So, the Cat’s Out of the Bag…

I’ve been living in squalid conditions for over a year.

Rice and beans, beans and rice, right?

I was too “busy” paying down my debt to notice, right?

Cutting corners, you know, to save money?

That’s how I can justify how horrible that room looks…

Please?

Well, not exactly.

While I am horribly ashamed of that photo of the entry way to my home, the rest of the house isn’t like that at all.

If it were, I mean, dontcha think I’d be a prime candidate for the police to come barging through the door with a camera crew in tow for a taping of the show Cops?

The setting is almost too perfect. All it needs is a plaid couch with cigarette burns in the cushions and domestic beer cans strewn randomly about the floor…

My crime would be driving without a front license plate. (Did you know that they’re required?)

“Suspect is a white male of average build. Last seen driving a late model BMW in the vicinity of Gargamel’s castle…”

But now that I’ve shamed myself on the internet (what was I thinking?), it’s time to get things moving on this room (and entire first floor, while I’m at it) and set up a budget for 2009 to pay for it all, which I’ll start in November.

In the months ahead, I have one bill to pay that will likely be paid from my savings account. My horrible homeowners insurance premium is $902 (ouch!) and it’s due on December 18.

Aside from that, though, the month-to-month finances should remain consistent from here on out. No trips planned, no weddings scheduled, no huge holiday expenditures on the horizon, and we never really spend much for our birthdays (which are in the summer anyway). Basically, it’s an empty schedule.

Also, in an effort to speed things up even more, I’m going to try to get my wife on board — wipe out her credit card and boost her savings. A lot.

But my savings need the most work…

Resorting back to what worked so well while paying down debt, I realize that the only way to go is to make it automatic and then, if anything is left over, keep throwing that on to the pile too.

At the height of my pay down, it wasn’t unusual for me to make 7-8 payments to the same creditor in a week’s time. I’ve got to grow my savings the exact same way. If I find $5 in my winter coat pocket, that’s enough to initiate a transfer. Just do it.

So what’s my ultimate plan?

I’d like to be able to save up at least 1/3 of the cost of the remodeling cost before we get started. I’m not saying that I’ll use it all at the onset of the project, but for peace of mind, if nothing else, I want to have it available before I commit myself to such a huge debt load.

The remaining 2/3 would be financed on credit cards.

I know, I know, if you’re new to this site, that must sound crazy. Who’s willing to charge that much?

Well, that’s the method we used on the siding project and it was a whole lot more cost effective than the more common home improvement loan route we took for the roof the year before.

If you’ve got the right cards, the right offers, and a zero balance, you can borrow tens of thousands of dollars at well under 5 percent. No bank or contractor can offer financing that approaches that.

So, to begin, I’m going to continue the auto savings plan I started this month where I’m transferring $400 per month into an ING savings account. I may not reserve it for a vehicle purchase anymore, but I’m not going to cancel the transfer series either.

I was also planning to step up my extra mortgage payments from $50/week to $165/week to keep me on pace to have the mortgage paid off by 2015, but now, instead, I’m going to send that to my savings account plus what I would have been contributing to my savings account anyway and all of my passive income.

All together, on a good month (you know, when my clients actually pay their invoices), that would be around $2310 going in to savings right off the top. That’s freakin’ huge.

Basically, almost $10k every 4 months.

Sounds lofty. Borderline un-realistic.

Probably is.

I’m not really sure, I’ve never not had huge bills to pay…

The plan starts next week.

Posted on October 29th, 2008 at 8:46 pm by Brainy Smurf
2009 Goals, Finance, Home Improvements, Life, Savings | 9 Comments »

Another Big Ole Financial Fork in the Road…

In three weeks time I’ll be eligible to call into the Dave Ramsey show and Dave will ask me how much I paid off, how long it took me, and what my household income is…

He’ll then ask my wife’s name and then we’ll do the countdown together, “Three… two… one… WE’RE DEBT FREEEEEEEEEEE!” and he’ll hit the sound effect button from the movie Braveheart.

Then he’ll ask what the last bill I paid off was and what was the hardest part about becoming debt free.

It’s all very predictable. I already know how it goes, so I’m not going to bother calling in. I don’t like to think of myself as that exciting, you know?

Besides, my story is kinda bland.

The hardest part was waiting for each pay day — time was the hardest part. I knew how to get “here”, I just didn’t enjoy waiting for the paychecks to come in.

And the last bill I’ll pay off is a 0% interest credit card.

