Posts tagged with "house"

I Tell Myself A Mortgage Is A Loan

Thumbnail: Money fold

I thought I knew what to expect finan­cial­ly in own­ing a home. I was ready for mort­gage pay­ments, lawyers fees, gas bills, title insur­ance, land trans­fer tax (which is a sep­a­rate pay­ment from the name change fee), and any oth­er ran­dom thing that may cost me mon­ey.

What I was­n’t ready for was the rapa­cious urge to pur­chase things. Things that cov­er win­dows, things that illu­mi­nate the cor­ners of rooms. Things that go in hous­es, things that look nice. Things to play, things that orga­nize oth­er things.

So I spent some mon­ey. Got the living/dining room and two bed­rooms pro­fes­sion­al­ly paint­ed. Bought a 53″ Widescreen HDTV Projection TV. Of course, I need­ed a pro­gres­sive scan DVD play­er to go with it (as well as com­pos­ite cables for that and the Gamecube, which cost more than the DVD play­er itself). I even bought four games — Paper Mario, Viewtiful Joe 2, Timesplitters: Future Perfect, and Pikmin 2 — so that I could take advan­tage of widescreen and pro­gres­sive scan sup­port. There were also a few cost­ly trips to Ikea, Homesense, Home Depot for things like tables, bowls, king sized pil­lows, and Egyptian cot­ton pil­low­cas­es.

I’m in debt for the first (and hope­ful­ly last) time in my life. I was up to sev­en grand at one point, but the small­er part of it (all on cred­it cards) was paid-off with the help of my last pay­cheque, and the larg­er half hap­pens to be inter­est-free. I have to men­tion, though, that a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of what’s left has been reduced, to the gen­eros­i­ty of my par­ents. $2000 of it was towards a set of cus­tom-sized mir­rored clos­et doors to be installed in my room and in the coat clos­et, and they decid­ed to pay for them as a house­warm­ing gift. Pat also got me a bar­be­cue that fits per­fect­ly on my back patio, along with cov­er, cook­ing uten­sils, and wire-string brush.

My goal is to pay off the debt as soon as I can, and start putting 10% of my pay into a high-inter­est sav­ings account. I’d also like to save 2% of my annu­al salary for house repairs and upkeep, while look­ing into high­er RRSP con­tri­bu­tions and pos­si­bly an extra mort­gage pay­ment by the end of the year.

This’ll be hard, how­ev­er, because I’m itch­ing for a new com­put­er. I admit that I could­n’t help but take advan­tage of a great deal on Dell’s 19″ view­able flat pan­el mon­i­tors, so I bought two. Unfortunately, with a lap­top, I can only use one for the time being. I’ve been look­ing at the new P4 Extreme Edition proces­sors, which are dual core with hyper-thread­ing on each that can sim­u­late four proces­sors. I’m try­ing to wait until the price drops a bit, see­ing as how one of these costs as much as an entire new sys­tem. Normally I would­n’t even con­sid­er spend­ing so much on a CPU, but I can eas­i­ly jus­ti­fy it with all the video encod­ing and pho­to manip­u­la­tion I’ve been doing late­ly. I’ll prob­a­bly be able to afford one by the time they become rea­son­ably priced.

The House And Associated Promises

Thumbnail: Outside front of my house

So this is where I live now: an attached con­do­mini­um town­house. My unit is sec­ond from the right, and goes under­ground. The white win­dows fac­ing out on the main floor are part of the break­fast nook. There are still box­es every­where though, and it’ll take at least half a month to get every­thing cleared out.

It feels good to wake up in my own house, and as such, I now have to ful­fill all the promis­es I made to myself on the sat­is­fac­tion of such a con­di­tion.

  • I promise to floss every day.
  • I promise to vac­u­um more often than I did before (how non-com­mit­tal of me).
  • I promise to smoke less weed.
  • I promise to stop pour­ing cook­ing grease down the drain.
  • I promise to film Dolly run­ning her fat ass up the stairs (she nev­er expe­ri­enced stairs until I moved).
  • I promise to walk more often than I ride the bus.
  • I promise to get my finances in order, which involves enter­ing all my incomes and expens­es into Quicken XG then set­ting up (vir­tu­al) sav­ings accounts for retirement/emergency/pleasure spend­ing.
  • I promise to keep my room spot­less.
  • I promise to read more than I watch movies.

Running Down

I left work about halfway through the day. A sharp pain was start­ing to devel­op on the sides of my head, and I was gen­er­al­ly sore all over. Even while chew­ing or swal­low­ing, there was a tremen­dous pres­sure from the head of my mandibu­lar condyle to the inner ear. Most like­ly, I was start­ing to run myself down; the last time I felt like this was after an all-night shift at the Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy, and I end­ed up run­ning a fever and miss­ing two days of work there. Shirley con­vinced me to take an extra strength Tylenol (with codeine), which is some­thing I rarely do. I’ve always believed in pay­ing atten­tion to the pain sig­nals that the body gives off.

