pride of ownership

when we were looking for houses, one of the big things i'd see on house ads was "pride of ownership" - it makes sense, where renters may be willing to let things slide, owners are going to take care of the home better because it is their investment, their property, their future.  and, dare i say, because as the owner you're going to live in the neighborhood long term and don't want to be known as the slacker neighbor who leaves their shutters broken and bushes scraggly and untrimmed.

on that note, i called a handyman service today - they're coming tomorrow morning.  my list of things we need to have fixed, not necessarily all tomorrow:

• patch drywall/tile in master shower where our plumber had to cut in to replace the leaky handle
• fix our leaking sink (scott clogged the pipe with potato peels that our garbage disposal didn't like, and in the process of  undoing the trap and all that, we discovered that a seal under the non-disposal side of the sink seems to be leaking)
• a piece of flashing on our roof needs to be nailed down, and the area needs to be checked out for water damage (fingers crossed)
• our shutter slat needs to be replaced because we are those slacker neighbors who haven't fixed their broken shutter since they moved in 18 months ago and i'm tired of feeling guilty whenever i see the front of our house.  this one we can probably do ourselves, we just need to do it.
• our gutters might need a few small patches where they're leaky - or we may just need to replace them with something newer that doesn't leak and doesn't need to be repainted
• we want to get estimates on what it would cost to add a few extra outdoor lights on the back of our house (1 next to the garage back door, 1 on the patio for night grilling purposes) and to get an exhaust fan installed in our master bathroom
• oh, and we need to do a radon test to see what the radon level is - when we had our place inspected, they said the level was moderately high, but recommended retesting before we do any remediation.  (apparently radon is the leading cause of lung cancer for non-smokers!)

yikes.  i think tomorrow i'm just going to have the handyman do tasks 1-3, and estimates on the lights/fan.  i'm pretty sure pride of ownership is actually a nicer way of saying "i pay too much to keep this place up that i'd darned well better have some pride in it."

the handyman said it'll take him about 4-6 hours tomorrow, so i'm just taking the whole day off of work.  i've needed to get an eye checkup for a few months now, but put it off because we need to find a new eye doctor near our house - i was able to find a place near us that takes our insurance and has an opening tomorrow afternoon!  i was very proud of myself for economizing my day off.