Have you ever seen the movie The Money Pit?
It’s a comedy made in 1986 starring Tom Hanks and Shelley Long. The plot is simple. A couple buys a dream house, but it turns into a nightmare.
Everything about the house goes wrong. From a leaky roof to broken stairs, doors fall from their hinges and a bathtub falls through the floor.
It’s funny stuff if you are watching it, not so funny if you’re living it.
I often feel like I managed to cast myself and my wife into a real life remake of this film.
This month will mark my ninth year as editor of the Mission Record and, while we rented for the first year that we came to the community, for the last eight years we have lived in a more than 100-year-old house that we purchased.
It was a debate right from the start. Pearl, my wife, loves old houses. I, on the other hand, prefer a brand new build.
So, like all married couples we compromised, and I lost.
Owning an old house has been quite an experience. We were only in the house for about two years when our first disaster struck.
The main floor bathroom began to overflow and what we thought was going to be a quick fix turned into a $40,000-plus problem.
It seems the roots of a large tree in our front yard, plus our hedges, had all grown into our sewer lines, under our driveway.
Soon the jackhammers were tearing apart our driveway to find and replace our sewer lines. The bathroom had to be redone and for about a week we had to keep running down to my office to use the washroom.
However, we managed to fight our way through and eventually the outside plumbing was repaired.
Life returned to normal … and then the rats came.
Not one rat, not two, but dozens. The exterminator came out to set traps and quickly solved the issue, but the damage was done.
While in the basement we were told to take out one of the ceiling panels to check for corpses (rat corpses - just in case you are wondering) and to ensure they weren’t hiding above out heads.
As we lifted the panel I heard a noise that sounded like skittles falling onto the cement floor. It was rat turds. Thousands of them.
The clean up was gross and costly, but I did get a nice new ceiling and carpeting.
The next job, well I can’t blame that one on the house. Pearl decided we needed to renovate the kitchen and like always, my response was “Yes dear.” About $20,000 later our house was as new as it was going to be – or so I thought.
Remember how I mentioned that the outside plumbing was all fixed? The inside plumbing went next.
While I was in the hospital, suffering from pancreatitis, Pearl came to visit and told me our ceiling was leaking at home. Apparently the pipes in the upstairs bathroom had burst and water was coming into the downstairs living room.
Another $40,000 later and we had a nice new en suite.
Insurance helped a little on these jobs, but much of it wasn’t covered for one reason or another.
In total, we ended up replacing all the water pipes in the house, got a new water tank and replaced all the electrical wiring as well.
It seemed to me that, like the movie, our journey was at an end.
There is nothing left to fix. All new wiring, all new plumbing, all new sewer system, we also replaced the windows from single to double pane.
We’re done!
It’s time for our happy ending.
On Sunday morning, we woke up to discover that the retaining wall in our backyard has collapsed. Insurance says they won’t cover it.
Where’s the director? This script needs a re-write.
– Kevin Mills is the editor of the Mission Record