Trolley and I, with the assis­tance of Aaron, moved a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of chat­tel through the week, trans­lat­ing into late nights and mis­er­able days. Every pre­vi­ous night, I’d ver­bal­ly con­sid­er sleep­ing in the next day know­ing how hard it would be, and as Trolley not­ed, I’d nev­er end up doing so. Even this morn­ing I could­n’t sleep, so I got to work at ten past sev­en, more than half an hour ear­ly. It’s good to know that I was able to be stronger men­tal­ly than phys­i­cal­ly, some­thing that has always been dif­fi­cult for me to bal­ance. Usually it feels like my body is giv­ing out first, but after­wards, I real­ize that I could have han­dled more. This time, my body is actu­al­ly telling me that I’m over­worked. I think the key is con­vinc­ing myself that phys­i­cal dis­com­fort is just a tem­po­rary feel­ing that can be ignored.

It’ll all be worth it once I’m set­tled down, which will most like­ly not be until I get my clos­et doors installed. I’m replac­ing my white ones with mir­rors, and since the clos­et runs the entire width of the wall, they all need to be cus­tom sized. It’s the last thing that’ll be done before I real­ly feel like I’m in my own home. The mir­rors should make the room look twice as big and appro­pri­ate­ly dark­er. I got the quote today, and it’s just under two grand, tax in, includ­ing instal­la­tion. I decid­ed to go ahead with it, since it’s actu­al­ly cheap­er than I expect­ed, so they should be arriv­ing in 6 to 14 days.

Next week is hair­cut, get­ting cus­tom-fit­ted venet­ian blinds, Christine’s birth­day din­ner, and a lot of unpack­ing.

A Favour House Mine

We were at the house late last night, build­ing desks and fill­ing dry­wall holes. I decid­ed not to sleep in this morn­ing, because I need­ed the time to get work done, although I also need­ed sleep to get it done prop­er­ly. There are mailouts to com­plete, state­ment stuffers to design, bitmaps to vec­tor­ize, and count­less oth­er things for which I’m respon­si­ble. I con­vinced myself that I’ve (begrudg­ing­ly) gone through enough tor­tur­ing days of lit­tle sleep for some­one else, so it would be more appro­pri­ate if I did it for myself now.

Stepping out­side, the chill of win­ter morn­ing still in the air against the ear­ly light of spring, I skipped nine tracks until Claudio start­ed singing, in his shift­ing, melod­ic voice:

Bye bye beau­ti­ful
Don’t both­er to write

My lethar­gy turned into ener­gy, as I thought of how things have worked out based on the deci­sions I made. How I could die hap­py right now, although I’d pre­fer to wait at least two weeks if giv­en the choice.

The way I seem to have every­thing I deserve, and noth­ing that I don’t.

The Keys To The House

Thumbnail: Keys to my house

The trans­fer of keys is the very last step in buy­ing a house. Aside from all the steps involved in actu­al­ly pur­chas­ing one, to get a set of keys means the com­ple­tion of many things. A con­sol­i­da­tion of one’s funds (deposit­ed in trust, post­ed on file, ver­i­fied by accoun­tants). The pay­ment of all par­ties involved (lawyer for legal fees, gov­ern­ment for land trans­fer tax, insur­ance com­pa­ny for title insur­ance, as well as the sell­er for the full amount of the house). A record in the munic­i­pal min­istry of the trans­fer own­er­ship (once the lawyers of both par­ties involved have paid for an exe­cu­tion clear­ance cer­tifi­cate).

The keys sig­ni­fy that the deal has been closed, and noth­ing has gone wrong between the time of pur­chase and the day of trans­fer. Usually, I wor­ry about things going wrong, even when there’s only a mar­gin­al chance, and I have a com­plete under­stand­ing of this fact. When some­one shakes my hand after an inter­view to con­grat­u­late me on get­ting the job, I’ll wor­ry for days, right up until I get my name on the con­tract. This was no excep­tion. Anything could go wrong — sell­er chang­ing his mind, hid­den law­suits or liens, or even a fail­ing of the final inspec­tion — from the day I made the bid to the last min­utes of the clos­ing date.

Yesterday, I walked into my lawyers office. I car­ried with me a cer­ti­fied cheque that was most­ly my down­pay­ment, but also includ­ed his fees and tax­es (I’m for­tu­nate enough to not have go into my line of cred­it to pay for the lat­ter two). I signed sev­er­al doc­u­ments, received my sta­tus cer­tifi­cate and con­do papers, as well as oth­er let­ters of con­fir­ma­tion.

Today I picked up my keys, and now I own a house.