Wednesday, October 11, 2017

i can't move ... i can't afford it!

In order to move forward on the house that we're buying ... I had to attend two sessions of choosing colors and paint and stoves and faucets and grout (whee ...) and all of the wiring junk before they would say that it was safe to "break ground" on our house.  It is now safe to break the ground.

Did I have fun doing all of that?  Um, no.  And it wasn't my first rodeo, so I knew I wasn't going to have any fun.

Anyway, FOUR LONG HOURS of choosing and choosing and choosing and more choosing and I thought I was good to go.  Oh, I was wrongo.  I still had to attend an additional session on wiring.  Um, I'm no electrician, but I went.  I took my hard hat, too, just in case I would have to go "out in the field."  Fortunately, I only had to visit a design showroom.

So, anyway, the gal at the first meeting stuck to the budget I gave her and I only walked away with a couple of things that I really hadn't planned on (read  didn't know I needed.)  I was not so lucky at the second meeting with the wiring dude.

I walked in and was immediately asked about the things that I wanted in my house.

"Well, I want a fancy doorbell where I can see people."
"We don't do that here."
"Okay, I want a switchplate in the floor to plug lamps into."
"We don't do that here."

* Sigh *

"What do you do here?"
"Well, we wire your house for camera monitoring and we hang TVs on walls ... stuff like that."

Rick had specifically asked that we mount our TV on the wall in the living room so I knew I was in the right place. 

My salesman showed me only one option of doing that.  I assumed I had to believe everything he told me to get that job done.  He then showed me that my house was wired for "surround sound" and he showed me the speakers that I would need to get that done.  He then told me that it was "old fashioned" to have a modum box in your closet to ignite the internet ... and who wants to be old fashioned?  He explained that I needed to have a fancy-schmancy metal box in the WALL of my closet to HIDE my ugly ol' modum.  Sadly, I believed that I needed that.  And, of course, I needed sped up internet connections ... that he could wire in.

Ka-ching.

I left, two hours later with all kinds of plugs and wires headed to my new house ... and a big ol' metal box to put my modum in and four "unobtrusive" wall speakers for my surround sound.  Yep, I had to have all of this stuff or else ... my house wouldn't work?

Little did I know that I just got tooken.  Yup.  I in no way needed a metal box.  I also didn't need those four fancy speakers that couldn't even GO IN MY WALL for the surround sound ... because I don't have walls where the surround sound will be.  I didn't need them because the speakers provided by the new house people had already taken care of that. 

I don't know what else I bought because everything started to go dark about an hour into the meeting.  I'm sure I bought a dog, too.  You know, just because the dog I already have isn't big enough.

The good part, though, is that nothing is returnable.  All sales were final.  Yeah, that's the good part.  Because once I woke up from that nightmare, I definitely would've been returning everything. 

Except the doorbell.  That's cool.  Too bad they didn't sell those there.

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