We love our new wood-burning stove and all, but it completely derailed our progress in the guest bedroom and office. We were getting thisclose to wrapping up the two rooms and moving upstairs. And then the stove happened. We demolished the dining room, yanked out carpet, sanded floors, and broke a window.
Then we freaked out about how much heat we were losing through the window, which made us freak out about how much heat we were losing through the attic. So we insulated the attic. Then we ordered insulation for the basement. Plus enough firewood to last us through the winter. And, while we were at it, we ordered new windows for the dining room. Our house feels enough like a shanty without the boarded-up windows.
Here’s the thing, though: all of this stuff costs money. A lot of money. We were visiting the hardware stores at least twice a weekend to pick up one thing or another. And each trip resulted in a tab of $500+. The fireplace was a $2300 purchase. $1600 for the chimney liner. $240 for firewood. $900 for a water heater. $400 for windows. $500 insulation. $200 lumber. It adds up fast. We were easily dropping $1000 to $2000 per weekend. Yipes!
We’re paying for our renovation in cash, so a couple of months of frivolous spending left our bank account a little lower than usual. We like to keep our account balance above a certain amount, and lately we’ve been hovering a few hundred bucks under our comfort zone. Whenever we drop below our buffer, we panic. There was a lot of nail-biting and hand-wringing and Advil going on. So we decided it’s time to give our debit card a break.
We’re declaring November & December our no-spending months. We’re not going to buy building materials, tools, appliances or any other big purchases until the end of December. This doesn’t mean we’re going to stop working. We have a huuuuge to-do list of things we’ve been putting off. We have supplies on hand to finish most jobs. Rest assured, we’ll be crazy-busy for the next two months.
We’re making two exceptions to our spending freeze. 1) If we run out of basics like nails, screws or Great Stuff, we’ll still buy those. But we’re not going to spend more than $50 on a trip to the hardware store. 2) If an emergency comes up, we’ll be flexible. We’re talking pipes-froze-and-burst type emergencies. Not OMG-SALE-AT-LOWE’S emergencies.
Not gonna lie: this will be tough. We have so many projects we want to do — building new (insulated!) walls in the dining room, for example. But we also have a bajillion small projects we need to wrap up before we can move on.
Here’s what we have planned for the rest of the year:
- Guest bedroom / Office / Upstairs Hallway
- Put up trim
- Paint the trim
- Hem and hang curtains
- Re-veneer the bed
- Make legs for the desk
- Install ceiling fan in guest BR
- Install guest BR closet
- Make custom shelves for the office closet
- Dining Room / Living Room / Stairs
- Remove all the staples from the staircase (there were stragglers)
- Remove carpet from the living room and entry hallway
- Replace two dining room windows
- Install ceiling fan in living room
- Prime the walls outside the master BR and down the stairs
- Basement
- Install hot water heater
- Insulate rafters
- Install shelving system
- Demolish staircase
- Mildew-bomb the stinky corner
- Master Bedroom
- Move all the stuff from the attic to the garage
- Reorganize tools, toolboxes and bins (currently a hot mess)
- Move paints, paint supplies, hardware and electrical stuff for storage in basement
- Other Stuff
- Demolish hideous trellis outside laundry room
- Insulate the washer pipes
- Polyurethane the white dresser
- Book a dumpster for Thanksgiving weekend and empty out the garage (it’s completely full of trash from the dining room demo)
We definitely have our work cut out for us, but we think we’re up to the task. It’s going to be hard to totally stop spending after a few months of kid-in-a-candy-shop behavior, but we have plenty of supplies to get these jobs done. By the time January rolls around, we’ll be back in our comfort zone. Added bonus: all the odds & ends jobs we’ve been putting off will be scratched off our list!
We’ll keep you posted on how we’re coping with the spending freeze. So far, we’re avoiding Lowe’s like the plague. They’ve already starting the holiday sales and specials. It seems like everything we’ve been eyeballing for months is magically on sale the minute we put our debit card away. Boo! Hiss!
How about you other renovators out there? Made any big purchases lately? Ever put yourself on a spending freeze?
Very wise decisions. Are you sure you guys aren’t “old souls”? This kind of wisdom doesn’t come with just three decades of living!!! LOL. Hang in there. This is a good thing…
Bradley told me how he used to ration out his Halloween candy so it lasted till after Christmas. Pretty sure he was an old man on the inside at birth!
