Movin' on up/The Money Pit

I debated on what to title this post. I could've gone either way.

I don't even know if I mentioned our move here. And I'm too tired to go back and look. So, about a month ago we found a new place to live. We moved in Saturday, and for the most part we're happy here. The condo is in a really nice community, it's huge, and the rent is incredible for the square footage we're getting (which means that if I mentioned the amount everyone in Orange County would turn green with envy, and everyone outside of California would gasp and go into immediate cardiac arrest, because you could buy 300 acres and an old, quaint farm house in Wisconsin for what we are now dropping in one month in rent).

So, the condo has some really great attributes. It's about 2,000 square feet, has three bedrooms, two fireplaces, a great patio and backyard, and a vaulted ceiling in the front room. Also, it has an attached two car garage, laundry hookups, and TONS of storage space (three linen closets so far, and I keep finding more). So the major selling points are all in place. It's everything we wanted.

But it's the little things that will kill you, right? Before we moved in, I thought that the trains would be our biggest problem. The train tracks (you know, the busy ones along Orangethorpe) are about a quarter mile from our new place. So far, that's the least of our worries. The big problem is that the condo owner lives in Texas, and the property manager is probably managing this place for him as a favor and wants to do as little work for us as possible. So when I called the gas company today to check out a gas leak in our kitchen and they shut off the gas to our stove and told me we couldn't use it until the gas line connecter had been replaced and I called the property manager to tell her about it and see what could be done she said "I'll send my husband to fix it Saturday." SATURDAY??!! We've been eating out almost exclusively for a week already because our kitchen was packed, and she's telling me now that we have to keep it up for almost another week. Seriously, we can't afford this. And it will probably be longer than that, because her husband's not really a repair man, just a guy who owns some tools, so he'll look at it one day, buy the parts the next, "fix" it the next, we'll call the gas company to come check it again the next day, and they'll tell us it wasn't done right. Then probably the guy will try it all again before admitting that we actually need to hire a professional.

Our other major concern is that we discovered last night that the water heater is leaning way over to the front, owing to the fact that the floor underneath it has collapsed. And it has no earthquake strapping on it, which we're thinking is illegal in a rental property. Worst case: the water heater falls over, breaks the gas line, and the place burns down. Or it falls over and falls on someone and seriously injures them. So Nathan talked to our handy "repairman" about what needs to be done (the floor needs to be replaced) and the guy goes, "Do you know how much work that would require?" You have got to be kidding me. So basically, who cares about the law or about safety, how much work am I actually gonna have to do, and how little can I get away with? We're dealing with schmucks. The owner seems cool, but the property manager is driving us crazy.

And those are just the two major things. Aside from those, the plug apparatus is broken on both bathtubs (a bad thing when you have a two year old), the carpet is seriously stained, the linoleum is peeling up in the bathrooms, one toilet doesn't work right.....and it goes on. And to top it all off, The Loudest Bird in Placentia likes to sit in the tree outside our window (5 feet from my head) at five in the morning and yell at our cat.

I know I'm complaining so much, but I'm really just getting it out of my system. We're so discouraged right now, but we know that once this all gets taken care of, this is gonna be a great place to live. But it's hard right now to get past the rocky start.