New York Renovator

Golly, where could she be??

This is her new favorite place, now. We have heaters installed for the winter (yay!!) and the house gets horribly warm. (I like it cool in the house, everyone else likes it warm). The ceilings here are over 9 feet, so the top of the room is roasting. Of course, Livvy being the true feline that she is, hops up to the tallest heights of the room to bask in the warmth.

Photo taken on Thanksgiving Day. Boy, what a great day that was, probably my best Thanksgiving, ever. The husband was home ALL DAY, since the post office was closed that day. What a treat. The next day, of course, the mailmen were clobbered with mail, frantically stuffing two days’ worth of mail and packages into mailboxes. Yunno, I read all this hype in the news about the USPS needing to end delivery on Saturdays, how they are losing money due to less mail…. based on our experiences here, all that is false. My hubs delivers mail for three small towns, and we are CLOBBERED with mail, especially parcels. Because parcels won’t fit on those smaller mailboxes (except for those mammoth whitehall mailboxes that some of the residents have around here), the mailmen are in and out of the vehicles constantly. The volume of mail has risen exponentially. And it’s been this way all year, not just for this holiday season. People may be using the USPS less for first class mail, but people are ordering items online much, much more. These online products must be delivered, and most companies use either UPS or the USPS. So the amount of parcel delivery has increased a lot– and delivering parcels takes up way more time and manpower than merely dumping envelopes into mailboxes and various pretty whitehall products.

Part of the reason that the post office is having financial trouble is because the USPS is required by law to fund it’s business by profits ALONE. It’s the only government department to do this. Other government departments take taxpayer money, or borrow. The USPS must operate by profits.

Additionally, the USPS has a lot of older (Baby Boomer aged) employees who make a TON of money and get a TON of perks/vacation time/pension money/sick pay. And there are some bureaucrats who game the system. I think if the USPS slashed waste and removed the luxurious pension perks, they’d quickly go into the black again.

Also, the USPS should increase the rates for sending junk mail. If they raised the rate by ONE PENNY per piece of junk mail sent, they’d make millions. And magazines should be forced to have covers on them. Pornography, by law, must be covered. But some of the magazines and racy catalogs are just as pornographic as the sleazy mags. If the USPS required that slime-mail be covered up, they’d make even more money.

See? The USPS should just read my blog! Problems solved!

Anyway, it was nice to have my mailman home for a while. A WHOLE DAY. Too short, it was.

I don’t know about you, but I hate paying extortion prices for appliance repair. My whole household is disrupted when one of the major appliances breaks down (I work full-time, so a disruption like that is a major headache for the family)– not to mention my budget. JUST to have the appliance repair dude step into my house is $200, and that doesn’t even include the repair yet. :-p

Well, one of the benefits of writing how-to articles online for a home and garden website is that I get to learn about all KINDS of nifty tips, tricks, and online resources, like this appliance repair website. Woo hoo! I no longer have to rely on the repair dudes for stuff like this! We recently got a new GE washer (more on that later, as I plan to write a review on it), and it’s comforting to know I have access to all the GE parts should I need them. Another nice thing about researching appliances and getting parts online is that you can haggle with the repair dude (I do this all the time with the plumber). For example– if your dryer belt tears off and you need a new one, but don’t want to pull apart your dryer to fix it, ask your repair dude if you can get the dryer parts if he will install them. My plumber does this for me, and it’s a win-win situation. It saves him the hassle and time of going to get parts for my appliance, and it saves me money because I do the legwork. And if the parts are online, you can have the mailman do all the legwork!

Anyway, repairing the appliances are expensive enough. I recommend that you do a little research yourself– find out what’s wrong, buy the parts if you need them, and maybe even install them yourself if you can. Believe me, it saves a TON of money.

