so, i think that this photo pretty much summarizes everything about the quality of the work that the previous owners did in our house:

(that’s the sticker explaining how to install the bathroom medicine cabinet. which is most definitely installed upside down).

ben and i have a new rule for the MoneyPit: just because something breaks off in your hand doesn’t mean that you broke it. we’ve spent the past 5 months fixing the big things that were done wrong; now i expect that we’ll spend most of the next year chasing down the little things. bathroom vanity installed upside down and so high that my under 5’4″ guests can’t see themselves in the mirror. crooked kitchen counter jams a drawer shut. the kitchen faucet leaks back down into a bucket under the counter. the bathtub handle doesn’t stay on. doors that won’t stay shut, or won’t stay open. mushy floor boards that need to be pulled up and supported. rain water that seeps under the shed and down the basement stairs. rats (or rabbits. let’s hope for rabbits) that tunnel in under the back stairs. gutters that leak directly over the back door. the list is WAY too long to post it all here. and this is before we start making the upgrades and hacks that were the whole reason we WANTED to buy a house. a customized bookcase installation. premium kitchen lighting. closet shelves that make sense. a basement workshop. backyard fire pit. a coldframe for starting tomatoes early. raised vegetable beds.

still, it’s ours. we’ve both lived in other apartments with at least as many broken items, but have never been free to just FIX things, because they weren’t our buildings. there was nothing to invest in. i know that buying a shiny, fully-equipped and modernized condo makes a lot of sense for a lot of people in a lot of housing markets, and i don’t doubt that there will be days in the future when i want things to just work. but for our own first house purchase, we couldn’t wrap our brains around buying a box of air*. we wanted the visceral experience of getting dirty and using our hands to make things. well, we got that. plenty of dirt, plenty of stuff to make. about 20 years’ worth, i’d estimate. there will be days that i hate this. i pretty much hate this part right now – walled in by boxes, electricians tracking drywall dust up and down the apartment, our domestic lives generally in chaos. but if we can look past the toughest six months, i’m still glad we opted for the project house.

* i realize that the definition of ownership, and the freedom to customize, varies greatly with the condo building. but i was particularly struck when a coworker, years ago, explained to me that in her luxury high rise apartment building, she technically owned her unit from the paint inwards. all i could think was how bizarre it was that she owned a million dollar box of air.