This Damn House

Is it possible for a house to hate its owners? Or to not want to be fixed? I'm not usually prone to anthropomorphization or mysticism, but it's hard to come to any other conclusion to explain the fact that every single project in this house is about 10 times harder than it would be for a "normal" house!

Take, for instance, a simple plumbing repair: fixing a leaky bath tub fixture. There are a zillion pages on the web that show you how to do it. It's fairly straightforward.

Until the handle that's supposed to slide off...doesn't, and the only way to get it off is yank it with vice grips which shears the bolt that attaches to the inner workings of the valve necessitating replacing the entire damn thing, because the bolt had fused itself to the handle.

Okay, well that's just one thing, right? Except...the exact same thing happens to the other bathroom's faucet.

(Knowing this house's history, I wisely went ahead and ordered the whole valve set ahead of time at over $100 rather than the "repair kit" for $7 because I just knew it wouldn't be that easy. Unfortunately I just ordered one, figuring surely the "repair kit" would work on at least ONE of our tubs! Ha. ha. um, no.)

There's the fiasco with the light fixture....of course our house couldn't easily accept a standard sized light fixture!

Yesterday we accepted delivery of a new refrigerator (YAY) which, of course, couldn't be easily installed -- we needed to take a crow bar to an odd wooden shelf thingie someone had once thought should be be a good idea to place under the fridge, and the ice maker won't work until we get an adapter to connect it to our non-standard plumbing!

This is the story of this house since the day we moved in -- every step of the way, our house resists whatever we try to do. It's very discouraging.

(If I ever think I can stand the trauma, I will tell the tale of installing our washing machine! I think I need more therapy first, though.)