The American Dream: homeownership. I guess owning a home represents what so many people work hard their whole lives for. (Well it used to anyway.. now they will give a mortgage to anyone). But I'm not here to get on a soapbox, just to share with you some of our latest home tidbits. There is one medium-sized project that I have been looking forward to us getting taken care of in our house. When we bought the house, we knew that some framing around our back french doors was rotten and that it would need to be replaced. We also knew our carpet was worn and dirty and slightly ripped and would need to be replaced. (I did clean it twice with a steam cleaner machine, so not too dirty, but definitely want new carpet). Luckily, cost-wise, we only have carpet in one room. And as much as everyone wants hardwoods and I love our hardwoods, I also love having carpet in this one room. It feels very home-y to me and I know once we have kids I will want carpet there because that is where we spend the majority of our time and kids need carpet to fall on. Plus if we spend a fortune matching hardwood floors, I would have to pay a few hundred dollars more to buy an area rug to throw on top of them anyway.
So, first project: getting the framing fixed around the french doors. We called probably 10 people / places over the span of 2 months before we finally found someone to do the job. People wouldn't return our phone calls, estimates were too high, etc. Finally, finally we got a guy to do it who was recommended to us by one of my coworkers. He did a really great job on the whole project and then in the end left all of the scrap wood pile laying our backyard and couldn't take it away! What are we supposed to do with it?? Well I would also like to tell you the cost on these projects. People aren't always willing to share the cost of owning a home with each other, but just so you understand that it's so much more than just the mortgage (as I'm sure most of you know anyway). This particular project was $1419. About what I thought it would be.. I was guessing around $1200. So $1419 plus a pile of wood - joy.
Project # 2: now that the framing is complete, we can get new carpet! There was no point in putting it in before because they would just have to rip some of it up to get to the damaged part of the floor. I had a figure in my head for this one, one room of carpet = $800, right? Sadly, no. Well I guess we could get cheap-o carpet and pay $800 or less. We found one we really like, middle of the road carpet that we'll be putting in. I will be sure to post before and after pictures once we get it installed in the next few weeks. We chose to go with the carpet we liked but with a shorter fiber and standard pad since this is only our ~5 year house and not our 'forever' house. Cost of project: ~$1350. Yikes.
Project # 3: reupholster the steal of a couch we got on craigslist. Couch = $80. I thought.. can't cost more than $400 to reupholster, right? Man I am just a bad estimator. Apparently it's at least ~$500 for the labor and then you have to buy fabric and it's been suggested that we need new cushions for $150. This is not an urgent project but we'll probably be taking it to another recommended place in a few weeks and cross our fingers that his estimate will be a little lower. Plus before we bought the couch I thought that we would buy two matching chairs and they would be $200-$400 each so maybe the couch cost is not so far off anyway.
Though the framing project was a 'need', and I know the other two projects are 'wants', it's still expensive. But I still love our house and all of the projects we have taken on to make it our home. If you want to talk about 'needs' though, how about the thousands of dollars we had to spend water proofing our basement, replacing our air conditioning unit, having plumbers snake our drain, having electricians fix our wiring, etc etc. Thankfully we are blessed and fortunate enough to be able to afford all the projects that the house brings with it. But that doesn't mean I don't stress over it :) I think we'll stop after these 3 projects and take a little break before getting into anymore.
Hope you all are having a great weekend full of fun house projects or no house projects!
4 comments:
So true! Owning a home is expensive or in our case just doing the up keep on a large home and lawn is time consuming and expensive. Definitely don't spend a fortune getting furniture reupholstered before you have children is my biggest piece of advice though. Or at least get something that is super durable, so when they wipe their snotty nose on it you can wipe it off =) Not that we have ever had to do that at our house! Good luck with all your projects!
haha thanks for the reupholstery advice! this particular sofa is right when you walk in the house and a place that we don't spend our time so i'll cross my fingers that that means kids won't mess it up (even though i'm sure i'm lying to myself) ;)
I'm just now catching up on your blog and am grateful you shared the carpet estimate. Wow. I would have underestimated that by about $700 or so. Clearly, I'm not a great estimator either. That's on my list of projects too, so thanks for sharing so I won't be completely blown away!!
final carpet price came in around $1200 which i am happy about!! still a few hundred $ more than i had originally thought though. i have some good carpet recommendations too if you need them - i wouldn't do home depot / lowes / empire today
Post a Comment