The Money Pit

Do you remember the 1986 movie "The Money Pit" starring Tom Hanks and Shelly Long. As quoted from indb.com, it is a story about "a young couple that struggles to repair a hopelessly dilapidated house." If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. If you know us, then you already know the basic concept of the movie. Let me tell you a story.

In October of 2003, we were at the top of the real estate game. We had just found out that we were having Kaeson, we had sold our old house in Sandy and were ready to close on a beautiful house in South Jordan. At the closing table, the sale fell through (by no fault of our own) and we were forced to move our belongings to storage and our then small family to the in-laws spare bedroom.

After two months of rigorous searching, to the point of driving our real estate agent insane, we found our house. It was gorgeous: 5 year old, 3865 sq ft, 9-13 foot ceilings throughout, 4 bedrooms up, huge walk in closets, children's bathroom with double sinks and a door separating the tub, 1/3 acre lot, two open area bedrooms downstairs and a HUGE media room. To boot, it was priced much less than the house we had originally fallen in love with. We jumped at the chance at this gem. At the time, we had no reason to believe that this house wouldn't be perfect in every way.

Our first glimpse of gray clouds happened in the Spring of the following year when I was very pregnant walking around our newly thawed back yard, hit one of the many divots and broke my very swollen ankle (I gave birth wearing a huge brace and on crutches.) It was at that point that we realized what a shambles the yard was. We had bought the house during the snowy winter and had no clue as to the poor condition of the grass and soon to find out, sprinkler system.

The following year, we put up a vinyl fence. 1/3 acre + corner lot = a lot of fencing. We had expected that when we bought the house. The following year we FOUND an extra space in our basement. A huge 200 sq ft room that had electricity and a ladder in it. We lovingly called it the time out room. We finished that space off and although it was pricey, it did add additional storage room and footage to our house.

I was looking at the amount of money that we have put into this house over the past four years and I just about passed out. This is what we have done: put up a new vinyl fence, put nearly 70 gallons of paint on the walls, finished out the time out room, replaced nearly all of the carpets with hardwood floor for our asthmatic daughter, replaced the stove, dishwasher, dryer and the washing machine has been replaced twice. Every light fixture was traded out and ceiling fans installed in the kids rooms. We had to knock down a wall in the basement to allow furniture to go down the stairs. Now, to book and to add the straw to break the camel's back we had our central air conditioners go kaput last week, the wiring in our basement has been deemed not up to code and we have already hired a company to demolish and redo the backyard. The yesterday, I got up to get a glass of ice water only to find that the icemaker on the fridge had malfunctioned, flooded the entire freezer and fridge area, spilled water ALL over the kitchen floor and that the water had already found its way into my sewing room directly below the kitchen.

When is enough enough. My dad told me when we bought the house, "Congratulations, right now you own a house but it will be owning you before too long. " I guess on the bright side of things, we love our house, we love our relatively low house payment, we love our area so we are in now immediate hurry to move. Someday, like in the movie "Money Pit," we hope to have the immaculate, beautiful detailed house that Tom Hanks ended up with. For now though, that seems like a very distant and far off dream.