SS: Homeowner woes... "The Money Pit"

[DarkFury]

Why is it... that when you least expect it, something major in your home decides to go KAPUT!!!

In the last month, I've had 2 such things.

First, I had my washing machine decide to spill all kinds of water all over my living room floor. Turns out that something (a button, a coin, or some other small object) got stuck in the water pump and wore a hold in the side of the plastic housing, thus allowing water to spill freely from the unit.

This repair set me back about $150... a $50 part with the rest being labor (of which it only took the repair guy 20 minutes to replace the part). Now I don't know about most of you guys, but I can't earn $100 in 20 mins at my job. Hell, I'm thinkin' that maybe I should get into the "washing machine repair business" if they can make cash like that (Just don't go work for Maytag... like the "Maytag Man")

Next... the garage got jealous that the washing machine was getting serviced, so it decides to fry the garage door opener. Turns out, one of my door remotes went on the fritz and started randomly cycling the door up and and down until the motor burned out. By the time I figured out that the remote was causing the random activation, the motor was smoking and fried. On top of this, my garage door (an old wood style from the 70s or 80s) pretty much was deemed too damaged to repair by the technican I called to replace the opener.

I've know for some time that my garage door sucked.. but hey, it did it's job... but as the guy worked on it he showed me that it was only hanging on to the wall by gravity and tension... and that it could possibly collapse at any time without warning. Now granted... I didn't plan on buying a new garage door anytime soon... but I sure didn't want to spend any more money trying to bandaid my old door.

So now I've had to drop over a grand to get the door and the opener replaced. I'm still not recovered from "Christmas", yet the house is trying to go "whole hog" on me.

Seriously, it's getting to the point now that I'm gunshy of what is gonna break next around here....


... oh... my achin' wallet. OWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!

[renovation]

i just got a price of $5800 to water proof the basement of my place . i feel your pain i think im going to sit on this for a while .they did offer 1 year payment plan .im like ----- that $500 a month .this is like 1/2 a house payment. we have gone this long it go a lot longer!

[uncledaddy]

Knowing that this is what comes with homeownership, I still can't wait until I get there. Maybe another year or two.

uc <----Daydreamin' away.

Oh...good luck to both of you.

[Nija]

Can't you just open the garage door? That would save some money.

[Jeffbx]

You mean manually?

What, are we reverting to cavemen? Next we'll be walking across the room to change the channel on the TV!

I feel your pain DF - we got the double whammy of the dryer & garage door last summer. The dryer I was able to fix myself (needed new bearings & plastic guide tabs), but we ended up with a new garage door, too.

[Prngr44]

The only thing in recent memory that's kind of like this was the brick bid I got for my house. It's a sort of acquaintance that's doing the brickwork and he was going to give me "a good deal."

When I got the quote from him it was SIGNIFICANTLY lower than anything I got. Anywhere. I called him back to ask about why it was so much lower. He went on about how he was willing to give a better deal to a fellow firefighter, etc etc. I was like "SWEET!" Well my builder called him to make sure the bid was right too after I turned it into him... same story, bid's right.

So when it comes time to actually show up at the house, he gets there, sets up some of his equipment, and I get a call that night. "Hey... I, uh, think I miscalculated the amount of brick I needed. That quote I gave you? I need to double that."

Basically the 20k needed to be turned into 40k. I told him that wasn't going to happen, but since he was a friend, I wouldn't hold him to the signed contract for 20k because I didn't expect him to lose his ass on the deal either. I cut out the stone fireplace chimney, let him use a larger sized brick (for less brick) of the same color, then split the difference 40/60. I still got a heck of a deal on my brick, but he didn't have to lose his ass so much.

I'm sure I'll be singing DF's tune somewhere down the road. (Hopefully not for like 20-30 years!)

[Daedalus]

When we bought our house it had an old deathtrap garage door. We got lucky and within a month had a friend who was demo'ing a rental he owned. We bought a modern sectional track door from him for $75, and a new opener from Costco for $135. Took us a weekend to install, including re-framing the opening for the new door. I'm a huge fan of buying used. We found our matching fride/range/dishwasher on Craigslist for $1550. They retailed for over $4k jut a couple years before we bought them.

[DarkFury]

Can't you just open the garage door? That would save some money.

I had a 2 car garage door... that was all wood (i.e. VERY HEAVY)

Plus, with all the stuff in my garage, there is no way I can get to the manual latch from the inside while it was down (and the outside lock was broken).