Welcome to May! April was, to be honest, a very strange month. It had a little bit of everything, both good and bad. I can’t say that I’ll miss it, but parts of it were pretty nice. I don’t remember exactly when we started working from home, but I’m pretty sure that it was before April – which means that I’ve spent all month at home (with a few trips to the grocery or liquor store).
And I’ve really enjoyed working from home. Being completely honest…I don’t want to go back to the office. It’s nice to be able to take long walks in the morning, get home, have a leisurely cup of coffee on the deck while catching up on the news (maybe even eat breakfast!), then take a shower….and still sit down to work a full thirty minutes earlier than I would have if I’d have gone to the office.
On the other side of the day, it’s nice to put in a full day, then shut down the computer, take another long walk, then have a leisurely drink on the deck, cook dinner, watch some television, and get to bed before 9:00.
I love that kind of a schedule!
To be sure, April also had some downsides. The most glaringly obvious one to me is that I’ve developed some serious anxiety about being around other people. It doesn’t take a trained psychologist to figure out why: I had some chest pains after going out a month ago, I associated them with COVID-19, I couldn’t really call anyone (other than an ambulance) for help, and it freaked me out. Since then, I’ve experienced some degree of chest pain every time I’ve gone out to a store or have had someone come to my house (delivering packages or coming to give me home improvement estimates).
The good part of that is that it’s been so consistent that I know beyond any doubt that it’s psychological – and knowing that has allowed me to block it out and rebound back to normal pretty quickly the last couple of times that I’ve gone out. This is a big plus, because I’m really NOT “that guy.” I don’t get wrapped up in my health. I don’t worry about it. So worrying about it as I have been – to the point of having anxiety attacks about it…well, THAT bothers me more than the actual worry does. When I start stressing over something I really can’t control, that’s when I start to just give up.
On to more pleasant things. I’ve decided to get serious about fixing up this old house (and landscape) over the next however long it takes. Big-ticket items that I’m looking at getting fixed now are the roof, the retaining wall in the back yard, the deck, all of the floors, the half-bath, and – maybe – the kitchen. Lots of work, lots of money, lots of time – but these are things that need to be addressed and I’ve put them off for too long.
The roof has been leaking for a while, and I’ve had the insurance company out again in the hopes of convincing them that it just needs to be replaced. I showed them damage inside the garage – the ceiling and walls – and in the foyer (front wall and floor). At least this time around, the guy they sent out admitted that he saw holes in the roof. The last one wouldn’t admit to any damage at all. What I’m hoping is that the new guy won’t give me $1000 and tell me to patch the holes. The roof is over 30 years old. It needs to be replaced. If I can’t get insurance to cover it, two things are going to happen. First, I’ll be getting a new insurance company. Second, I’ll be refinancing the house and pulling some money out of equity.
It’s obviously important to have a good roof over my head, and it’s made more important by the fact that I simply cannot replace my floors until I can control the leaking coming in to the front hall of the house. When I replaced the front door a couple of months ago, I pulled up most of the hall floor because it was so water damaged it was like walking on wet towels after a storm. Since doing so, I’ve had a literal towel next to my front wall to keep the water from pooling at the foot of the stairs after every rain storm. I’m not spending a penny on new flooring until I know that it will stay dry.
Heading to the back yard, my retaining walls need to be replaced (as pictured in the post entitled “Solutions”). This is somewhat vital because my upper lawn has been slowly washing away as the retaining walls fail. The level of the upper lawn has dropped about 8 inches over the last twenty years. One casualty of this slow slippage has been the deck.
The deck has pulled away from the house by a couple of inches, and has begun to list to one side as the earth underneath it erodes away at different rates. While it’s still standing – and fairly stable – it doesn’t take a genius to see that it’s not going to be either of those things for more than a year or so down the road. I had a contractor out this morning (the second in as many days) taking a look so that I can get estimates on repairing it vs. replacing it vs. a bit of both.
Both contractors are also giving me estimates on repairing/replacing the retaining walls, and I plan to get at least one – probably two – more estimates for both of those projects.
The half-bath project is something that I’ll be doing on my own. At first, I was just going to re-seat the toilet, as it has been leaking (I’ve turned off the water to it), but I’ve decided to go ahead and gut the room and use it as a learning experience. New floor (which will stretch out into the laundry room in front of the half bath) will let me get an idea of how I want to handle flooring for the rest of the house. A new sink will give me an idea of what sort of effort and expense will go into replacing the cabinets in the kitchen. Lighting, painting…it’s just a good project to let me get my hands dirty with home improvement – and if I completely screw it up, it’s in an enclosed area so nobody has to see it, and it’s small enough that it should be fairly inexpensive to get a pro to fix my mistakes should that become necessary.
Through thinking about all of these projects – and I’ve thought a lot about them – I’ve come to the inevitable conclusion that I’m not retiring next year as I’d hoped to do. For one thing, it’s going to be expensive and take time. For another, my 401(k) has been CRUSHED this year – I’ve already lost over $100,000, and I don’t have any reason to believe that that’s going to rebound anytime soon. So I’m just going to hunker down, do my job, try to enjoy it, and hope that I live another 10 years so that I can enjoy a funded retirement when I’m 65. By then, I should have the house paid off (or very close), even if I have to refi, it will be worth a lot more than it is now, and I can decide if I still want to move to the woods or if I’ll be happy just living where I am.
Lots of questions, yeah – but I’ve got sort of a plan, and that makes me happy.
It has been a beautiful day today, and this weekend should be more of the same. Looking forward to getting in some good walking to finish out the week (shooting for over 100 miles for the week), and to beginning to tackle that half-bath project. Should be fun!