Home Alone

We are now living in our first real home, the first place that we aren't just renting but actually have a vested interest in.  That's not to say that we haven't rented some pretty nice apartments in the past---our place in Irvine was as slick as anything you would expect in Orange County.  But the flip side of owning a home is that suddenly you care a lot more about maintaining it, keeping it clean, and making sure everything stays as good as new.

At least those things that you can control.  This year we found a pretty bad water leak coming from our ceiling.  It started off as a small water stain but now it's gotten so large that it's trickling down the wall, the paint has started to peel, and drops of water fall from the ceiling.  The trick is that we're part of a condo community, which is kind of like a halfway house between renting and owning.  It's as if you're still stuck at the kiddie table.  The plus side is that the community association is responsible for the building exterior so we didn't need to repair it ourselves.  The downside is that if the community association is bad, there's not much that you can do.  Even worse is that they're not responsible for damage to the interior.  It took us forever to get the property manager out to even look at the damage (and only after we threatened to call a lawyer).  And then they claimed to fix  the roof several times before, but we never really knew exactly what they did since we were always away at work.  The only way to check if they actually did their job was to wait until another big rainstorm hit and see if it still leaked.  Which is exactly what happened last week---after claiming that they had fixed the roof several months ago, we heard the tell-tale drip wake us up.

Well, today they finally sent a contractor out who finally may have found the source of the damage.  I had to stay home alone to make sure that they actually did something---and they actually did tear off the roof and repair the leak from the outside.  Still, we'll have to wait until it rains again before we're sure, which may not be until spring...

Interestingly, our place is only about 5 or 6 years old and we've already had this problem.  Some of our neighbors have also had serious problems.  The thing is, the buildings look nice, but I guess you never know what's behind the walls.  It's all superficial.  I guess that's a life lesson right there.  But I wonder, are they just not building things the way they used to?  We live in an area that has many houses that are over a century old.  It's easy to say that those classic houses were built better with better materials and with better work---you know, back when men were men and had hair on their chest and houses had roofs that didn't leak, not like now when everyone just goes for the cheapest shortcut.  But is that just rose colored glasses romanticizing the past?  Maybe all of the terrible quality houses have already fallen over by now.  These are things to keep in mind if we ever move to a new house...