Hello My Name is Anna Fielding and this is my husband Walter...

... or better known as Shelley Long and Tom Hanks in The Money Pit.

Owning a house has kinda gotten old. Don't get me wrong it's totally awesome to have our own house until that particular time of month rolls around when the mortgage statement and utility bills come in. Oh don't forget those bank statements that constantly remind me that we are starring in our own version of The Money Pit.

There are bright sides to it all, for example that broken oven I wrote about in my last post ... it's getting replaced at no cost to us, well okay just a fee for the service call. When we bought the house the owner offered a home warranty and if you read my blog it has come in quite handy. We've had the fridge fixed, the water heater replaced and now the oven replaced. Definitely worth every penny. It's coming up almost a whole year owning the house (April 30!) and we have been receiving notices about renewing the warranty on our own. It's not cheap, at least for the plan that was provided for us, which we figured was about $800 for the year. It covered a lot of things but it is so different when it was provided to us versus us having to write a check for the amount. We are also looking into the warranty type plan offered by our utility company. It's far cheaper from what I understand but I don't know much about what it actually covers just yet.

Just to reflect back,on some things I wish I knew before we bought the house or when we were looking...

• If you have a wood burning fireplace with a brick chimney or lots of brick some place, check for spall, or flaking.  I'll post more about it later but we've had to have some chimney work done due to a leak it caused in one of the bedrooms. 
• Get a really good home inspector. We had a guy that a friend used and he sounded good but we realized that most inspectors are really jack-of-all-trades-masters-of-nothing. Our inspector didn't even go up into our attic which we are kicking ourselves for. But lesson learned and we've moved on.
• Me personally, I'll never buy another "used" house.
• Hire a painter if you can afford it. Just the thought of painting makes me shudder.
• Don't buy Benjamin Moore paints unless you're willing to splurge for more pricey rollers and brushes or hire someone. BM paint is all the rage and even more so since they've teamed up with Pottery Barn. But their paint is so so thick that while you may only need one coat to cover, if you don't use the pricier stuff to apply it you will be cursing the paint. Behr paint at Home Depot is a decent amount cheaper and covers well with you one step up from bottom of the line paint supplies. 
• A decent amount of contractors are NUTS! They either unresponsive, somewhat unprofessional or do a crap job. You can't win. We had a contractor last year for the chimney who said he'd take the job and then he never showed and was never reachable again. Our latest chimney contractor was more nuts, looked like they did a good job but now is unresponsive for a final small part of the job we want done. (No money has changed hands for that part so no worries).