This is the story of our renovation, the toils and victories through a sweltering summer of blood, sweat and tears. Read all the gory details of Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

Our kitchen project was finally coming to a close. Yet even now, three months since we moved back in, there are many unfinished projects awaiting me. Now that I am back to a normal schedule with kids’ schooling, my online job, and such, I can only chip away at these remaining projects, slowly but surely. My goal is to batten down the hatches for an Upstate New York winter, and I’ll pick up the hammer and saw again in the spring.

After we tackled the butcher block countertops, we collapsed for a few days. Almost all of the really intense physical labor was done. Except the flooring. We’d installed plywood sub-flooring over the 70s hardboard subfloor over the 50s linoleum over the 1855 pine planks…. thank God, they’d removed the funky 40s carpeting somewhere in there (although dregs of it appeared from time to time as we removed partition walls). I love wood, just LOVE it, but it is so expensive. I decided to go with TrafficMaster allure vinyl planks. It looks like wood– for a second or two, anyway– but it’s durable and easy to install. Cost me a small fortune, though, I’ll tell you what. I would much rather have spent the cash on Black Friday deals, believe me! But I had been waiting SO LONG for a new floor.

Very easy to install. I guess that's why it's so pricey.

It took me about 8 hours (straight) to install the dining room floor, 10 hours to do the kitchen.

Once the floor was done, the room looked like a real kitchen again. We moved in shortly after. Oh, the JOY!

This is our beverage area, which I conveniently tucked under the stairwell. Note the painted pantry shelf to the left. Still has no doors, though...

Our favorite appliance. Oh, how we dreamed for this moment! LOL, six adults in a home make a lot of dishes.

I’d mentioned before about the sink and window as the room’s focal point. I carefully crafted the trim around the window to reflect the home’s Greek Revival architecture. The Greek triangular pediment and fluted trim is repeated throughout the house. I stained this wood extra dark to make it stand out. Cellular blinds soften the hard lines. I need more color and decor here, but all in good time.

2010 was a wild, crazy ride for us.

I’m spending the winter quietly, taking things slower as best I can. I work at home to pay off the kitchen. If we had hired out to have all this work done, the job would have cost us a small fortune. By doing everything ourselves, we saved a ton of money. It was a lot of work, sure, but I think everyone was enriched by the experience, especially my kids. Here’s a quick breakdown of the economics:

According to this chart, we saved over $36,000 by doing this ourselves. That is a HUGE savings! Yes, I took time off from work to work on this renovation. I worked on reduced hours for four months. However, consider this: a kitchen renovation gives you an average of 70% return on the cost of the project, so I basically “earned” $25,200 on the value of the home. That’s more than I make in a year, let alone four months. So even though I’m not seeing a liquid $25,200 cash in hand, it’s part of my real estate investment. It was well worth it, I think, to go reduced hours on my job (with which, I figure, I lost about $2000 income) to earn $25,200 in capital investment on the property. Moreover, improving the electrical and water supply reduces our insurance premium, the insulation in the walls reduces our heating bills,  and everything in general improves the quality of our lives here.

I think my DIY project was worth it. But I’m SO GRATEFUL it’s over!

Oh my word. I was researching PDA gadgets recently, and lookie what I found!

It’s an HP iPaq 210 Enterprise Handheld. A mini-mini computer! I love it!

The hardest part about being a technology researcher and writer is seeing ALL these delicious gadgets. I DO SO want to try them out! I love this thing!

It’s a PDA, or Personal Digital Assistant. Kind of like a mini “home away from home” gadget. I like those. I am joined at the hip to the Internet (it’s my career). When I travel or am away from the computer, I have to be able to check in on my email and assignments. I have my iPod (which I adore), and I can connect to wireless hotspots, where available. I have no desire to find a replacement for my iPod just yet. I’m very happy with it. But I think eventually I will upgrade to something more. The iPaq is nice because it’s Windows-based (has Windows Mail, Windows Mobile Office Outlook, MSN Messenger, etc). And it takes an SD card for adding more memory (something the iPod seriously lacks). If I ever want to upgrade to something like an iPaq, I can give my iPod away to one of the kids (oh wouldn’t they love that! They love my iPod!) and get an iPaq and claim in for my business. That’s the nice thing about being self-employed– you can get gadgets and claim them for the business. Tax deductible.

