Home ownership, such a delight

We had a damp and quiet weekend - drove the children around - went for a short walk between showers - did some slightly unnecessary shopping - played around with paints a fair bit - moved clothes between the washing machine and the dryer - read some books ... Very peaceful. Here are some kangaroos on the golf course refusing to get out of my way.

In a fit of over-achieving Canberra has managed to vaccinate 104% of its over-12 population so we're not interested in covid numbers any more, although people still have it. One of the local radio announcers asked Twitter why Canberrans think the vaccination take up was so high and my favourite was something like "we work in government and know that any global conspiracy is well beyond the capabilities of our elected representatives" which strikes me as both accurate and insightful.

This morning I was reading about soaring house prices in Canberra - and it is ridiculous, up 22.5% in the last year with a median house price of just over $1million - feeling smug because I have a house already ... so it decided to take its revenge in the form of the termite inspection man who came at 8.00 am and told us by 8.10 that we have two of the three species that exist in the ACT and he was looking around for the third. And of course we have to do extreme measures immediately so our house doesn't fall down, which definitely yes but at vast expense.

And during the course of the termite inspect we realised that the hot water tank (original, from 1976) was leaking. It lives in a cupboard in our dodgy and not-approved laundry (they just filled in a bit under the house, we knew it when we moved in) and sits on three inches of gravel, which should have been a giveaway. Once the leak was noticed I remembered that the laundry floor had been unusually warm lately, but I thought it was a hot water pipe (what? suddenly appearing where one hadn't been for fifteen years?) but it actually was nice expensive coal-fired electric hot water leaking across the slab (hopefully) or gouging out the dirt underneath the slab (not good). My husband also remembered the shouting at number two son for taking all the hot water, which given the size of our hot water tank (enormous) does seem a bit unlikely. In hindsight. 

So the quote my husband got over a year ago has been magically re-activated and they are kindly doing a rush job for us. And have I mentioned the oven? The one that came brand new in our kitchen renovation, that broke within a month and had to be replaced, that broke twice more and got fixed, and then broke again? I don't think I did mention it, because it was too disheartening. Anyway we went back to the store that sold it to us and said we weren't interested in getting it fixed or replaced because it was USELESS ... and they agreed and gave us store credit immediately, which was rather pleasing. Winning Appliances, if you're buying in Australia, they were great.

Unfortunately we got an unusual 76 cm wide oven so the options are quite limited unless we go mucking about with the benches, which we are not going to do. And unless we are willing to spend $12,000 on an oven (we are NOT, I don't even like cooking) there is basically one choice, which still manages to be a couple of thousand dollars more expensive than the one we had, so bye bye money. 

So basically the smugness I felt this morning about having a rapidly appreciating house value (theoretical money) is being squashed by the depressed feeling of having to actually fork out so much real money in fixing up house shit. Welcome to Monday.