House Number Procrastination

Back even before we had the house sided, I was contemplating having custom house numbers fabricated.

The diminutive selection offered at Home Depot or Lowe’s just wasn’t cutting it and I wanted something that looked nice. Unique. Classy.

At the time, I blamed my hesitation on wanting to wait and see what the house looked like once the siding was up before making a final decision.

That was nearly 2 years ago now.

Hesitation has become procrastination.

Our house still doesn’t have a number on it.

I’m pretty sure that we’re breaking some sort of local law there but because the mail has continued to be delivered, well, I haven’t felt any sense of urgency to get the issue resolved.

Until now — though I’m sure this feeling will soon pass…

Posted on January 30th, 2009 at 7:25 pm by Brainy Smurf
Home Improvements, Motivation | No Comments »

Trying to Acquire Homeowners Insurance

This weekend I took the first step in trying to obtain more conventional homeowners insurance.

What does that mean?

Well, right now, my insurance is bottom of the barrel insurance. When you have no place to go, and no one will take you, what I have right now is what they give you.

It doesn’t cover much (or anything), but it keeps the mortgage company at bay.

In the past, my insurance has prevented me from getting a home equity loan to help make the improvements needed to the house. (Though, looking back, I should almost be thankful for that).

Here’s how it went down — craptastic insurance company demanded that I make improvements to my home, I went to mortgage company for a home equity loan to pay for the requested improvements, everything is going great, and then the day of closing, the insurance company stops it dead in its tracks: not enough insurance to cover the loan.

Nice, huh? Talk about a Catch-22…

The worst part about it, other than the fact that my policy doesn’t cover anything, is that they send you threatening letters every few months and require home inspections each year. I won’t even mention the premium.

Basically, you’re treated as if you own a dilapidated crack house with no running water. Really.

I’ve been with this insurance for 5 years now and, frankly, I’m tried of it.

So why haven’t I switched already?

That’s the $64,000 question…

Not that many people shop around for homeowners insurance on a regular basis, but like with an auto insurance form, one of the first questions they ask is whether or no you’ve ever been cancelled or denied coverage from another carrier.

The minute you say “Yes”, you’re disqualified and hurried out of their office as if, well, as if you reside in a dilapidated crack house with no running water.

Back in October of 2002, Allstate dropped my coverage after just 29 days and gave me 40 days to find a new carrier.

With a strike like that against you, I soon found out, it was an impossible task.

My coverage lapsed.

With nowhere else to go, one very rude insurance agent gave me a route to take — the FAIR plan.

As I said, it sucks.

Now, before you start pointing out that my entry room is a little rough around the edges and that it kinda looks like a dilapidated crack house with no running water, let me list out why, exactly, Allstate cancelled my policy.

• The roof of the dwelling is damaged and lifting/buckled.
• The soffits/fascia/eaves are damaged and needs paint.
• The renovations are not completed.
• Your chimney is crumbling, separating, in need of tuckpointing.
• The foundation of your dwelling or garage is crumbling.
• The siding or frame exterior of your dwelling is damaged, has peeling paint.
• One or more trees on your property poses a risk to your property because it is overhanging.
• The windows of your dwelling or garage needs paint.

The lack of correct singular/plural grammar is theirs, not mine. The windows “needs” paint. Nice…

Anyway, as you see, those are all exterior issues. Every single one of them.

And what have I spent in excess of $40k renovating?

Yes, the exterior.

The roof is new as of December 2006.

The soffits, fascia, and eaves are all new as of August 2007.

The renovations are complete — at least the exterior ones are.

The chimney was torn down when we had the roof done in 2006.

The foundation was tuckpointed by the company we had tear down the chimney — brickwork is brickwork, right?

The siding is now vinyl — no peeling paint there.

The largest tree branch threat was cut down by the utility company because it posed a larger threat to their power lines than it did to my house.

And I’m not sure how the windows ever could have used paint — they’re all vinyl and have been that way since I bought the house.

So over the weekend, I contacted a local insurance agency — one that blew me off five years ago. I didn’t want to contact them specifically but, logistically, it made the most sense.

Hopefully they’ll call me back today asking for more info and further down the line, I’ll receive some good news.

My current policy expires December 18.

I’d rather not take it down to the wire…

Posted on November 10th, 2008 at 7:21 pm by Brainy Smurf
Home Improvements, Insurance | 5 Comments »

Shame as a Motivator

When I woke up this morning, I told myself that this was NOT going to be another wasted weekend. I was all geared up and ready to go outside and rake, rake, rake, until both hands were covered with blisters.

Then I noticed that it was raining. Ever tried to rake leaves in the rain?

Yeah, it doesn’t work at all.

So my next target became *that* room.

Yes, that one. The room I’m ashamed of:

Off to the right hand side, behind the yellow bin and the plastic penguin, there was a big pile of crumbled plaster on the floor. You can’t see it, but trust me, it was there.

I cordoned off the room using the shower curtains, which you can see, put on my 49-cent dust mask, you know, for protection, and brought in a snow shovel from the garage and a shovelin’ I went.

I filled the air with the finest dust you’ll ever see (or breath) while also filling 8 trash compactor bags full of crumbled plaster and broken pieces of the wooden lathe that once held the plaster up.

I know that doesn’t sound like much, and it’s really not, but plaster is freakin’ heavy.

Each one of those bags, which I only fill half way due to the weight, weighs well over 60 pounds.

Backbreaking work, really, which is probably why we never “finished” the job when we tore the walls down in the first place.

Once I’d cleared the room, I broke out the shop vac to get all of the fine dust (that had settled) up and out. Yep, I even vacuumed — that’s worth über bonus points with the wife!

It was at this point, she mentioned that we should get a new rug for the room. Not really wanting to throw money at the room, as a temporary fix and all, I was hesitant, but she twisted my arm and off we went to a super discount store that if I were still in high school, well, I’d never admit to having been inside. Ever.

The store is called Ocean State Job Lot.

This place makes Walmart look like Neiman Marcus — you know, the store where Sarah Palin shops…

Yeah, it’s rough.

But it’s always had some decent, not great, but decent area rugs. And today, it didn’t disappoint!

We walked out of there with a modern looking patterned 8′ x 11′ rug for $125. We could’ve gone the oriental route, but I’ve never really liked how “busy” they look.

Maybe that’s just me.

Once home, we unrolled the rug. It’s not exactly what either of us had in mind, I’m sure, but it’s a definite improvement. From there, I decided to “hide” the largest windowless wall with the photo backdrop that I used on Halloween night.

Then we moved an extra couch into the room. (Who has an “extra” couch? Seriously…)

And, finally, I plugged in the arcade game for a quick game.

Here’s how it looks now:

Not great, I know, but still, it’s an improvement.

And to think, it only cost us $125 to take it to that unfinished-but-sorta-finished basement look!

And can I just mention that I suddenly find myself getting some decent use out of January 2007’s dumbest purchase? How about that!

Oh, one more thing, why does the carpet smell like Elmer’s glue? That’s gonna fade, right?

Posted on November 8th, 2008 at 7:46 pm by Brainy Smurf
Bargains, Home Improvements | 9 Comments »

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 | 15 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 | 3 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 | 1 Comment »

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 2006, 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 | 12 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 »