That's an interesting thought carol....... Maybe it's not punishment for something I did, but delay tactics to keep me from doing the next thing. I never thought about it that way. The biggest plan I have right now is to scrape all the cottage cheese ceiling off the dining room and living room. I've made myself ignore them for all these years. There are beautiful coved multi-level ceilings and I hate the cottage cheese that someone put on. I can't imagine that the house or the old guy actually like the sprayed ceiling, but who knows. Maybe the house is trying to save me from myself. There might be a huge mess of cracked ceiling under that cottage cheese. Oddly though, the reason I finally hit the end of my rope on the ceilings is the one day that the plaster/cottage cheese fell off just in one spot. So maybe the house WANTS me to do it. If this is how its trying to motivate me, it's just not working. Stupid house.

I want to thank you all for replying to my post. It was very generous of you to take the time to help me with this decision. You all made some great points for me to consider. Looks like we'll be putting it on the market but I thought I would address some of the comments in your posts at this point: Play up what 'spoke' to us when we bought it issue: That's gonna be tough. I dare say I do hate EVERYTHING about this place: but I know that can't be entirely true. Mostly is though! I'll give it that it has a pretty good floor plan and a nice neighborhood. Period. Why did we buy it? Well we had a list of things we wanted the new house to have and this one had many of them, when we looked at the list on paper and put checkmarks next to it, it looked ok. i.e. 2 car att garage, 4 bedrooms, office, screen porch, playroom...Plus basically had the square footage we wanted for our family of 5, a nice quiet neighborhood, and was in the school district we were trying to get into, which was our #1 priority and could close in time (#2priority). That's about it. Nothing of the actual house itself spoke to us, other than to say" you'll need to fix this , clean that, update this, repair that"....ad nauseum. It had been neglected by previous owners and showed its wear and tear but we thought it had the bones to work with and once we put "our mark on it, it would be nice" and we'd be in a good school district. I remember saying that. We had left a lovely new house that I had drawn the plans for and needed nothing done but was in a poor school district. After the move I sunk into a very deep depression which I have been able with much effort to scratch and crawl my way out of but as a result I think I'll forever resent this hellhole since it robbed me of a couple years when I was depressed. We have done a lot of improvements and in fact it is considered by most (not me) to be quite nice. It is nice but I am too emotionally tied to hating it to ever see it as really nice. We could stay and continue working on it since there are a few mre things we'd like to do. The only thing is the more we do, though in a way it helps, in another way it just reminds me of what a mistake we made by buying it in the first place. The $30,000 lost issue: I think I was referring to the fact that the market has depreciated by that much here so I was seeing it as a loss IF we move but I agree with the point that it's actually already lost! I had never thought of it that way. Thanks for pointing that out. The can we afford to move question: I'd say that's the million dollar question. And the answer is a definite yes but with some caveats. We'll be paid off here within 9 years. Oldest will be starting college in 6 years. If we move, we'd need to go back up to a 15 year mortgage and payments would be about the same as now. Yikes, I am very frugal and paying a mortgage for an extra 6 years is a tough pill to swallow. Tougher even than the Prozac maybe! We have lots of friends who have lovely houses and 30 yr mortgages but I can't handle that, though we could have one S W E E T !!! house if I could. Not in the cards for me or my DH since I hate debt. a 15 yr mortgage again will be a little tough to take but less so than living here where I'm unhappy. And you know what they say: "If Momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy!" Life is short issue: Sure is which is why we are planning on selling. It's a tough market and we're only willing to lower the price such that we can get a nicer place with a 15 yr mortgage. We won't go so low on price here that would necessitate us getting a 30 yr mortgage for any new place. That would definitely make me resent any new place such that I'd be in the same boat as now. Hopefully we'll get lucky and be able to sell with not too big a loss. So, have I mentioned that I have a lovely house to sell????? LOL

Mine has been a love affair for the most part. What I love about my Paperwhite is: *I can press down on a word and get an immediate definition. *I can buy a book in bed! Some days, I have to check out the daily deals before I get out of bed. They are so cheap that I have tried out authors I have been curious about but never wanted to invest big bucks on. This is huge. I discovered Dorothy Sayers (Nine Tailors) and am currently reading Georgette Heyer's, These Old Shades. I have also found some great sci-fi for a couple of dollars. *I can read in darkened rooms and don't have to be right by a lamp. *I love knowing how many minutes are left in a chapter and what percentage of a book is left. *I really appreciate being able to change the font size. Previous to getting my Paperwhite, I read a great book with tiny font size that strained my eyes at night. Also, I read one of those tall, narrow paperbacks that was so difficult to hold open and even so, I couldn't read the print in the middle at the center of the book. *I can return to previous chapters or pages with little difficulty. *We found that my hubby could download a free Kindle app to his Nexus pad and register on my account. He can access all my books. Actually, his app is much prettier than what I have but he has to charge his pad daily. I, only once a week or so. *I love reading the magazine, Science News, on my Paperwhite. I am sold, and I was a real resister, too. Paper books still have a place. Some books are so good you want a physical copy on your shelf. I haven't paid more than $3.99 for a book yet. For a newer book that I really want to read, I will get it on audio at Audible. Over all, I am so glad my family got me this device for my birthday.

We have all tile on our main floor. It is hard on the feet and joints. If you can get used to wearing slippers/shoes around it is fine. But we also put area carpets down and carpet runners (sort of like little habitrails) around the house which make it easier to walk in bare feet). I prefer bare feet but have slippers I wear around the house often. All flooring is a tradeoff. Carpet is soft but easily soiled. Wood gets scratched and need refinished, often with noxious chemicals. Tile is hard but easy to clean. My favorite flooring was a solid surface linoleum I had in an old house. I'm not sure they make it anymore. It was a solid material all the way through, had no odor, repelled dirt and was soft to walk on because the sub floor was plywood. I must say the wood look tile does look fantastic. The only issue we've had is cracking when the tile spans a doorway and they are on different heat zone pours (our heat is in-floor hydronic). To fix that we have used the grout caulk to patch those areas so it is a bit more flexible. Probably a better tile installer could have avoided this issue. Would I put it down again? Probably not if I knew I was living here so long. I would have put down my solid surface linoleum. But since this subfloor is concrete I may not have gotten the softness I liked out of it. But I would not have had to deal with cracking grout issues. The reason I didn't put it in was I was concerned about resale. Wood look tile has a more high end look. I was interested in hardwood but didn't know how it would perform with the expansion and contraction of the floor heat. I also was concerned it would insulate the heat too much. If you get carpet go with a thin berber (ours was a cheap berber). We had that in our upstairs and the heat came through beautifully. Then we got a cheap plush style and the heat does not come through very well.