Hardly the type of story he’s looking for…

Anyway, I’ll soon find myself with a lot more cash on hand each payday. In fact, that’s already happened — I’ve spent a lot of money already this month just knowing that there aren’t any large looming bills to come in the mail.

That’s coming to an end in November.

So, I’ve started putting together a new budget that will continue to pay down our mortgage at an accelerated, yet comfortable, pace and one that will hopefully make my savings account grow equally as fast as the balance of my 401k has been dropping of late.

What am I saving for?

I’m not sure.

No, that’s not true.

I know what I’m saving for, I just don’t know yet how much I’ll need. And I’m afraid to find out how much I’ll need because it might be more than I can imagine saving for.

Make sense?

Plain and simple, the entire first floor of my house needs to be remodeled. And we’re not talking about a coat of paint and some new lamps…

It needs to be gutted. We need new floors, new walls, new ceilings, new wiring, new plumbing, etc… We need everything.

As it stands right now, it’s an embarrassment — so much so that I almost don’t want to hand out Halloween candy this year because of the small glimpse of the interior that the kids will be able to see.

Yeah, it’s that bad.

Hang on, let me take a picture.

See what I mean? This is the entryway to my home. Mouseover it, you’ll see what I’m talking about. Not what you expected, huh?

It’s looked like this for over a year now. Really.

Now I’m sure you understand my plight.

I just spent all of the these years paying down my debt to get to this spot where I am right now…debt free. And now I’m in a position where I’ll need to spend $30k, $40k, maybe even $60k in one shot and put myself deeper in debt than I ever was before.

Yikes.

I can’t really imagine saving up $30k, let alone twice that! But seriously, look at that place? It *needs* to be done and the sooner the better.

One route would be to just deal with it for another few years (can you imagine?) and save like crazy until we can afford it.

The other route would be to get on the horn, get a few contractors over here for estimates, and get it done in the not too distant future while saddling ourselves with payments for next few years…

Obviously, I’m leaning towards the latter route. See, the roof and siding projects we took on between December 2006 and July 2007 cost us a little over $40k total — and here we are, already, lining up to be debt free in November 2008. While it felt like it took forever, it really didn’t.

History tells me that it’s possible for us to pay for a project this big, but my gut tells me that I want out of this $2500/month-to-creditors cycle… It’s worn me down.

Or maybe it’s walking into my house and seeing that scene above that’s been wearing me down…

Posted on October 28th, 2008 at 9:32 pm by Brainy Smurf
Finance, Home Improvements, Life, Savings | 13 Comments »

Experience of Purchasing my First Home

When I purchased my home in the fall of 2002, I knew going in that it was going to be a work in progress. A fixer-upper of sorts.

I mean, it was one of those real estate listings with “AS-IS” tagged on. Never a good sign.

I remember my real estate agent calling me up at work and saying that he had a few new listings come in that I might be interested in.

On the way home (my bedroom in my parents house), I stopped by the RE/MAX office and picked up the MLS sheets printed out from an inkjet running dangerously low on ink. It was nothing new, I’d been doing this for at least two months without anything that remotely peaked my interest.

For whatever reason though, that night, after dinner, I brought my younger sister along for a “drive-by” of two of properties the realtor had printed out for me. It was about a half hour ride in total and neither house really interested me.

The next morning, while at work, the real estate agent (who was obviously growing impatient with my complete lack of excitement from his suggestions) called again and I asked if I was interested in any of the properties on the MLS sheets.

“Nope.”

Now, at the time, in the summer of 2002 — houses were selling even before they hit the market. Certainly a different climate than we find ourselves in today.

I’d found a few homes that were perfect, only to find out that by the time they made the newspaper (or even the internet) and I’d caught wind of them, they’d already been sold — usually within the same real estate office that listed them. It was really frustrating.

It was almost to the point where buyers were putting down deposits on homes sight unseen.

Over my lunch hour, I did another drive-by of the two “better” homes that I’d driven by the night before.

One was an updated cape, but a bit smaller than I’d like, it only had a 1-car garage, and it was on a busy road.

The other was a big dark decrepit looking thing with grass approaching the 2 foot mark. Short of boarded up windows, it was obviously abandoned.

Hmmmmm…

What did I have to lose? I hadn’t actually gone through a house for a few months at this point, so I called my agent back and said, “You know what, yeah, let’s take a look at the red one and the tan one…”

I took the rest of the afternoon off from work and headed down to the real estate office — I had become a bit of a familiar face (and probably an inner-office joke of sorts) and as I was waiting for my agent to get his stuff together (i.e. find his lighter), the listing agent for the big red house, an older gentleman, said to me, “I think this is going to be your day…”

God damn shyster… Don’t you tell me… That’s what I was thinking — I didn’t vocalize it.

