DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

The worst thing about buying a new house — so far, anyway — is feeling like I don’t own this one any more. I’ve been thrown back into my apartment-living mentality, where every picture hung means one more hole to patch, every moment spent setting up new drums or computer gear or recording equipment means another moment packing it away in a few weeks. When I know I’ll be leaving soon, I have a hard time settling in; the temporary nature of the arrangement wrecks my ability to get comfortable.

Ironically, we’re continuing to remodel, on the advice of our realtor, who insists that a dollar spent on the kitchen now is worth two more in the listing price. Yes, that’s right: had you put all those tech-market investments into kitchen remodels instead, your portfolio would have doubled rather than halved last year. So long as the kitchens in question were located in northern California.

Following this “logic,” we just had the kitchen cabinets refinished, and new counters and a new sink put in. The place looks so good, I’m tempted to say I don’t want to move… but that was true before these changes.

Yeah, I admit it; I’m whining. I can hear your protestations now: “So don’t move if you don’t want to!” It’s not that simple — I want my damn 5 acres, recording studio, datacenter, home theater, and 1700 electronic and/or ethernet devices. It’s just hard to be excited about the property when it exists only conceptually. Whereas it’s easy to be depressed about packing boxes, weekend trips to the self-storage place, and the prospect of putting our home on the market before we find a “suitable replacement.”