Home owners of Lemmy do you have any advice on dealing with the stress of owning a home?
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Learn how to fix things in your house and it will give you the confidence to stop worrying about every little thing or sound.
Plus I find it's so damn satisfying when you fix something, truly one of the greatest dopamine hits available
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Every drop of water, crack, ant, royally freaks me out at this point. I can't afford to rent. I own a shitty house that is a fixer upper. So frustrating.
I know it is cheesy, but look at every maintenance project as an opportunity for learning a new DIY skill.
Start going to garage sales and flea markets to collect tools.
It helps if you can chitchat with someone IRL about mutual homeowner issues.
Homeownership is man's continuous battle against water.
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Every drop of water, crack, ant, royally freaks me out at this point. I can't afford to rent. I own a shitty house that is a fixer upper. So frustrating.
You get used to being house poor. You learn how to budget how much it really costs you to live.
It beats paying someone else’s bills. That’s for sure
When you think things are bleak as far as repairs/maintenance, look to local lenders in your community. Unless you made a significant down payment they probably sold your mortgage to Freddie but they still can give you loans on your home equity especially if going to pay for things that are going to put more equity in your home.
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Every drop of water, crack, ant, royally freaks me out at this point. I can't afford to rent. I own a shitty house that is a fixer upper. So frustrating.
You mention ant - if I may recommend, it's worth getting a bug guy to look over your house. I would make sure to get the ones where they have entomologists on staff instead of cheap Joe's Bug Service. Especially if you live in a place where there are termites, you want to get ahead of that.
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Every drop of water, crack, ant, royally freaks me out at this point. I can't afford to rent. I own a shitty house that is a fixer upper. So frustrating.
I don't have a fixer-upper per se, but the dude who flipped my place to sell it really cut corners. I do as many repairs myself as I can. I consult the Internet, local hardware shops, and people I know who have done home repairs. I'm currently dealing with a toilet that won't stop running unless I cut the water supply to it. I know that I need to replace all the parts in the tank, but I haven't been able to make it to the hardware store to get the parts.
Also redneck engineering temporary fixes is totally a valid strategy. My parents put flex seal on a fucked up part of their roof and it kept the leaks at bay for 4 years. It could have lasted longer, but they got the whole thing replaced.
My screen door is broken, and I haven't been able to replace it, so I have it tied open and held in place against my porch railing with some yarn. In bad storms, before it broke really bad, I used duck tape to keep it shut so it wouldn't go flapping around.
Parts of my porch siding (plastic lattice) would also start blowing around in bad storms, so I used spare boards to prop everything in place until I was able to cut all the lattice down.
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I know it is cheesy, but look at every maintenance project as an opportunity for learning a new DIY skill.
Start going to garage sales and flea markets to collect tools.
It helps if you can chitchat with someone IRL about mutual homeowner issues.
Homeownership is man's continuous battle against water.
Homeownership is man's continuous battle against water.
Yeah, a heck of a lot of household troubles can be put on the backbone, but anything involving water intrusion needs to be fixed right away.
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Good example.
In a similar vein: setup alarms. Smoke detectors is an easy one, but also water leakage detectors. If feeling adventurous, maybe logging of water/power usage as well to catch slow leaks.
I'm generally not a fan of IoT devices, but I know some people with a water metering device that will detect any leaks, and can be configured to easily shut water off in the event of detected high flows indicating a burst pipe. You can also shut water off when you go on vacation so you don't have to worry about it.
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The biggest advice I can give is put systems in place to reduce as much as possible the list of things you have to manage freeing up your mind and time to solve more complex issues.
Stick a hose on the dehumidifier route into the drain never empty it again as an example where as before you emptied it daily or every 2 days.
If the hose-to-drain route isn't feasible, many dehumidifiers come with a built in pump, so it will pump water out when the tank is full. These can go against a hydraulic head, so you could even put one in a basement with no plumbing, and run the drain line upstairs to a drain.
Also, you probably know this, but for anyone else, don't bother with any dehumidifiers that run on a Peltier element instead of a compressor. They will be slightly cheaper, but they'll use the same amount of energy for like 1/20th of the capability. They advertise them as "quiet" or "compressor free", but just don't do it.
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I solved this by selling my house and outsourcing all those bullshit problems to the landlord.