So we hit the tan house first.

The agent opened the front door and we walked in to two cocker spaniels barking their heads off. They were penned in the kitchen using one of those baby gates people use at the top of the stairs.

The house looked alright I guess, but it reeked of, well, dog piss. I mean really bad. We’re talking so strong that an entire case of Lysol canisters wouldn’t be enough to solve this. Needless to say, it didn’t leave me with a great impression.

Off we went to the red house. That’s the actual photo attached to the real estate listing — from a distance, yeah, it looked semi-decent.

As we pulled up in my agent’s ashtray of a car, this time *he* said, “This is going to be the one for you!”

“I just hope it doesn’t smell like dog piss,” I replied.

We worked our way up to the front door and he struggled to get the old fashioned latch style storm door to open. One of the panes of glass on it cracked. Not a good start. We broke the house.

He finally gets the front door open and we walk in… Wow! Dark wood paneling (warped too!) and shag carpeting. I’d never actually seen a home so out of date in real life… Then the smell hit. Stale. Musty. Damp.

The house had been vacant for around 6 months and, well, let’s just say that it was pretty apparent. Still fully furnished with, well, cheap, old, sometimes broken, and, really, just crappy furniture…

Peeling wallpaper in the rooms that actually had wallpaper. Cobwebs everywhere. It really did look like a haunted house. Smelled like one too!

The MLS sheet stated that the home had hardwood floors. I guess that was truthful, but they failed to mention that they had been painted battleship grey.

The toilet had a post-it on it saying “Don’t flush”. I tempted fate and gave it a try. It didn’t flush.

No matter, it was a neat old house and I was feeling adventurous, so I went through single every room. Two of the bedrooms had 4 miniture size beds in them — not twin size, but not toddler sized either. Odd — unless the seven dwarfs resided here.

I checked out the walk-up attic, looked around the scary basement, and even hit the “play” button on the answering machine that indicated that there were 5 new messages.

As we left I was thinking, “Hey, that was kinda fun… No way in hell I’d live here, but it was a neat walk through…”

When we returned to the RE/MAX office, we looked through a few more listings through what they considered their “super secret agent only website” (I’d already seen every listing on realtor.com) and the listing agent for the big old haunted house poked his head into my agent’s office and said, “I really thought that was the one for you…”

I laughed him off, “Yeah, right…” and called it a night.

After sleeping on it, I felt my initial reaction was the correct one. Haunted houses are neat, but not exactly an ideal place to live. Even so, I drove by it again on the way to work.

It was a good 600 square feet larger than any of they other houses they’d steered me towards in my price range. It looked HUGE from the street. It had a two car garage. It was on a quiet street with well kept homes (excluding itself). It had an empty lot next door.

I arrived at work and called my agent to inquire about the lot next door — was it part of the property?

“The red one?”

“Yeah, the red one.”

He wasn’t sure. I heard him call out to the listing agent. He wasn’t sure either. I asked them to find out…

About an hour passed and the phone rang.

“Paul from RE/MAX is on the line.”

I took the call. He started off with his canned, “Good morning, how are you…” like he’d never spoken to me before. I really hated that. He did it all the time. Nice guy and all, but when you’ve been dealing with someone for a few months, you can drop the whole act…

Anyway, the property went all the way to the corner. It was just one lot, but a big one. I asked if the listing had been advertised yet.

“Nope, not beyond the MLS sheets.”

“Can I take another look?”

“Really? Yeah — sure!”

I went through the house again that evening but this time I didn’t treat it as a total joke…

This is the first post in an ongoing series I’m working on dealing with the large upgrade and renovation expenses involved when you purchase and live in an older home.

Posted on June 12th, 2008 at 7:35 am by Brainy Smurf
Bargains, Home Improvements, Life, Mistakes, Success | 2 Comments »

Home Improvements : Sewage Rerouted

The plumber came out yesterday morning and did his thing to fix our basement sewage problem.

When I arrived home, after the bank incident, I took a trip down to the scary basement to see the fine workmanship.

Eh, it looks alright.

He tucked the new pipe real high and tight among the floor joists, which was nice, and he connected to the main sewer line in a convenient spot — all he had to do was unscrew a cap on the cast iron pipe to make the connection so I don’t think they’ll be raising the estimate any either.

