Ah, the joys of homeownership.
We needed to get a new fence for our property. Our 20-year-old wooden fence had fallen (some parts of it, literally) on hard times. So my wife, whom I cede most home stuff for reasons explained later, contracted with a company to tear down one day and build the new one the next day.
A sidebar: After that first day, the construction people needed two parking spaces in front of our house to park their truck closer. Not having a driveway is a hassle for people working in our backyard.
Fortunately, my wife is one of the best car parkers ever. Seriously, she can get into tiny spaces and does it so well that once a FedEx driver saw her parking and complimented her. But what she needed to do in this case was to park to take out two spaces so that no other car could get in there. She moved her car so the fence contractors could put their truck into that space. She did this perfectly.
So, the process went fine as far as we were concerned. But one of our neighbors was dissatisfied with one element, complicated to explain. The person harangued my wife and the workers on day 1 with BS (the workers “probably weren’t licensed,” the person surmised, using subtle ethnic bigotry).
On day 2, the person rang our doorbell – my wife was at work – and kvetched about something that was not the workers’ responsibility. The person was so insistent that the workers jerry-rigged a fix without me asking. They were great guys.
Oh, geez
The next day, another contractor looked at things in our house to do some handyman work, notably the clogged sink in the downstairs bathroom. Someone else had told me that I could take off the pipe underneath, blah blah blah. I said Well, yes, I could; my issue has always been, ‘Can I reattach it?’ Based on previous experience, the answer is probably not.
He quotes us for that and some other small jobs around the house. But then he saw some construction someone else had done in 2024, and he pointed out that part of that construction was not up to code. Yikes. And, not incidentally, that tracks. Should we get the previous person to rectify it, something my wife is resistant to doing for reasons, or get somebody else to replace it?
This falls into my general anxiety about owning a house. I never owned a home before marrying in 1999, and my parents did not own a home until 1972 or ’73. But my wife had purchased her first home independently, so she’s better at this stuff.