Owning a home is a catch-22, in my opinion. For myself, I grew up moving from one rental apartment to the next. While my parents owned their own house until roughly 1982, they realized the cost and upkeep associated with home ownership wasn’t sustainable, given that they had sick children that required medical attention that could only be obtained outside the province. Since travel and accommodation costs weren’t always covered, it was a financial no-brainer to live in an apartment where, repair and upkeep costs were generally the responsibility of the landlord. This may be why I never had much of an issue in adapting to the Mountie lifestyle, since I had pretty much been moving every few years my entire life. But I digress…
While renting an apartment may release one from certain financial and upkeep burdens, there’s definitely something to be said for owning one’s own home. Your own space, answering to no one else and knowing that you can make whatever changes or upgrades as you see fit. It’s liberating after a fashion, although the costs of such things can quickly make you reconsider. Even during my adult life and well into joining the RCMP, I always rented. This just made sense to me, since I knew I would be moving every few years. It wasn’t until I met my wife and we had our first child that owning our home became important.
Our home was purchased at a reasonable price through an estate sale. Having had only one previous owner, the home had, shall we call them, “unique” features but was overall in fantastic shape, was well-kept and would provide a reasonable home for the years to come. We saw no issues that would carry over into our next posting, which would come up in 3 to five years anyway. Then, the COVID-19 pandemic hit and I got sent home. I then quickly realized that my future no longer rested with the RCMP but with a static job that would see us remain in Regina. Okay, fair enough. And since life rarely cares about one’s plans, of course all hell would need to break loose.
First, our foundation buckled. During a significantly heavy rain fall, the foundation wall shift and cracked open, allowing significant amounts of rain water to seep into our basement. This resulted in needing to demolish, brace and renovate the entire basement. While that wasn’t a terrible thing, since it modernize the basement (it was fake wooden clapboard and orange carpet), the costs and disruption to the overall household was significant. Once it was all said and done, we were happy. But there’s no denying that the cost was a bit of a nut-punch to the soul.
Over the past few years, we’ve enjoyed the benefits of a private back yard, garage, and the benefits of having no one above or below us to cause noise. But in recent years, sewer back ups caused by little hands using too much toilet paper, etc. caused continued issues within the basement. As I’m sure you can imagine, a backed up sewer into one’s home not only smells quite unpleasant but poses certain health issues due to what comes back up. We had the main drainage system through a hydrovac treatment in 2023, which carries a 3-year warranty, provided we don’t flush diapers, wipes, paper towels, corpses… You know, the usual. So far, we’ve had to have them pop in to clear our line three times, with each visit confirming that eventually we’d need to consider next steps to repair the very aged, 60-year old pipes that served as the main line.
On this occasion, which took place on last Sunday, the last day for me to relax after a week off before heading back to work, the basement received a nice outpouring of of stagnant, offensive material from a lovely back up. Great. My wife worked to get the plumbers back while I worked to disinfect and clean the basement floors, book shelves and bathroom implements that got affected. This time, we were advised that several cracks and defects in the main drainage line would require immediate attention, lest the pipe collapse, which would pose a much greater issue. I started to imagine all the worst case scenarios that involved jack-hammering my basement floors, digging up my entire front yard and the costs, not only for the repairs but the clean up and subsequent renovation that would ensue.
Luckily, we were given an option where they appear to be able to repair the pipe by coating it’s interior with an epoxy resin of some sort that essentially repairs and the existing pipe and is rated to last 30 years. No drilling, no digging up the yard and no destroying the basement. This was good news. This repair will run to the tune of almost $5,000. Fuck. Damn home ownership! We reluctantly scheduled the repair, which is supposed ot take place next Monday.
Owning a home that you can call your own can be a wonderful thing. The comfort and privacy you get from a private residence is significant over the prospect of living in a shared building with an unknown umber of other renters, any one of which may be noisy, violent, problematic or obstructive in one’s daily life. But the costs of home ownership can be significant, and not everyone will be able to pay the cost. For us, it will cause a significant financial hiccup. Not as big a one as if we did nothing, of course. And that’s the bittersweet pill; there’s a cost either way. The question simply becomes ensuring it’s the lower cost that one deals with. Hopefully in the hopes of preventing further costs down the road. ☯️
The Blogging Buddhist 