Kim and I moved out of our lovely penthouse condo in June 2017 and moved into our quaint country cottage. In many ways, we love the place. But in some ways, this has been the worst financial decision I’ve ever made.

This house has been a money pit. And I have very real fears that things are about to get worse.

Despite reassurances from a structural engineer and a foundation contractor that our house, while a little wonky, isn’t about to fall down, I’ve been worried since we moved in that the foundation is faulty.

Those worries intensified this summer and autumn as I discovered a variety of cracks in the walls and ceiling.

Last Sunday, feel stress not just from the house but also from the U.S. political environment, I decided that the only sensible thing to do was to crawl under the house and poke around for a while. Stress relief, you know? So, that’s what I did.

There was good news and bad news. The good news was that I didn’t see anything different about the foundation than on previous inspections. (Well, I don’t think I did, anyhow.) The bad news is that I found out that we have some rot directly beneath our bathtub.

Really, though, the best thing about this whole process was alleviating some uncertainty. I’d been stressing about all of this, floundering about what to do. Now, I feel like I have some direction. I have a next step. And I know one problem, at the very least.

Because we’ve already poured so much money into repairing this place (nearly $100,000!), I’m hoping that any potential repairs here don’t get costly. But who knows? In any event, I’m certain to have more stuff to write about in the near future!