Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Trifecta of Crap (Part One)

The past week has had some spectacularly bad moments (although, I must admit that I have had worse weeks in the recent past). So bad, in fact, that I found it necessary to write three separate posts about how crappy these things really were. This is the first. *Warning - this post contains many more swear words than I usually employ in one post.

The Kitchen

Actually, this wasn’t really one moment in particular, rather it has been going on for several weeks, but the whole thing self-imploded last week. As I have previously discussed, my dishwasher stopped working. Happy to stimulate the economy, I purchased another one and crossed my fingers, hoping the jackass who lived in my house before had not totally fucked up the kitchen by putting the floor in after the dishwasher. Well, he did totally fuck it up - but not in the way I was expecting.

The problem with the dishwasher was not the floor or the height of the hole, it was the width. Apparently, the asshole who lived in my house thought it was perfectly acceptable to install a dishwasher in a space where a dishwasher doesn’t really fit. In order to do this, the asshole needed to carve out part of the floor and cut various dents into the existing cabinet. He also needed to cut off most of the dishwasher’s insulation to shove it into the hole where it clearly does not fit. Well, fast forward to me wanting to properly install a dishwasher. Can’t be done, says the installer, pointing out the various fuck-ups of the last owner.

Short story - the cabinet next to the dishwasher needs to be rebuilt.

However, rebuilding that cabinet affects the whole countertop/sink area creating the real possibility that the whole thing would need to be replaced. So, I figured that since I was going to be creating utter chaos in my kitchen anyway, I would look into replacing all of the cabinets. It turned out that I could easily replace (and add to) the cabinets and fix other things in the kitchen for under $10,000. Impressed by the prospective beauty (and value) of a new kitchen, I was so excited, but of course, didn’t have $10,000 sitting around to spend.

So, I went to my beloved bank and applied for a home equity loan or line of credit. Within a week, the bank called and said I had been approved for a $10,000 home equity loan. Yippee!! Plans were drawn up, estimates made, people consulted. Now I just had to wait for my money.

And wait and wait and wait.

Finally, last week, the bank called again. Sorry, they said. Our loan policies have changed because of the bad loan market and you no longer qualify for a loan. What?!?!? Apparently, during the month I was waiting, the bank decided that the minimum amount of money they would approve for a home equity loan would be $25,000. But I don’t need $25,000!!!! I just wanted the stinking $10,000, and really, I could have done it with $8,000. But nooooooooo . . . .


Fucking economy. Fucking president of the United States and fuckers who have taken this country into the shitter. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. What kind of system is it where a person who makes a fairly good living (in a job that is absolutely repression proof, in fact, my job gets busier when the economy sucks), has been working at that job for 8 years, owned her home for 6 years, has always paid her bills on time, and has excellent credit can’t get a freaking loan for $10K?

Now I am back to fucking square one and trying to find some person to rebuild one fucking cabinet in my sinkhole of a kitchen.

Goddamn it.

And the worst thing? I fucking HATE doing dishes by hand.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I feel your pain! Damn those assholes that had our houses before us. I think all previous owners must meet weekly to come up with ideas that will continue to haunt us decades later.

Anonymous said...

You could try for the $25K loan and pay them back $15K the day you get the loan disbursement check. That way interest doesn't accrue on money you don't want to use.

Ms. PH said...

Ahhh, yes, I could, except for the fact that I don't have $25,000 in equity in my home plus the additional 10% left over the bank requires. In other words, to get the $25,000, I would have to have about $40,000 in equity. And that I do not have.