I Want To Be a Plumber When I Grow Up

My partner and I have lived in our condo for 2 years and have learned so much about home ownership during that time. At the moment, I've learned that I wish I wasn't a home owner.

Our condo, at the moment, is nothing but an endless cycle of brokenness. And yes, that is a real word. If anyone has seen the eighties-fabulous movie "The Money Pit" starring Tom Hanks and Shelley Long, you'll have an idea of what we have been going through. Granted, our bathtub hasn't fallen through the floor, but we are on the Terrace level, so there is no floor for it to fall through. But if there was, that bathtub would be long gone at this point. I am sure of it.

For instance, we just paid someone an exhorbitant amount of money to hang new closet doors which have been sitting in the corner for 3 months. Do you know what a simple task it is to hang closet doors? It really is easy. However, our condo consists of uneven walls, steel studs, and weak drywall. All of that adds up to equal one hefty price tag for a contractor to do it.

We are entering our second winter WITHOUT heat and we still do not know if it is because our air handler needs to be replaced ($2,500) or if it because of the Condo Association's system. We have been battling a year now to figure this out and have already invested $800 in upgrading our current system to see eliminate possible problems. Nothing has worked. A new air handler is on the horizon. Merry 'effing Christmas.

Just this weekend, our kitchen sink decided to become clogged. We could not think of what possibly could have gotten stuck. Well, a call to the plumber and $400 later*, we now know that a knotted piece of synthetic hair (aka WEAVE) was stuck in the pipes. My partner and I are both males with full heads of short hair - we have never used synthetic hair. That god forsaken piece of weave has been sitting in our pipes for over two years, just waiting to clog it. And that is the SECOND, yes, ladies and gentleman, second piece of weave to be pulled out of the drains in our condo. About a year after we moved in, my partner decided to try to fix the drain in the bathroom sink, which would would not depress, so that you could fill the sink with water. Well, after he ripped it out of the drain, we discovered this was so because a chunky piece of weave was wrapped around the bottom. Yum.

So, yes. Home ownership is a wonderful learning experience. Once you own a home, you fully learn the wonderful benefits of renting and how you wasted so much time and money going to college instead of learning a trade, like plumbing.

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*This was the second visit from Mr. Plumber. The first one cost $300 to remove a huge fish my partner flushed down the toilet and it got stuck.** Not necessarily the Condo's fault. However, the plumber did say that if the toilet wasn't so old, causing the pipes to be arranged differently, the fish would have easily been able to plunged out. I believe his words were "If there was a Toilet Musuem, this toilet would definitely be a star attraction."


**Why did he flush a fish, you might ask? Well, it was our fish wh was a huge, dirty, smelly, chiclid who was a miserable son-of-a-bitch. While I was on vacation, my partned tried to do something sweet and dispose of him. Flushing him was perhaps a little rash, as he was large enough to feed a family of four, but its the thought that counts.