Speaking of the estimate, I think they should actually lower it.

See, what is blatantly apparent to me is that they went out of their way to unnecessarily remove as much copper piping as possible — all the way up to the kitchen sink trap. They then replaced it all with plastic.

Hmmm, think that has something to do with the fact that scrap copper commands over $3.50 per pound these days?

Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you look at it, we’ll be out of town this weekend for a wedding, so the sludge clean up will have to be put off for another week.

Hopefully, by then, the standing water will have evaporated and clean-up will be less of a project…

Posted on May 9th, 2008 at 2:10 pm by Brainy Smurf
Home Improvements, Rants | 1 Comment »

Dreams of Grandeur: Three Car Garage

Well, I made a big mistake this morning… See, over the past few years we’ve had some major work done to the exterior of our 100+ year old house. New roof, new siding, new doors, some repaired brickwork, a new porch, basically — short of an addition — we’ve done it all.

But one thing has been neglected — the detached garage. (insert scary fanfare here)

Though it’s a two car garage and that would indicate that it was built in the 70’s or 80’s, I’d venture to say that it was actually built in the 1940’s based on the knob and tube wiring throughout which I disconnected in the summer of 2007. It was probably a huge status symbol back in the day.

Now? Not so much.

It’s a junky looking thing. An eyesore. A 400 square foot wood framed rectangle built on a slab with cheap, dented, and rusting metal doors, a boarded up window (where the roofers tossed a brick on to my BMW), tons of peeling paint, and crumbling asphalt shingles. As you may have guessed, it’s not nice to look at.

To its credit, it does have really nice copper gutters which, unfortunately, the previous owner painted. Really, it doesn’t have much going for it. The elephant in the, um, yard.

It’s dirty and old. One bay has the BMW in it. The other bay has a couple of lawn mowers, a snowblower, my airplane, the garbage can, and an assortment of other lawn tools. There is no possible way we could fit another car in there.

Right now, we have 3 cars. Once we have children, I’ve a feeling we’ll even have four cars. Ridiculous, I know. Growing up, I remember when we only had one car and it got the job done — now, for some reason, I feel the need to have four… It’s hard to justify. Impossible, really. I digress…

So, obviously, I’d like a larger garage — something that, at the very least, could fit all three of our vehicles, and if possible, all of the lawn equipment as well. We’ve got enough property to expand, and if need be, we could always add one of those pre-made sheds they bring over on a wide-load truck for the lawn equipment. I don’t really like those, but it would certainly free up some space.

So I did the Google and typed in “3 Car Garage“, you know, to get a few ideas. And the ideas were definitely there…

Check this beauty out:

This could totally work. I mean, honestly, it would be nicer than my house, but at the same time, it wouldn’t overpower the house either.

I hate that, you know, when you see a raised ranch style home being towered over by its garage. This is unquestionably a large structure, but my house (which isn’t a raised ranch) would still be an entire story taller — and it’s in the same style as my house with the gabled roofline.

Basically, it works. I can picture it already.

Zoning, however could be a problem… I’ve heard horror stories about people trying to build two story garages in town. It’s one of those things were it can only be done if you know a guy, who knows a guy, who knows yet another guy.

Price? Well, obviously that would be a problem as well.

I’ve no idea how much something like this would cost to build, but when I put my mind to something, I usually get it done.

It kind of reminds me of how in high school I joined Columbia House to get 12 CD’s for a penny without even owning a CD player. Just the fact that I had a CD collection made me feel the need to save up and buy a CD player — which I eventually did.

Relating to the present, I’ve got three cars… See where I’m going with this?

The main problem I foresee is sticking to this goal long enough to be able to afford it — either way, something like this can’t possibly be realized for a number of years, if ever…

It’s okay to dream though, right?

Posted on May 7th, 2008 at 6:27 am by Brainy Smurf
Home Improvements, Motivation | No Comments »

Stink-o de Mayo — Plumbing Estimate is In

They mailed it — that’s what took so long!

You’d think that with the stench of sewage in someone’s basement that there would be a little bit of urgency on their part.

You’d think…

What’s a little fuzzy mold, right?

Anyway, the quote is $527.74. And we’re going to do accept it.

See, this isn’t something we really want to delay. The odor is rough, putting it mildly, and I’ve come to the conclusion that no matter who we choose, I still won’t be 100% satisfied by the price or the quality of work.

