Home Owner Woes

Way back in October of 2020 I moved into my first home and had little idea of what awaited me. As I moved in the first three things I did were:

• Complete a mega deep clean of everything.
• Get gigabit Internet setup.
• Install a Google Nest for "smart" thermostat control.

I was excited - things were coming together with my touch of configuration and I was just getting started. With the Florida heat in the air and heavy amounts of manual labor I just wanted a cold drink, so I turned on the ice maker in the freezer and started moving more and more items over to the home.

Of course it isn't a move without breaking something and my little TV I used for Xbox/Halo hacking did not survive the travel.

As the next morning arrived I walked into my kitchen and there was a pool of water on the floor. Not just a little water, but a solid amount of water that was evenly spread across the kitchen. I did some investigating, but I was no expert - it was like the ice cube creation process just refused to work and streamed the water into the base until it overflowed the basin pan.

With a bit more research I realized there was no hope for this aged out fridge and I decided to bite the bullet and order a new one. I thought my kitchen woes were over, but that only lasted for another few days until my first dishwasher run. As you can expect - I started the dishwasher and went to bed and when I came out in the morning I once again had water everywhere.

Saving the details - yes I then had a new dishwasher of the same style of my recently replaced fridge. I guess its outside the scope of my home inspection to clean some dishes and make ice cubes in order to detect these issues. There was nothing like draining a large portion of your funds on a down payment to have large purchase after large purchase.

My luck didn't end there as a load of laundry refused to dry my clothes without running the dry cycle like 4 times. Each time the dryer ran my lights flickered and something just didn't seem right. I unplugged the unit and vacuumed the lines in order to fix this beast of a machine, but all I did was break the electrical line. Now I had some prongs jammed in a 220 line and needed to move the washer to make some room.

The dry wall on the washer side had some signs of water damage which I am upset neither myself or home inspection caught. The water lines on the washer couldn't be removed without tools and once I did - there was zero chance I could reconnect a line. They were squished and malformed and clearly had never been changed since perhaps the home was established.

At this point I was pushed into a new world learning about every major appliance, water damage, drywall patching and more. Some things others may have learned before their first home, but I surely had not.

After a trip from a plumber & electrician I had a replaced water line and fixed electrical outlet. Unfortunately for myself the plumber just left me with a hole in the wall where the repairs took place. Now I had my first ever drywall job, which was obviously poor, but after some painting and placing new units back - no one could tell without dragging them back out.

With that that repair things finally slowed down for a few months until I decided to start painting some of the rooms and run some cables for Internet throughout the house. I already wrote 2 parts about this adventure, but I basically fell through the ceiling while running cable and had to patch more drywall and paint a bunch of rooms.

Though when all said was done - I was excited to have a painted living room with hard-wired Internet for a prime movie experience. I could only take a break for a few weeks and then my microwave randomly stopped working. This fell back in priority because my skylight appeared to have a massive leak and was just leaking water during any heavy rainfall.

Though as much as I wanted to avoid it - I knew from my attic ventures running cable that I suspected a few active leaks on the roof. I went back and looked at my home inspection and it notated.

The roof covering is 15 years old and in the fourth quarter of design life. The covering is losing granules and becoming brittle. However, at the time of inspection, there are no ACTIVE signs of moisture intrusion.

So was starting to wonder if what my inspection notated as inactive simply became active during the next heavy rainfall. Cutting that story short - I ended up with a new roof and skylight which put all my leaking nightmares to an end. While I was getting the roof replaced the crew told me I had a pretty large wasp infestation in one of my vents, but they all appeared to be dead.

I did hire a bug company to help rid this house of some ants & roaches I encountered when I moved in, but I personally never was aware of wasps. The story all connected itself when I went to replace my busted microwave. I disconnected the exhaust tubing from the equipment and a heavy amount of dried mud and dead wasps pooled out of it.

Outside of the panic attack that induced - I noticed the internals of this microwave were full of mud and wasps, which maybe is what shorted this machine out and fried it. After a new roof and microwave I was tired of fixing things that seemed required and I wanted to enhance my home with things I personally cared about.

So I bought some Nest Protects to replace my broken smoke detectors and got a video doorbell to give me eyes when I was away. Things were finally calm as month after month passed, which turned into a year without anything major breaking.

Heavy rainfall and hurricanes though started doing a number on my aging fence, which was starting to swap/collapse in many areas. A few times I could attach a new post alongside the decayed one, but after doing it a few times it was getting difficult to continue.

I didn't expect myself while starting this process to convert to a white plastic fence, but two big reasons convinced me.

• 1/3 of my fence was already white plastic via a neighbor.
• Plastic was largely cheaper than wood in 2022.

I appreciated taking advantage of not having a fence for one day and cleared out decades of weeds and volunteer trees. I was amazed how many thick weeds and vines can pile up under your fence growing in/around it leading to the destruction of said fence.

So with a home with nearly every single major appliance replaced (except for stove & AC) and a fence replaced I was exhausted. There couldn't have been anything else majorly wrong and for the most part that was true. A few years passed and it wasn't till late 2024 that my next project took place.

This time for my own personal home improvement I took focus towards the garage: moving towards a new paint job, epoxy floor and new shelves.

Outside of the dumb idea of painting after the floor went in - it really elevated the look what was normally a very old looking garage. It may have been just a fresh coat of white paint paired with a new consistent floor, but the garage really pops now in terms of visual appeal.

So even with a few woes that started right after moving in, things leveled out and I finally got to upgrade my home with a few things I knew I wanted. The woes may continue as more things age out, but at least the mountain of tasks to do is just a little mound now.