The House (a.k.a. The Money Pit)

Two house-related things popped up over the last week...

Thing #1

The night before we were set to go to Boston this past week I threw in a load of laundry.  About 30 minutes after putting in the wash, I headed down and put everything in the dryer.  Maybe an hour and a half later I went down to check on things. I had sort of forgotten about it and never heard the buzzer go off signaling it was done.  I went down, pulled open the door, and discovered damp clothing.  I figured there were some heavier towels and things in there and maybe I didn't put in on for long enough so I went to add more time and run it again.  That's when I noticed there were still 20 minutes left on the buzzer.  The stupid thing had stopped in the middle of a load.  I ended up hanging everything up and would worry about it when we got back.  So Tuesday I called to have someone come.  After a phone call that took way too long, I got an appointment for Friday.  Sometime between 8a and 12p.  So I have to work from home in teh morning.  I am hoping they'll be able to fix it quickly and it won't be too expensive.  The stupid thing isn't even two years old yet.  And of course there was only a 1 yr warranty. 

Thing # 2

A while back I got a flyer in the mail for various outdoor housing jobs -- things like power washing, gutters, and various roof repairs.  I wanted to have my gutters done so I held on to the flyer.  I moved into my house nearly 2 years ago and I have not had the house power washed or the gutters cleaned out once.  I have a lot of trees (a LOT of trees) in my yard which means there are a lot of leaves and other crap that get in the gutters and make the siding on the house dirty.  The gutters really needed to be done so I finally called yesterday to get a quote.  The guy headed over to my house shortly after I called and called me back at work and gave me a price.   $65.  Nice, that's a little less than I was expecting.  And then he started the up-sell.  "The house could use a good power washing," he said.  "I'll through in the gutters for free!"  Now I figured the house was somewhat dirty, but really the though of paying to have it washed hadn't crossed my mind.  He said $225 for the power wash and the gutters.  Hmmm.  $225 is an awful lot more than $65.  I talked it over with my boyfriend, another friend, and my mom to see what they thought.  I decided to just bite the bullet and have him do it.  From what I could tell, $225 was a decent deal.  And company is coming this weekend so what the hell, right?  He said he could come the next day.  Awesome.  So he called me early this afternoon saying the job was done.  And by the way, did I want him to install gutter guards too?  You know, because of all the trees.  Only $600!  Yeah.  I passed.  I was expecting to just get my gutters cleaned for like $75, not spend $825 to have a bunch of extra things done.  He said fine and he'd stop over at 6:00 after I was home from work for payment.  He came on time which was great and then had yet another off for me.  He offered to take $85 off the $600 for the guards if I changed my mind.  Geez!  No thank you, but gotta give him credit for perisitence.

If you want to get an idea what the tree/leaf situation is in my yard you can click on the following previous entries from early spring and last fall with pics:

 I don't want to jinx myself, but I'm kind of waiting for what Thing # 3 is going to be.