There is no place like home

I have got absolutely the craziest idea I think. I decided that I have to buy a house in Toronto to live there with my family. You do not have to tell me that I am nuts.

House in Toronto, Canada, right now is about $300,000 approximately and it is quite average, 3 bedroom house. Nothing special.
I do not have a down payment money nor a good salary. Just my crazy wish. I just think that I have to. I cannot live in the apartment for the rest of my life with rental prices going up every year. That means that I will have to downsize pretty soon and again and again and end up in somebody else’s basement apartment that I hate to do.

I imagine myself being weak and climbing other peoples’ stairs in the basement.

When we came to Canada we bought a house in a small town B*** Ontario and lived there for 10 years and due to family circumstances had to sell it and move to Toronto, back to the big city.
I cannot tell that I regret I sold it, though I regret that I bought it for sure. It was a lemon, you know and a big one. It was tremendously overpriced, I (my family)bought it approximately for 20,000 dollars more than we should and we bought it like a rent to own program that was a b*s* because we just had to have more mortgage on that overpriced old junk, that's what we did and to pay for it for 25 years what we did not. It was a real “money pit” like in a movie. Only in a movie they managed to restore and replace everything very nicely and we did not. We did not have money, any money.

My husband was driving a truck to US and back at that time and I was stuck with my 3 kids without a job or possibility of it in a small town in a new country in that century home (it was built in 1892(or something?), no one knew for sure and had some features that have never been replaced. It had some charm though. It had high ceilings with genuine crown moldings in the living, dining rooms and in the hall. It had yellow brick walls darkened by time and pollution very nicely. Natural though painted wood all over the place.
Nice wooden floor covered by cheap broadloom wall to wall covering all wear and tear made by time and usage. We had genuine brass chandelier in the living room, very heavy. I constantly was afraid that it might go down and kill somebody.
Walls in the basement were so old that plaster or whatever it was there was dripping as the sand of a seashore if you would touch it.

In a bad weather when wind was blowing effortlessly through the house, windows were singing their moaning song, as if somebody was crying: release us, replace us, we are s-o-o old… In a big wind shingles from the roof were flying around and I prayed that there will be some of it still left after the storm , that not all of the roof will fly away.
Lucky for us we usually did not have tornadoes in our area. The heating costs were just staggering. When my husband was on the road in winter and kids at school, I used to sit at my computer with winter jacket on and a hat, turning down the thermostat as low as humanly possible, so my cat was looking at my jacket with envy.

In a bad frosty weather all pipes would be frozen and you could hardly squeeze some water from it. So you have tons of frozen water outside(snow) and no water inside to cook or take a shower! Nice. All plumbers we called periodically to help us with our problem would tell us all kind of fairy tales regarding pipe conditions and some of them even ventured into replacing process. Eventually they had to dig a big trench in our driveway and take out all outside pipes, that were full of tree roots and could not let water through no matter what. The procedure eased our pocket by $5,000 but no more frozen pipes in winter – Hallelujah!

To make our life in the house more thrilling, my nice kids one day decided to go camping in the basement( they had nice playground area there). So naturally they needed a fire. Everybody knows you need a fire in on a campground! They came home for lunch and made a fire in the basement and left. The results were devastating. We did not have money to move out so we had to stay and do renovations after the fire. It was a nightmare for 4 months but we survived the fire and the renovations and everything.

Now when I look back I miss my old drafty house, I long for it. I know my kids miss it too. Because it was our home, it was our life. It was hard and it was beautiful. As life is. We had good things and bad things and good things were more…I’ve been living in my mom’s house or my own for the most part of my life and when I lost it, I thought it is going to be okay, less worries about the roof and furnace and bills, but now I feel that I lost something else, something bigger and more important, that you cannot replace and I need that. My place that I can call my home. MINE. JUST MINE...

And I am determined to do that, just do not know how to realize my dream yet. Not yet. But I will have to figure it out. Well, I accept that I have to buy a house in a pretty miserable condition, but I agree to that and I have experience now, and interest will be considerably higher then normally bank would give me and I agree to that too.

I just need some time so I can save some money for closing costs if not for down payment.
But I’ll buy my own home and make it nice, swear to god, I’ll do that, no matter what, because there is no place like home, there is no place like home.