Do you ever just feel like you’re going through a season? For the past few years, our 116-year-old home has consistently reminded us that it’s far more experienced than my husband and I are.
When we recently encountered an unexpected $1,000 drainage issue less than a week after paying another person to fix a leak in our roof, I heard words I never thought I’d utter leave my mouth. I was talking with Stephanie, the fourth person out to my property in four days who specialized in repairs. She asked if we rented or owned.
“We own, and I’m about ready to sell if you’re interested.”
I meant it in the moment, I think. And all weekend, that off-the-tongue quip bothered me more than I’d like to admit.
See, when I was a teenager, I dreamed of owning an old house—a place with stories and character and quirks. When ours came on the market in 2016 for a price we could manage with a 30-year mortgage, we were thrilled.
Ten years later, the cracks are showing. That’s half a pun because our walls are made of plaster, which naturally cracks with age. The other half is that by the end of the year, it’s possible we could pay more in home repair costs than we’ve put toward our principle in a decade—and that sucks when there’s still two more decades of payments looming.
Signing up for a 30-year mortgage in my early 20s
As elated as I felt to have the old home of my dreams, I was also 22 years old with zero homeowner experience when we went under contract. And life happened fast.
Two weeks after we closed on our house, Kody and I got married. Six months later, I was pregnant. We crunched the numbers, and after paying for daycare and gas to and from work, my full-time job as a reporter would’ve cleared our family about $5 a day. We decided it was best for me to stay at home.
At the beginning of 2018, we were a three-person, one-income household $3,000 above the poverty line—meaning that we skimped by on $40 of groceries a week because we barely exceeded the qualifications for assistance.
Then, two years later, this job at Dogwood dropped out of the sky like a miracle. A steady paycheck. A livable wage. An opportunity to work remotely, while keeping our toddler home with me. For a second time in a short expanse, things changed for our household very, very quickly.
I remember the first time I swiped my card without pulling out my phone to check my bank account. For a few years, you couldn’t have convinced me, a girl raised in the midst of a massive economic downturn in Southside, that we weren’t actually rich. Then, inflation hit, driving the cost of everything through the roof (sadly, pun intended)—and repairs we’d previously priced at $6,000 were suddenly quoted at $15,000.
Once again, my husband and I found ourselves treading water, keeping our heads just above the surface financially. That felt utterly ridiculous with the amount of money we were bringing home. It had to’ve been our fault, right? There’s no way we should be making what we were making and still counting down the days until the next paycheck. So once again, I crunched the numbers.
Over the past 10 years, our mortgage—due in part to fluctuating interest rates and a highly contested county-wide property value reassessment—shot up 40%. Our homeowners insurance, which we’ve never made a claim on, doubled, as did our car insurance on paid-off 2006 and 2014 vehicles. Town water and sewage rates continue to rise annually. Just last month, our electric bill doubled from the month prior. Couple that with rising grocery and gas costs, and it’s a recipe for financial strain.
Those are just the everyday costs—not the thousands of dollars worth of repairs we’ve already put into our house or the tens of thousands of repair dollars looming over the next couple of years. Hence, why we’ve dubbed our home Money Pit Manor.
And I know we’re not alone. Nationwide, the average cost of home repairs rose 22% since 2020.
Blessed, but stressed
Back to the weekend, specifically the comment I made about being ready to sell.
I’m not.
Not really.
Not when I think about living out my childhood dream—though, some days it feels more like a nightmare. Not when I think about the unhoused people in my own community who would be so thankful to live among these cracking plaster walls. Not when I think about the convenience of our location to the local amenities we often enjoy.
I feel so icky inside when I think about how blessed I am, coupled with how stressed I am. But over the past 10 years, it feels like I’ve grown apart from the young girl who saw this house for what it could be—and have started to see home as more of an obligation.
Recent repairs helped move the needle on that a little. We had to throw out some things because of the roof leak, then more things because of the drainage issue. Those two problems forced me to put a lot more attention into our home than I honestly have since my dad passed in 2024 (if you’re reading between the lines, the repercussions of depression suck when you can hide them behind a happy little front door).
Rising everyday living costs suck. Big-ticket essentials all breaking at once sucks. Looking at repairs on the horizon sucks.
Needless to say, I found myself looking for a sign. I didn’t know it’d be a literal one, but in the midst of cleaning, discarding, donating, and storing, I found a sign I’d bought a few years ago and forgot to hang up.
The sign read: “Have big dreams. You’ll grow into them.”
I looked at that and laughed. Big dreams this house was. Busted pipes. Leaking roof. Cracked drainage. Failing HVAC.
And then I picked it up, dusted it off, and realized I’ve learned a whole lot from this house. A lot about resilience. A lot about repairs. A lot about perseverance, endurance, teamwork, faith, and trust.
If It can teach me all that in one decade, why in the world would I want to shortchange myself ahead of the next one?
Honestly, I don’t know where the money’s coming from to fix everything that’s broken. But I do have faith that it’ll come. And that our home will once again become a place of joy instead of stress. Besides, we’re already halfway there. It’d be a real disservice to not reach the finish line on home repairs after we’ve already come so far.
RELATED: A 115-year-old house, a 60-year-old heater, and a home repair tax credit that just vanished