Buy.com has the best price I’ve seen on these babies– under $400. That’s still a very very pretty penny. Not in my immediate future, that’s for sure. But it’s nice to know that there’s something out there waiting for me. See more deals and super sale at Buy.com. They are magnificent!

I don’t know a whole lot about the housing market, but like most other things, I figure such issues are easily understood with a healthy dose of common sense. There’s a blog post story in the Wall Street Journal (yes, I guess even the high-brow WSJ folks blog! lol!) called Are We Headed For Housing Armageddon? It’s interesting. In a nutshell, the article describes a new twist in the housing market “crisis”: banks are unable to hold foreclosures due to improperly transferred paperwork from banks to homeowners; Apparently, during the housing boom, some banks were a little sloppy with their paperwork in their eagerness to get lenders. Now that banks want to foreclose for non-payment, homeowners with savvy lawyers claim that the absence of mortgage paperwork absolves them from bank foreclosure. Judges may rule that, due to the absence of proof of original lending agreement paperwork, the banks cannot foreclose on the homes.

Wild!

So the chatter around the water cooler is that this will only prolong the housing market bust. According to Amy Calistri of Street Authority, mortgage debt in the United States fell by $99 BILLION in the first quarter of this year. In the second quarter, it dropped again, half that.

It’s pretty obvious that Americans are not buying new homes! This is good. Seriously. For one, I think our economy relies too much on new construction, particularly when there are billions of older homes that are perfectly suitable for use. All this excessive and new construction causes sprawl, eats up rural resources and creates more debt. I think we should change our attentions away from newnewnew, and begin to recycle the very good homes that exist currently. My home, built in 1855, is a fine example of making something old new again. And every single inspector that has looked at my house raves about the strength of the structure– “They don’t make homes like they used to,” they all say. So all this talk about a “housing armageddon” is, I think, a little overstated. It may be a housing armageddon for the banks, but for the average American and the average traditional American pre-owned home, it’s housing heaven.

Another result of the housing market turned upside down is the apartments industry. Again, according to Street Authority:

But the decline in home buying is starting to trigger an increased demand for rental apartments. Apartment occupancy rates rose to 92.2% in the second quarter of 2010, up from 92.0% in the first quarter according to Reis Inc. Rents are also starting to rise modestly, up +0.7% in the second quarter.

Apartment occupancy rates rose 92% ?!? That’s incredible! This is a radical change in the housing industry in our country. Now, I’m sure not everyone can afford a posh Manhattan luxury apartment after foreclosing on their homes, right? This opens up an entirely new demographic after the housing boom of the 90s. The “experts” say that the backbone of the American economy is home ownership. I don’t know if this is true– is it? As I have already stated, home ownership requires bank loans. So the backbone of the banking industry is home ownership, to be sure.

I am wary of all the Chicken Littles running around, trying to make us anxious about the “crises” that face us, when in reality, most of the “crises” that exist are for the banks. It’s unfortunate that some folks lose their homes, yes. But as far as ruining our economy– I really wonder if this is true. If anything, Americans are focusing on making more with less (not necessarily a bad thing), and people are looking for apartments (which encourages cities and landlords to clean up and fix up their areas). We are, by nature, a resilient people. We will adapt and adjust to changes. I do not think the housing market shifts constitute the end of the world. Perhaps this is as good a time as any to return to the good old Yankee work ethic:

Use it, wear it out. make it do, or do without.

WARNING: Rant ahead. If you only like to read happy flowery post, please skip this post and read my others! LOL

You’d think that will ALLLLL the heavy competition steeped against retail (local) stores these days, they’d be willing to bend over backwards to offer quality products and good service. Nope! I have had a very bad week with several of my local retailers, enough to sour me something serious. I do a lot of online shopping, so I guess I am spoiled. The online stores treat me well, offer deals and discounts, and ship the stuff (most of the time) extremely fast. AND they also send the CORRECT products!

