Initiation

Paul and I are experiencing the Official New Home Owner's Initiation to the Home Owner's Guild of Pain (which sounds a bit S & M-ish, but I'm beginning to think that might be fairly accurate).

A week after we took possession, there was a huge windstorm here. It knocked down trees and power lines and while it was having so much fun, it thought it might tear off a few of our shingles, just for kicks, and fling them into our new neighbour's yard. Between being incredibly busy, not owning a ladder and being unwilling to admit that something might be wrong with our house before we were actually out of our apartment, we spent a blissful two weeks in denial of our situation. Finally, I assembled the following facts:
- Number one: the shingles in the neighbour's yard are brown.
- Number two: the shingles on his roof are grey.
- Number three: our shingles are brown.
- Number four: we have the only house with brown shingles on the entire block.
- Number five: there is a naked patch on our roof. Damnit! (It annoys me that "Damnit" looks wrong and "Dammit" looks right. "Damnit" makes me feel like I'm cursing baby lice.)

We investigated going through our home insurance but they basically said that it wasn't worth it to pay the deductable. Tara and Steve had left us a stack of shingles in the garage so we figured that with a little instruction we could fix it ourselves (we've both shingled roofs before, but have never been in charge). We asked Paul's Dad for some help and what that ended up looking like was: Paul's Dad fixed the roof, Paul helped, and I ran ground support, bought groceries and cooked dinner (mmm, spaghetti).



Paul taking shingles up the ladder.



Paul helping.



Paul's Dad, hard at work.



A good view of our very cool new ladder (housewarming gift from Paul's parents). It's incredibly adjustable, which is very helpful in a split-level house.

The roof is patched for now and we'll be fixing it properly once we are out of the sub-zero temperature range. We hadn't even finished recovering from our Induction into the Home Owner's Guild of Pain when the lower half of our power outlets in one half of the living room stopped working. We know that the wiring in our house was done quite creatively (we have more than one switch that we have no idea what it controls) so finding out what went wrong is likely to be a challenge. Only six of the thirty-odd breakers are labeled and I know that Tara and Steve are both highly intelligent and made an attempt to sort them out. This will have to be a project for another day.

Since bad things come in threes, I'll be holding my breath until the other shoe drops (does that make it the third shoe? And if so, where does one wear that third shoe? Wait, don't answer that!) It doesn't really matter that things keep breaking and things will keep on breaking; I'm loving this house more everyday! If that makes me an all-too-willing member of the Home Owner's Guild of Pain, so be it.