Anyway, here’s the scope of the work to be done:

I’m not completely certain that $527.74 is a great price. In fact, I’d bet I could do the work myself while spending just $80 in materials at Home Depot or Lowes.

But at this point, I just want my house to smell fresh and clean again. Sooner rather than later and that’s why we’re not going to solicit additional quotes.

Posted on May 5th, 2008 at 11:57 am by Brainy Smurf
Home Improvements | 3 Comments »

Home Improvement Headaches – Contractors Effin Suck

Can I just say that I hate contractors?

Seriously, is there a reputable contractor in existence? It’s really frustrating.

Over the past couple of years, we’ve done some pretty major renovations to our home. Back in December of 2005, we had our roof done. The original roof had two layers of the asphalt shingles and these were on top of a layer of cedar shingles which were likely original to our 100+ year old house.

Basically, it was a pretty big job simply because of all of the stuff that had to be removed and all of the additional material, like plywood, that had to be added before the re-roof even started. Total bill was around $14k.

It started off great, a HUGE dumpster was delivered and dropped right in our yard and work began. After a few days though, it was as though the dumpster was an afterthought. They were just letting the debris slide off the end of the roof. I can understand that — it would be a lot easier, but they dumped probably half of the roof onto decorative shrubs right in the front of our house?!

It got worse though. I didn’t mind that the debris had ripped probably 80% of the screens in our windows, whatever, but one evening I came home and found the window on our detached garage (which was not being worked on) was broken.

I went in, and noticed some finger dust marks (the car was in storage for the winter and it gets pretty dusty) over a deep scratch on the hood of my BMW?! No broken glass anywhere on the floor. Very odd. My wife and I went all CSI and came to the conclusion that they somehow managed to throw a brick from the chimney on the roof, through the window of my garage.

From there, they went into the garage, probably crapped their pants when they saw the car it hit, and they tried to clean up the evidence. I wanted to barf. Profanity was used.

I was upset about the car. I was upset they went into my garage. I was upset that they tried to cover it up. I was upset that they killed my bushes. While the did a nice job on the roof, in the grand scheme, I wasn’t at all happy with the contractors.

Making matters worse, the dumpster remained in our yard for an additional 3 weeks — on Christmas Day, yes, we had a 40 cubic yard dumpster along side our house. It was very festive. Adding insult to injury, the construction company was stopping by a couple of times a day, driving right up on our lawn, and dumping more into it.

Sure, the neighbors probably thought we were also having our kitchen remodeled, based on the additional debris from other projects piled high above the walls of the dumpster, but in actuality, we were just the contractor’s personal landfill.

The next project was the siding project that I detailed on the site last summer. The contractor we selected had a seedy sales team, you know, were the one guy just goes on and on and on about how beautiful your wife is (while it’s obvious he’s just a dirty pig), and how she’ll love this color siding (I hope so, she picked it…), and how he was a star baseball player for the Red Sox back in the day. I looked him up. He wasn’t. Besides, I hate baseball. Nice try there, bro.

Anyway, the cost of that project was over $26k. It was supposed to take 2 weeks to complete and work began on June 14 — two weeks earlier than it was supposed to.

Things looked good — everyone was happy. And then it took a turn for the worse. They ordered the wrong window for our attic. They put another window in the wrong place. They lost an employee so they couldn’t do any work. They put the wrong header on the front window of our house. They started begging us for more money?!?!

Then the siding on one section of the house wasn’t level — and it was obvious. They put the handles on incorrectly on our front door — and the locks didn’t really work. They even chipped a piece off of the trim on the new front door. They called it a thousand dollar door — though at Home Depot, they run around $300. Either way, they didn’t hang our door correctly.

At that point I just wanted them out of our house, I didn’t care. I’d go out and buy another $1000 door just to make them go away.

In the end, the project was finally completed in October. Hardly a 2-week project. It was a 5 months of hell. Just thinking about it makes me angry.

Making matters worse, have you ever found it funny how all contractors like to take pride in how they clean up after themselves? This specific contractor still highlights that “feature” it in their ads in the weekly paper. Hmmmm… my yard still has 100’s of cigarette butts that I’m still picking up, not to mention thousands and thousands of nails that my lawnmower will surely choke on this year.

Roofing shingle fragments are everywhere, vinyl slivers, styrofoam insulation pebbles, just crap everywhere. And did I mention all of the indentations in the lawn from all of their driving around they did in our yard? No, I probably didn’t. They ruined our yard. Then littered all over it.