I can't think of a time I've ever had a landlord fix a problem. I wish I lived somewhere that you could just deduct repair costs from the rent, or otherwise withhold rent.
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It beats having a landlord.
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I can't think of a time I've ever had a landlord fix a problem. I wish I lived somewhere that you could just deduct repair costs from the rent, or otherwise withhold rent.
You might want to look into Nolo’s articles & books https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/renters-rights
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Every drop of water, crack, ant, royally freaks me out at this point. I can't afford to rent. I own a shitty house that is a fixer upper. So frustrating.
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I did learn this one the hard way. This is excellent advice.
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Every drop of water, crack, ant, royally freaks me out at this point. I can't afford to rent. I own a shitty house that is a fixer upper. So frustrating.
Depends on the condition of the home. Make sure you get a good inspection before buying and understand the ramifications of anything they find if you go ahead with a purchase. Things that eventually need to be replaced, likely in the lifetime you'll own it, are the water heater, HVAC and roof. Not terrible but you have to budget for it. Since you say you live in a "fixer upper" I'd say just keep it so it doesn't leak. Don't worry about ants as long as you keep all of your food sealed up and they aren't carpenter ants. If they are then you need an exterminator.
You WILL find the occasional bug, odd noise, scheduled repairs and replacements, etc. These aren't causes for panic. I can do most basic repairs but I leave plumbing and bigger electrical jobs to pros because they require specific skills, familiarity with the issues and lots of tools I wouldn't need again. Yard maintenance is just work. I call it my "gym" lol.
My mortgage payments will go down over time unlike rent that just goes up. On the downside my property taxes and insurance costs have gone up as the value of my home has gone up.
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Similar to auto repairs. If you have one vehicle and you start working on it make sure you have uber or a neighbor willing to drive you to the parts store because you forgot a part/wrong one.
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I know it is cheesy, but look at every maintenance project as an opportunity for learning a new DIY skill.
Start going to garage sales and flea markets to collect tools.
It helps if you can chitchat with someone IRL about mutual homeowner issues.
Homeownership is man's continuous battle against water.
I'm trying to convince myself I need a table saw to replace a rotten board in my deck.
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You mention ant - if I may recommend, it's worth getting a bug guy to look over your house. I would make sure to get the ones where they have entomologists on staff instead of cheap Joe's Bug Service. Especially if you live in a place where there are termites, you want to get ahead of that.
Carpenter ants will chew wood into something resembling foam.
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Every drop of water, crack, ant, royally freaks me out at this point. I can't afford to rent. I own a shitty house that is a fixer upper. So frustrating.
Never, ever, under any circumstances, think that you’ve finally done everything that needs doing.
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I sure wouldn't say 'all'. The first years of your mortgage you are paying the bank more in interest than you are knocking off the principal.
A $300k home with 20% down and an interest rate of 3.5% on a 25 year amortization schedule will see the buyer paying $8k in interest versus $6k towards the principal at the start. Over the course of the mortgage, the $300k home will cost $420k thanks to the $120k in interest the bank takes.
The way people should think about it is not whether or not they break even compared to having not purchased the house. The real comparison is if they end up better off than if they paid rent that whole time instead.
If you bought a house for $300k, paid $420k for it over 30 years, and sold for $320k, you could think of it as a $100k loss, but you'd still end up $740k ahead of someone who had the same monthly payment going to a landlord.
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Every drop of water, crack, ant, royally freaks me out at this point. I can't afford to rent. I own a shitty house that is a fixer upper. So frustrating.
Don’t tell me… I’m 36 years old. Five years ago, I bought my house—an old one in a small town here in Spain that needed a complete renovation, including the roof. After four years of very, very hard work, mostly done by myself, I managed to restructure the house. I redid everything except the exterior walls. I moved in six months ago. So, here’s what happened: last month, some workers were installing new fiber optic cables for the whole street. They climbed onto my roof without asking and drilled a hole in it to run the cables—without my consent. For the past two weeks, I’ve been battling the fiber company and insurance to get this fixed. Meanwhile, I’ve had a bucket in one of my rooms for two weeks, and the room is now full of humidity and mold. The entire ceiling, which is made of drywall, needs to be completely redone. My hair is falling out nonstop—I’ll be bald like a light bulb in a couple of months if this keeps up.