We’re still spending like crazy because I really want to move next month, but we balked at the staircase reno that wasn’t part of The Plan. We’re refinishing the existing floors, so it seems silly to throw another few thousand bucks into the house to make the staircase the only new flooring in the house because it was veneer and not Real Wood. If we ever redo the floors , we can redo both staircases at the same time, but for now paint will have to do. (I will reread your floor-painting blog very carefully).
Good luck with the paint! If you have any questions, we’re always around =)
That is a massive list, but clever people like you will manage just fine. Don’t forget the January sales are bigger that christmas sales, so u can go nuts in 2012!
We haven’t even started yet and the first two quotes for building works are 50% and 20% over budget! So there will be nail biting (more than usual) budget tightening times ahead. We may even have to review everything we are planning! Grrrrr…..
You guys give us waaay too much credit. We’re less clever than stubborn
50% over budget? Eep! My head hurts just thinking about that. Planning / budgeting is by far the most stressful part of renovating for us, so you have our sympathies. Good luck!
What kind of insulation are you putting in the basement? If it is fiberglass batts, be sure that the fiberglass touches the underside of the floor. Lots of people, including many professional insulators, staple string to the bottom of the rafters and set the batts on the string. Easy but WRONG, because that leaves a space above the batts. Air from outside will be able to enter cracks and crevices in the building envelope and cool the air above the fiberglass. You’ll have great insulation storage but it won’t do much to insulate your floor. Tuck the batts kiss tight up to the floor then use those springy wire thingys made to hold batts up in the air, but don’t compress the insulation very much.
If you are going to cut sheets of foam to put between the rafters, great. I’ve ranted about fiberglass for nothing. Oh, remember that foam isn’t fireproof and you should install a sheet of 5/8″ drywall above the furnace/boiler. The fun never ends.
No doubt you will use spray foam to seal cracks at the rim joists and sills. Even tiny cracks are important because when the wind blows you have high pressure on the windward side and low pressure on the other side of the house and that pressure difference will allow a lot of air to move. If you haven’t considered it already, you might also want to insulate the rim joists with sheet foam. I’m so envious, I don’t get to use much insulation here in the mountains of Panama! Sorry about the rant. Fred
Fred, you’re the insulation master! Thanks so much for all the tips. Especially about drywall above the boiler — we’ll make sure and do that. We ended up getting some fiberglass batting that’s wrapped in vapor barrier on both sides. It supposedly keeps smells out, which is great because our basement is stanky. The other good thing about this stuff is that it has an edge we can staple to the rafters. It holds up the insulation without any compression at all.
Of course you realise it was really sneaky writing down that list like that. Now you have to keep referring to it and crossing stuff off it. Will you allow yourselves to get the debit card out in January if there are still things on that to do list?
Totally sneaky. We figured if we put it out there on the internets, we’ll have to hold ourselves accountable and really put that debit card away. We’ll probably whip it back out in January, but keep working off our list regardless.
When I first started reading this, I was worried there wouldn’t be any updates until then.
Ha! No problems there. We’ll have a lot to share all winter long!
I worried that too. As a late arrival to this blog, I need my weekly/daily/hourly fix.
First of all, hooray for the self-discipline to put yourself in a spending freeze! A lot of people can’t do that. Also, it’s great that you’re paying for everything in cash – we’re the same way…I actually charge everything on my credit card because of their cashback program, but we pay it off monthly. We want to be debt-free when we retire, so it really puts the brakes on the mindless spending.
And speaking of spending, yes, we’ve made a major renovation purchase lately. We just spent over $11,000 on bamboo flooring for the whole house. It’s our second major purchase, the first being $13,000 for two new A/C systems in February. And we’ve saving up for a new roof – we knew we would need to replace it within a year or two, but just got a non-renewal notice from our insurance carrier because of the roof. We have until about March to get it replaced, so it’s probably time to get some quotes.
Oof! That’s some major spending. I feel for ya. Awesome that you guys are paying for your renovation in cash, too. I think it has the added benefit of slowing us down a little. We can’t buy everything at once so we’re not starting projects / construction messes jall over the house. It keeps us sane!
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