So what makes me bring all of this up today? Well, remember that basement plumbing problem I mentioned last week? The one where the plumbing company was coming out to give us an estimate on Tuesday?

Well, they came out and said that they call us with the estimate tomorrow. That “tomorrow” was 3 days ago now.

They haven’t called. And our house still smells like sewage.

Can you understand why I hate contractors now (or again)?

You’d think that after spending in excess of $40k on renovations that your house would be better off for it — but in reality, I’m not certain that it is…

Posted on May 2nd, 2008 at 7:04 am by Brainy Smurf
Home Improvements, Rants | 8 Comments »

Now with Pictures!

In regards to our basement plumbing situation, a picture is worth a thousand words… and I’m not sure a thousand words would even begin to scratch the surface of describing the included odor.

The plumber comes out tonight to give us an estimate and hopefully the problem will be corrected later this week — apparently it’s a pretty common problem for kitchen wastewater to back up like this.

Anyway, looks like this weekend is lining itself up for a fun clean-up project!

Posted on April 29th, 2008 at 7:17 am by Brainy Smurf
Home Improvements | 1 Comment »

Low Productivity Lately

I didn’t get much done this weekend. Motivation isn’t quite at an all time low, but it’s not far off either.

I’d had plans to spend some quality time updating the blog, but it never happened.

I ended up playing an NHL video game instead — for hours. I’m a little embarrassed to admit it, but according to the computer, the last time I played was back in October which makes me not feel so bad.

Jumping on the bandwagon, even though they’ve been eliminated from the real life playoffs, I played as the Washington Capitals.

Sometimes I wonder how I found the time to even play video games in the past… By past, I mean like over 10 years ago. Seems I never have that time anymore and I have no idea what I’ve filled it with.

I’d also planned on cleaning up the curbside on the far end of the property.

See, we live on a corner, so there’s twice as much ’street’ to clear which entails picking up all of the leaves, sticks and plain old debris that lines the curb. Basically, you want to get as much up yourself so that when the street sweeper (eventually) comes by to pick up all of the sand that’s been spread on to the road over the winter, it leaves the pavement bare for the entire summer.

Yesterday, my wife and I did manage to get out there and get the job done.

Apparently the teenagers across the street from our open lot prefer Taco Bell and Marlboro smokes. Shocking, huh?

How do we know this? Well, our curbside is apparently their late night trash can. It’s also their overnight parking space for some reason even though the family paved their entire front yard (yeah, it looks, um, ghetto) and has plenty of room for all of their run-down vehicles.

In hindsight, I should have put the pieces of their broken glass water pipe on the hood of their mother’s car, but I just threw it out. She strikes me as the type of woman who’d pat her kids on the back for that sort of thing.

Really, who paves their entire front yard??? It’s a single family home with a parking lot for a front yard?!

I hope they move.

Soon.

We’d also planned on getting the basement, um, well, decontaminated. The issue we have down there hasn’t exactly gotten worse, but it hasn’t gotten better either.

Thursday night we went out and purchase some kitty litter — and I can I just say, that stuff is a bargain! Really. I’ve never had the pleasure of spending so little money at Walmart for something so heavy that I had to struggle on the way out to my car.

The plan was to use the litter to soak up the pooling water — something we’d planned to do this past weekend — but it didn’t happen.

Friday, my wife, she does all the talking, called a local plumbing company to have them come out and take a look at our sludge problem. They’ll be stopping by tomorrow (Tuesday).

The good news from the call is that they confirmed that it was apparently pretty common for the kitchen plumbing not to be connected to the city sewer line in favor of a dry well.

That explains the plumbing that I see in the basement. It also explains the hole I covered with a big rock in the back yard — that’s the dry well and thankfully not some sort of outdated “little house on the prairie” septic tank of some sort like I’d originally worried.

The bad news is that the plumber also told her that, to him, kitchen wastewater is more foul than toilet wastewater. My take is that it was a warning shot meaning that this is going to cost us more than if we had a “real” sewage problem.

I don’t know why, but for some reason, I don’t consider the kitchen sink water to be sewage, but holy crap, it freakin’ stinks…

Posted on April 28th, 2008 at 9:48 am by Brainy Smurf
Bargains, Blogging?, Home Improvements, Motivation | No Comments »

Is there a Starbucks in my Basement?

Seems our first home improvement project of 2008 has snuck up on us.

It was only a month ago that we paid off the final bit of the vinyl siding project from 2007. We’re not ready yet?!?

