The Misadventures of Home Ownership

As I mentioned before, we bought our first house this year back in March. When we decided to get married we were both renting separate houses with roommates. I had been itching to buy a house for a while, and with the tax credit and hungry housing market, it seemed to make perfect sense to go ahead and buy a house together, in spite of planning a wedding at the same time. Our search took us to all of our favorite areas of Nashville - Sylvan Park, Germantown, East Nashville, 12th South/Belmont, even "Historic West Town" (formerly known as the Nations). After countless showings and one failed offer, we finally settled on this adorable little renovated house in East Nashville built in 1949. (Please note that the heart cut-out shutters, while charming, will probably not being  staying..)

I grew up in Nashville, but moving to East Nashville was like moving to a completely different city to me. I had never been to any of the restaurants, I wasn't familiar with the streets and the shops. I had no idea how to get around and kept driving in circles every time I tried to find Bongo Java East. Now we've been over here for over three months and the more time we've spent on the east side of the river, the more we absolutely love it. Our house is situated within walking distance of Five Points (all that wasted time trying to find Bongo East and I could've just walked there!) as well as the Woodland Street Mad Donna's area. East Nashville being the pet-friendly utopia that it is, we love being able to walk our dogs everywhere and have found that most restaurants with a patio are happy to let dogs hang out. 

That being said, home ownership has already proven to be quite the project. One of the first things we did was add the fence, done by Rick's Renovations. We decided on privacy in the back and down the side bordering the neighbor's yard, but picket in the front so as not to appear like an unfriendly fortress on a hill. I've also been working on the landscaping a little bit. The dogs are constantly  running through the bushes in the front of the house, so we decided to create a sort of rock garden for durability and contrast, which turned out to be quite the undertaking. I got all the river rock pebbles from Home Depot, starting out with 15 1/2 cubic foot bags. I have gone back for more at least 3 times. I got the border rocks at Natchez Stone Company on Hwy 100. They were incredibly helpful and affordable, even if a bit out of the way. 

Unfortunately, some of the work that we've had to do on the house hasn't been by choice. Less than a month after we moved in (and the same week of our wedding) we discovered that we had major plumbing problems. Our sinks started to back up and the toilets were flowing incredibly slow. We called a plumber, and $300 later found out that the pipes underneath our house were basically climbing uphill - strictly against codes. Our water and sewage pipes had to be completely re-routed. We were utterly shocked. When buying a home, getting someone to inspect your house is highly recommended but not required. We had paid the extra few hundred dollars to get a professional to inspect it and absolutely nothing was said in the report about the plumbing, which is one of the main things that they are supposed to inspect. We had two guys look at it - one a plumber, and the other a contractor - and they noticed the problem right away.    Everyone we talked to said the same thing.. that it needed to be fixed right away and that it would cost at least $1000 dollars to do so. With our wedding the same week and our honeymoon a week later and already paid for, I started to panic and I was furious. This is the very reason you pay to have a professional inspect your home before buying it. If we had known about these problems, we would have never bought it with a wedding around the corner, in spite of absolutely loving the house and the area. I called the inspector and after much back and forth, we finally convinced him that it was his responsibility to get it fixed. Victory! 


After we got back from our honeymoon, we set to work getting the house arranged the way we want it. Everything was coming along wonderfully, and then The Flood happened. Thankfully, our house sits up on a hill and the actual flood waters never reached the house. The rain did, however, find another way in.. 

Yikes. 

Turns out the insurance company would cover the interior damage, but not the roof damage that actually caused the hole in the first place. Fabulous. You can't get the hole in the ceiling fixed until the roof is fixed. After several astronomical estimates and even one unsuccessful patch, we settled on Jeremiah Smith - by far the most affordable and they did an amazing job. With the roof finally repaired, it took us almost two months to get the hole in the ceiling fixed. Anyone that does drywall has been completely unavailable due to all of the flood damage all over the ceiling. After several appointments that didn't show up, we finally got a hold of Jason with Zeal Construction who knocked it out quickly and at a great price. The house was an absolute mess in the process, but he did a great job cleaning it up and we finally have a hole-less ceiling.  

So..what's next? 

What a night, abbreviated.

What a night.

Tonight was one of those nights where I ask myself the question "Why am I in the restaurant business?" Depending on my mood the answer always varies. Sometimes it is "Because I love making people happy." Sometimes it's "Because it's never boring!" But tonight the answer was "Because I have lost my damn mind and I am a complete idiot." 

Here I go..

It really is rather awkward trying to come up with the perfect way to start a blog.. At once I feel like I am speaking to millions of people (and I have always had an acute case of stage fright) and to absolutely no one at all, which leaves me feeling quite lonely.

I suppose I could begin with trying to explain why exactly I am starting this blog.. though I am not entirely sure of the reason myself. Since a young child I have always been pulled to Write. I started writing “books” when I was 10 or 11 that I would only let my cousin and best friend Graci read because I knew that she wouldn’t think I was weird because, well, she was weird, too. I never got past 30 pages with these masterpieces (though looking back, that really is quite a lot for a pre-adolescent), and most of them were pretty much about one of two things: dogs or a girl striving to make her way in the world, usually a runaway. I never really wanted to run away, my family is one of the most stable and caring families you will ever come across, but the idea absolutely fascinated me. The idea of being completely alone and independent.. But that’s not the point. The point is, some part of me loves to write and always has. I’ve kept journals periodically throughout my entire life – I remember my very first one, it had 101 Dalmatians on it and a little lock with a key that I always lost. When I was in 5th grade, my teacher gave me an extension on a story writing project not because I was behind and late but because I simply just couldn’t stop writing. I took all the creative writing classes I could in high school and loved them. In college, writing changed completely. I ultimately studied French and Anthropology, along with a hodgepodge of other classes, which kept me writing papers constantly.This kind of writing had to be academic and objective, which I actually did enjoy in an all-too-nerdy and sadistic kind of way. But all that MLA and APA style writing, mixed with working at the local hookah bar and good old fashioned partying left absolutely no time for any kind of creative or even journal-type writing.

So here I am, two years later, writing to no one and everyone all at once. A lot has happened in the past couple of years since I graduated with my fabulous French degree. I ended the most toxic relationship I have ever been in, started working at my family’s restaurant while trying to figure out what to do with my life, accepted my dad’s offer of a management position at that same restaurant, fallen in love with a great friend I’d lost touch with during said toxic relationship, gotten married to said great friend, bought a house with now husband, and somehow acquired 3 dogs along the way. My dad and I are getting ready to open a new restaurant together – a huge undertaking – and I suddenly feel compelled to write about all these things. So here I go…