Sunday, February 25, 2007

And Now I Present, "The Money Pit"

In March 2005, I breathed the de-oxygenated air of an overly exuberant housing market and, with the thought I normally reserved for the purchase of gumballs, bought a two bedroom condo in Adams Morgan. Actually, it's a co-op, which means I own shares in a corporation rather than the actual physical space I occupy in the Plaza West.

Confused? Think of your mother picking out your outfit in the morning before you go to school - it's something like that, living here. You can improve your apartment, for example, but all plans must be blessed by the miserly members of the co-op board. They're nice folks, but for them the concept of building maintenance is not a shared but rather individual responsibility, better steered toward an unsophisticated newbie resident than the corporation.

I suppose it makes sense to skimp on the bills where you can, to reduce waste and keep costs manageable for the mixed income hordes packing the building. Yet, despite all this abstemiousness, costs continue to rise at breakneck speeds. Maybe it's the bumps in energy and tax expenses, but all suffer from our ever-increasing association fee - not to mention the rising ground rent, something neither myself nor my real estate agent felt obligated to research and understand prior to the offer I tendered in those insane times; DC's cash-hungry bureaucracy commands income from the gentrified regions in Northwest, and so value of our land inflates like an appendix very much on the outs.

Anyway, a bloated tax bill is usually a good sign - it means things are looking up in our little burg. And I guess you can't really complain about growing fees; inflation is an inescapable constant, right up there with death and that other thing I've been talking about over and over. But all this is to be expected - my problem has to do with the upkeep and renovation of the place.

Wha? Yeah, good question. When I bought this place, in those crazy times, it was quite the shithole. Nasty, matted and stretched carpet ruled the floorspace, and the washrooms resembled the crumbling baths of the Roman era, not the glimmering spas known to frequent visitors of this or that highfalutin showroom. For awhile I thought my limited knowledge of home improvement would deliver, in no time, a restored home at a bargain price. Over time, however, one thing became abundantly clear - there was no way I could, single-handedly, refresh all the water damage and neglect my box in the sky had endured over the years.

So I hired the job out. New bathrooms and window and door molding went up in short order, and, for mere many thousands, I was living the good life. Among the improvements was a repair to my kitchen ceiling, which showed signs of shearing, as if caused by the settling of my 100 year old building. The guys did a fantastic job, or so it seemed, and soon after the fix I'd forgotten all about the gash that once adorned my still outdated kitchen.

Fast forward a few months, say 7 months, and what you find is this: the gash has returned! Not only is it back, but along the exact same fault line it existed before! I bought this place with eyes wide open, convinced I could resurrect it from its neglected state at a reasonable price. I figured an apartment, however crumbled, could be easily revived with a little elbow grease and investment. It's not a house, right?

Well, the Return of the Shear - and all the other stuff, from the difficulty of replacing my interior doors (yes, doors) to the endless saga involving my expired HVAC units - has got me thinking... Maybe there are some things that can't be resurrected. Maybe some things are, and always will be shit. Perhaps this is a dramatic assessment, considering the improvements that have somehow stuck since I moved in, but I feel I'm living on borrowed time, that this place will betray me before I can unload it when the market picks up again.

It makes me wonder about all the other shear in my life - my fear of commitment, my inability to deal with uncertainty and even fear. As I plod through each day, am I merely obscuring my problems, or am I owning up and and addressing the actual causes of those problems? I think about the re-emergence of the cracks in my ceiling, and wonder if they are in some way symbolic of something more. Something personal.

I can't say for sure, but, in my next home repair, the first thing I'm tackling are those blasted ruptures.