But this one seems to be an emergency repair… See, our basement is filling with, well, crap. It is the most foul smelling black sludge…E V E R!

We noticed an odor a couple of months ago during a rainy week. We usually take on a little water when there’s a heavy rain, and over the span of a week, I’d say we had over 8 inches of rain — so water in the basement was to be expected. The water stunk a little, but we chalked it up to the spring thaw…

Once the water dried up, my wife and I went down there to shovel out some of the muck. I was thinking it’d be more sandy or silty than anything, but it was nasty foul muck. Dry heave city — no joke. I was completely useless in the clean-up.

Things seemed fine for a few weeks and, while we didn’t forget about the problem, we tried to ignore it.

Over the last weekend, I noticed that our kitchen kinda smelled like a skunk. Years ago, a skunk sprayed the side of our house — really, you could see it — and the “funk” lasted for nearly a year. I went outside, inspected the entire house looking for a repeat offense, but didn’t smell anything out of the ordinary.

Back inside the house, well, skunk. Or Starbucks coffee. They smell the same to me.

Yesterday, I ventured down into our scary basement. There’s some standing water, some orange/rust colored goo on top of it, some white fuzzy stuff, and a lot of that wonderful black sludge at the bottom. Crap.

The stench wasn’t so bad — until we disturbed it (Yikes!) with one of those sponge-on-a-stick style mops my wife apparently received from Santa Claus years before I met her. Really, it still had a sticker on it.

Seriously, who get’s a mop for Christmas? My wife, that’s who.

Anyway, the good news is that we can see where it’s coming into the house. I don’t think it’s seeping up from the drain in the basement — it actually looks like it’s coming in through the old rock foundation (if you’re interested, I can take pictures!).

My wife and I followed all of the pipes down in the basement, and to me, it doesn’t look like our kitchen sink or dishwasher were ever hooked up to the city sewer line — basically, they never link up to the pipe where the downstairs bathroom or laundry room exit the house. Or, if they do, it’s not obvious to me.

My theory is that they still link up to the original septic tank the house must have had — the house is well over 100 years old — and that’s not getting the job done anymore. The only problem with that thought is that I’d think that our wastewater from the kitchen would stink of Cascade, Palmolive, and Joy — not, well, I can’t even explain what this sludge smells like…

Imagine a giant skunk drinking a grande Starbucks coffee.

Gag me now.

No, really, I can smell it.

So, the plan now is to call in a plumber for next week. I’m hoping it’s as simple as rerouting the waste water from the kitchen to the main sewer line and capping off the old line that exits on the far side of the house (where the sludge is coming in). Hopefully, then, it will clear up on its own.

As I’ve said, we’ve lived here for 6 years, the house has been there over 100 more, and this is a new problem — so perhaps this isn’t the answer, but I really hope it is — because I can’t imagine it will be very costly.

I mean, how much can a plumber possibly charge to re-route a 4 inch pipe ten feet in the opposite direction? I’d do it myself if not for my gag-reflex.

No, that’s not true — I’ll find comfort in having someone who knows what they’re doing come in and tell me exactly what they think the problem is…

I’ll keep you posted on the situation *and* the bill.

Posted on April 25th, 2008 at 7:33 am by Brainy Smurf
Home Improvements | 5 Comments »

Ahhh, the Good Life…

Last week, for the first time ever, we hired a local landscape company to come out and pick up our leaves.

It’s something that we’d normally do on our own, and in the past, it has been something we’ve done on our own, but it’s probably not something we’ll ever do again.

(Before anyone points it out, I know, I know, wrong time of the year for that sort of thing north of the equator.)

Next door to our house is an open lot which we also own. In the fall, it could be summed up as a leaf magnet.

Each year, we clear the main lot to make the house look nice; raking and blowing towards the empty lot.  Probably not the best strategy, but making sure the main lot looks nice takes priority.

From there, our city requires that we bag the leaves in those giant brown paper bags — like in the picture.

Idea is, you bag the leaves, leave them at the curb, and the city will come around and pick them up over the span of about a month — usually in November.

On paper, it sounds like a great idea.

But there are a few problems…

The first problem is probably unique to our situation — lack of time.

Working for the hockey team all of these years has sucked up our weekends. It’s difficult for us to find the time required (during daylight) to rake and bag the leaves at that time of year because, well, simply put, we didn’t have weekends from September through May.

Now that I’ve left the team, that should no longer be a problem.

