Home Ownership Isn't Always Fun

Don't get me wrong. I love my house. It's great to have my own space with no shared walls, floors, ceilings or parking with people who don't respect their environment. I love that if I want to turn up the music loud and sing along, I'm not going to get a knock on the door from management telling me to stop (I also have not noticed a pack of dogs hanging outside my front door, so I guess I'm not that loud).

Now to what I don't like.

• Yard Work. This is why I pay a guy to come over every other week and take care of what's left of my yard. I do plan to get rid of the shrubs that are overgrown and weird. I don't want plants that need to be shaped. I want native plants around my house that are low maintenance. However, it's too hot to tend to them right now. I'll wait for it too cool down. Probably in November.
• Maintenance. I do the cleaning. However, I hate doing things like take out the trash, clean my air filter (stores hardly ever have the filter size I need so I have to cut my own - jerks).

I have a whole list of things that need to be done. I need a new fence. That's probably where my tax return will go next year. Later today, I'm putting new weather stripping around my doors (I can see sunlight, which is probably why I had a $200 electric bill!).

But the thing that stresses me out the most is my air conditioner. It's 8-years-old. I've written about the whole thermostat mess. I'm no longer in the energy saver program. But now, I'm beginning to wonder if there's something wrong. Last August, I sweat through three hot days while waiting for a repairman to show up only to add freon to the unit. Everything appeared to be OK with it until Friday night. It felt warm while I slept. When I woke up Saturday, the thermostat said it was 78 degrees (way too warm for me to doze). I didn't hear or feel any air blowing in the house. I walked outside to hear the unit running. I got closer to it, put my hand over it and felt hot air blowing (that's a good thing). Then, I took a closer look. Ice. I shut the unit off at the breaker.

I came inside and called the home warranty people and was informed it would be MONDAY before the company would schedule an appointment. By 12:30, it was 84 degrees inside. I walked out to take a peek at the unit. There was no more ice. I turned it back on. Everything was working fine. Still, I didn't want to cancel the service call. After the last experience, I was thinking I should just keep my fingers crossed that there were no further problems as the heat is definitely on again. So imagine my surprise when the a/c company called at 9:30 this morning! The main guy was on a call 20 minutes away and wanted to come by! YAY!

He gets here, checks everything out inside, then goes outside. He hooks up some gauge things and says I just need freon. So while he's doing that, we talk about my a/c and what I need to watch out for (you know, things you never know are supposed to be done because you've always been a renter). Let me share a couple of tips he gave me - especially handy if you have a home warranty because if you don't do these things and the a/c goes out, they won't cover it. He said to put ant killer around the unit because they can really mess it up. He also told me to gently wash the outside coils.

He told me not to worry about adding freon once a year. He said if it gets to the point where I'm doing that a few times a year, there's a problem.

If I had a husband, he would (hopefully) know these things and take care of them so that I could go about doing the things a girl should do. I have no shame saying that's man work. I want nothing to do with it.

Yay! New Fan!

Those of you who know me have heard me complain about my house. Well, not the house itself, because I love it, but the fact that the previous owners left everything the way the builders gave it to them - cheap fixtures are especially irritating.

I plan to replace them over time (do you have any idea how expensive door knobs are???), and thanks to my dad, have ceilings fans in my bedroom and in one of the other bedrooms. I took advantage of the sales tax holiday a few weekends ago and bought a ceiling fan to replace this ugly fixture in my living room:
Ugh. Have you seen those at the hardware store? They're like $11! One schedule change and $115 dollars for installation later, the ceiling fan guy shows up. Within two minutes, he did this:Then, he assembled my new $119 fan (did I mention Lowe's also knocked 10% off the fans??). It took all of ten minutes. He climbed up on the ladder and within 20 minutes had the fan in place. It took just as long to get it balanced so it doesn't wobble from my slanted ceiling. And here's the finished product:
I'm not sure I like the glass fixture, but it's a million times better than that cheapy fixture it replaced! So, thanks, Trey, for doing such a good job!

PS, Dad: he told me he's had guys who thought they knew what they were doing and spent more than four hours working on a fan, only to have their wives call and get him to do it in less than an hour! It didn't take that long to do the one in my bedroom!

UPDATE: I returned home to learn the fan and the light operate on separate switches! I can turn on the light or the fan or both from a switch on the wall - no chain pulling! YAY!