When it comes to home ownership, it’s always something, especially with this house. I’ve been thinking about why we’ve had to do so much more basic maintenance in our first few years of this house compared to our last house, and I think I know the answer. We purchased this house from developers who renovated and flipped it. The incentive for them is to do the renovations as cheaply as possible without hurting the asking price. This means outwardly things are probably going to look quite nice – beautiful floors, quality tiling, well-kept yard, new paint jobs, etc. But there are probably going to be corners cut in other, less obvious areas that reveal themselves over time – cheap light fixtures and ceiling fans, slow drains, closet doors that are put on backwards, etc. A potential buyer will probably catch some of these during inspection (we caught a few), but not all of them, and the DC housing market is so tilted toward sellers that a lot of buyers waive their inspections or don’t much stock in them, because they are so scared of scuttling the deal. It’s better for the seller to go cheap wherever they can get away with it, because they won’t be living the house they're selling.
Our previous house, on the other hand, we purchased from a woman who had lived there for almost 20 years before she sold it to us. So, it was the reverse. Outwardly it didn’t look as nice, but all the little practical quality-of-life things were better, because she had been consistently upgrading and fixing them. Her incentive was to make the house as livable as possible, since she was the one living in it. It wasn’t to her benefit to go cheap.
Although, now that I think about it, we did spend thousands of dollars in renovations and fixes while we lived there. We spent almost $10K alone on a new radiator because our old one was leaking carbon monoxide (which is very bad), and we completely remodeled one of the bathrooms, the basement, and extended a bedroom. We also leveled out our backyard and replaced a rotting deck with a nice stone patio. I don’t remember exactly how much all that cost, but it must have been pretty expensive. So, maybe our old house wasn’t any cheaper to maintain. Maybe it was just less annoying because it wasn’t the constant drip, drip, drip of repairs – or maybe it was, and I’m just falling victim to recency bias, and you can basically ignore everything I’ve written thus far.
Whatever the case, this time it’s a tree. We have a big tree in our back yard – a maple of some sort, I think – and it’s kind of a nuisance. It blocks a lot of light and it litters our yard with sticks, especially after a strong wind. But it’s a tree, and I’m loathe to mess with trees, because they are important to the ecosystem and a big part of the neighborhood aesthetic. S, however, wants to do something about it. Her main fear is that the bigger branches are going to snap off during a storm and damage our house... or worse.
So, she’s called a few tree people out to look at it and see what could be done. In DC, apparently you can only cut down a tree if you have a good reason, and the first guy who came out told us that we wouldn’t be able to attain the permit to do so. He suggested we do some extensive pruning.
But then we had somebody else come out, and she took a long look at the tree, picked up a long stick stuck it through a knothole, smelled it (for some reason), and shook her head.
Her: You see that.
Me: Uh... I don't know? No?
Her: You don't see that?
Me: It's a stick?
Her: Look at how deep it goes.
Me: What does that mean? Is that bad?
Her: It means you have hollow growth.
Me: You're going to have to elaborate.
Her: This entire limb is at risk of snapping off.
The "limb" to which she was referring is basically a whole separate tree in and of itself. If it snapped off it would complete cave in the roof of our family room. This was in direct contrast to what the other guy told us, who said the tree was perfectly healthy and structurally sound. I don't know whom to believe. It looks healthy to me, but what do I know? I'm no arborist. Also, the second person's assessment got me a bit spooked, as we do have some powerful wind storms come through here from time to time.
As I mentioned above, S has long been fearful that this tree would cause damage, so she's all in on getting it cut down. I ultimately agreed. My thinking is this: Since we're required to get a permit from the city, anyway, there is no harm in starting that process. If they tell us that it is healthy and strong and can't be cut down then that's that. But if they tell us it does pose a risk and that we are allowed to cut it down, then we should do that. Really, it's an easy decision for us, because it's not our decision.
Also, if we cut it down, it will make it easier for us to get solar panels, which has been a dream of mine for a while, so it would probably be a net positive for the environment overall.
Alright, time to what some college basketball. I could win hundreds of dollars if Houston pulls off an upset of Baylor. Let's check the score -- shit, it's already 19-11 Baylor. Oh well, is all a mess of corruption, anyway.
Until next time...
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