The next issue is a financial one. The leaf bags aren’t free. They come in bundles of 5 and you can buy them at Home Depot, Lowes, Walmart, Stop-n-Shop, and pretty much any where else that has some sort of “hardware” aisle.

You can price shop all you want, but bottom line, they come out to around 50 cents per bag. Sounds like a relative bargain, huh?

Typically, at the start of “leaf season”, we’d pick up around 10 bundles. Let me tell you, there’s nothing more upsetting than walking out to the car with a bunch of oversized lunch bags that you just paid over $50 for.

And then it really hits you like a punch in the stomach… You just spent $50 on something that you’re just going to throw out in a matter of hours.

Making matters worse, we’ve always had to go back and buy even more bags. As a result, we’ve never actually cleared and bagged the *entire* yard. I always end up mowing the crap out of them with the lawn mower — finally chopping them into a fine powder by around August. It’s embarrassing to admit.

In the end, I’d say that over the past 3-4 years, we’ve averaged between $60 and $80 spent on those paper bags. That’s PER YEAR.

Add in the time it takes to bag over 100 bags of leaves. It hurts.

Once bagged, we’d end up building a huge pyramid of paper bags at the curb — it actually looked pretty neat.

But then the city wouldn’t come on the day they were scheduled.

Some children would topple the pyramid.

It might rain.

A bag would tip over, spilling leaves all around.  You know, that sort of thing…

Worst case scenario, and one that happened last year — an early snowstorm before the we’d even started bagging. Sigh…

Basically, there are a myriad of problems to be had each year… One big headache… Alongside a back ache, a butt ache, and two heavily blistered thumbs.

But this year, we solved it all with a phone call.

My wife called the company one morning before she went to work last week, and when I arrived home for lunch, our extra lot was clear.

We haven’t received the bill yet, but when you combine the savings on the bags and the time and the lack of blisters, we’ll, I’m pretty certain it will end up being a great deal.

Posted on April 14th, 2008 at 2:51 pm by Brainy Smurf
Bargains, Home Improvements | 1 Comment »

Siding Project Update - Sigh…

It’s been well over a month since my last set of remarks regarding our big home improvement project this summer.  Well, the contractors finished on September 1st.

An 81-day project.  The funny part is that the contract stated that work would be complete on July 15.  Ha!

I can now say that the house is sided. We have new doors.  The new attic windows are in.  You think I’d be happy, right?  Well, I’m not.

See, the duration of the project aside, the last thing to be completed was an attic window for the front gable.  My wife and I picked out a nice window by Harvey Windows — paid a pretty large sum too for such a small window.

Harvey custom made us a defective window.  It’s not square.  Not even close.  It’s… a trapezoid.  Yeah, it’s only about an inch off of having 90 degree angles, but it’s enough that when it’s up there on the house — it looks crooked. 

The decorative window, the center piece, on the front of our house is visibly crooked.  Level, but crooked.  Can you believe that?

Well, the contractors put it in anyway, and sided around it. 

It’s a Harvey issue now — they’ll have to replace the window. 

But now, what about all of the siding that’s flush with the crooked window?  That will need to be replaced as well… and I can imagine it already, they’re not going to want to do that.  Or they won’t be able to match the color.  Or the style.  I could go on and on…

Now, after contractors complete a job, they go through a punch list — you know, correcting all of the little things and details that the homeowner points out.  The company we hired has worked on this punch list at our home on at least 4 different occasions.  The two major “issues” still haven’t been resolved — and these are 15 minute projects for a seasoned pro.

It is just so frustrating to deal with contractors — I’m not sure a reputable one exists.  I mean, if I were to run my company, and treat my customers and projects, the way a typical contractor does, well, I’m not sure I could look myself in the mirror.

We’ve moved on to some interior work again, where we’re doing the work ourselves, but at some point we’ll have to call in the professionals to do some electrical, flooring, and drywall and I’m already dreading dealing with a bunch of people who do things half-assed and lie to your face.

Don’t get me wrong, the house looks good.  I guess I’m happy with the work, but when you look at the details, in the corners and things, it makes you wonder what the hell they were thinking — I could have made it look like that myself and I’ve never done it before in my life?!

And really, was it necessary to use my entire lawn as an ashtray?  Okay, that was a low blow…

No, on second thought, it wasn’t.

Oh yeah, and thanks for leaving dirty finger prints on a window 3 stories up that doesn’t open.  I’d love to know how they expect me to wash that…

Posted on September 7th, 2007 at 8:56 am by Brainy Smurf
Home Improvements, Rants | 2 Comments »