Give Me Back My Ignorance!

The problem with letting a competent general contractor into your house is not that he will tell you about all of the things that he is going to do, but that he will tell you about all of the things that he isn't going to be doing that need to be done.

I'm capable of ignoring almost any problem if I have enough time to rationalize it away. That's not really a positive trait, but it does allow me to live in a house that was crappily built in 1958 and then had fifty years of neglect and abuse applied.

Then Brandon comes in and looks at the floor, and the crawlspace, and the attic, and everything else and tells me things like this:

• My pipes are galvanized. Apparently that's something that contractors refer to as "bad". It also explains why I have to take off all the faucet aerators every once in a while and wash out all the chunks of metal that are keeping the water from coming out. The good news is that they can replace all the pipes under the house. The bad news is that because the pipes are under the house, they will need to be replaced with copper pipes. Since people are getting electrocuted trying to steal copper wire, I'm guessing copper pipe is somewhat expensive...
• The tub is leaking.
• The toilet is probably leaking, too.
• One side of the house drops off an inch in the last five feet. (To be fair, I'd actually noticed this problem even though I tried to believe I was making it up.) That could be "bad" or maybe just not that good, depending on what is causing it. The current theory is subsidence. If it doesn't change any more it's just a flaw that adds character to the house. If it keeps moving, my not-yet-installed beautiful tiled floor in the bathroom will probably crack although Brandon is going to do a bunch of stuff to try to keep that from happening.
• Also, the other side of the house drops off a bit as well.
• Even though I only noticed a leak in the roof in one spot before I had the roof replaced a couple of years ago, apparently it was leaking a little bit all over the place. That's "bad". We think it's all fixed now, but since it hasn't really rained since the roof was replaced, we'll just have to trust that it's all good and that the new ceiling won't be destroyed.

Home ownership -- it's a great way to save for retirement!