.

Our neighbors have all recently had new roofs installed and so who better to ask for recommendations. We decided we would start with them and then look for more if need be.

Let me start with quote #2. Fabulous young guy who called to ask if he could come earlier than our scheduled appointment since he had some time free and he wanted to get the go-pro up before the rain came. He went up to the roof and made a complete video guiding me through problem spots. He then sent me copies of the video footage plus a complete presentation about the company and their work. He went over the video with me in detail, answered questions, and showed me samples of the various materials they would use. He was at the house for two hours and left me with samples, a detailed proposal, and recommendations from satisfied customers.

Now let’s go back to quote #1. I had called his number and left a message. He doesn’t believe in email or websites. I should have taken that as a warning but I had watched his team do one of our neighbor’s houses and they were a well-oiled machine. He returned my voicemail later. Nic spoke to him to answer a couple of questions and we made plans for him to come out the next morning to take a look. Nic explained he’d be at work but we could call him if needed, although he couldn’t see why we would need to.

Man #2 shows up. He’s an older, gruff man. That’s ok. Age = experience. Right? He got my name wrong, several times and immediately asked where my husband was.

“He told me he would be here.”

Grumbling, he started climbing the ladder, stopping to tell me what a mess our roof was. He took a look at the flat roof, because at this point we thought that was all we needed to replace. He came down, put his ladder away, sat in the truck for a while and then provided a quote for the flat roof, all the time telling me how bad the main roof was. He mentioned several times that he should talk to my husband.

Given what he’d said about the state of the roof, I asked how much it would cost to replace the whole thing. His response was not a happy one.

“No one told me you wanted a quote for the whole roof.”

I didn’t know it was that bad.

“Your husband never mentioned this.”

Finally, grumbling to himself, he retrieved his ladder, went up, poked around and came back down, showing me a few blurry pictures on his cracked phone screen.

Bottom line: He could not accept that a woman might have agency to make decisions for the house.

So I mentioned that today our roof is being replaced. And which one do you think we hired?

There’s a lesson in customer service there, but I suspect the one who needs to learn it wouldn’t take notes from a woman.