We got a new washer this past week. New York State has this great rebate program going on right now (on a first come/first serve basis). Our old washer was 17 years old, and had sprung an oil leak while in the basement. I didn’t want to have oil all over my new kitchen flooring…. and rather then pay an appliance guy to labor over a very old model, we just decided to get a new one. And with the rebate, we got a phenomenal deal! But time is of the essence with these things, ya know? We have to submit the rebate information before the time/money is out.

So we had the washer delivered. Well, KIND OF. They called at SEVEN O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING, said they’d be here at 9am, and showed up at 8am. Then, they delivered the wrong model!!! They delivered the store display model!! It had dents and dings and no manual and NO rebate information.

So I had them send it back. I wanted my new washer. It took them all day to get their act together, and finally arrived at the end of the day (I do wonder if they installed my washer at someone else’s house and had to make a switch before coming to my house… hmm…) …

So they finally delivered the new washer… it was not in the original box… but on a dolly, uh huh…. but it came WITHOUT the manual and warranty and REBATE INFORMATION!
Yeah, you can tell where this is going.

So the delivery guys promised me they would have the information for me first thing in the morning– they’d place it in my mailbox.

Never came.

OK, so maybe they are busy delivering wrong appliances to everyone and are so very, very busy. I waited til the next morning.

Never came.

:S Hello, we have to get that rebate info in! And I want my manual!

Well, I called the store, and basically got the run around. The guy in the appliance department said that he had checked the washer before sending it on to the delivery guys, and he had included the manual with the washer, it must be there. And then he said I don’t need any more rebate information, because the store receipt will do. Yadda yadda. He *basically* called me a liar because he said he included the manual with the new washer and I must be wrong…. and *basically* called me dumb because he says I don’t need rebate information when I said I did (he later changed his mind when he remembered that we need the paperwork because they hauled the old washer away).

It’s really a shame. I spent upwards of $5000 at this store this summer, renovating the kitchen. I won’t directly name the store, but they are a national home improvement center that isn’t very High’s in my opinion… :-p I’m sure they must be busy with lots of sales due to the state rebate opportunity, but I would LIKE to have my purchased, proper appliance delivered AND I’d LIKE to have all my paperwork!! What the heck am I paying them so much money for?!?!

I think I love online shopping more and more…

Hey! I have some great news for you online shoppers and deal hunters! Buy.com has a new department called Household Essentials! You can buy household cleaning supplies, dry goods, bath and shower supplies, baby stuff, pet supplies and more in the department. I LOVE it. I dislike shopping at retail stores very much– the traffic (which is INSANE around here), the crowds, the cranky people, the rush-rush-rush of the rat race…. I like to buy stuff online as much as I can. Buy.com has been a Godsend during our renovation– I’ve ordered quite a bit of stuff from them. It not only saves me money but saves me time, too.

Buy.com combines the bets of the best in online household stores: Alice, ANTOnline, Baby Universe, Tool District, UnbeatableSale and others. The prices are very good and the shipping is free. Plus, Buy.com provides some really nice specialty items for great prices! There’s Starbucks coffee and exotic herbal tea like Numi White Rose tea and more. If you like to make gift baskets for the holidays, you can order all sorts of delectable, exotic products and have everything shipped to your door. Can’t beat that!

And this is all on top of their other stuff that they always have on sale. And then there’s the outstanding customer service and fast shipping. Buy.com is the way to go!

It’s nice to know that all the back-cracking work we’ve been doing on the house provides manifold benefits.

The housing market slump this year really slowed down new construction. As an owner of an old home in the midst of vicious suburban sprawl, I was actually happy to see the new construction slow down. Something similar happened in the late 70s (the economic downturn) after a period of profligate sprawl (in the 50s and 60s), which led to an increased awareness of restoring and renovating existing homes (in the 80s). TV shows like This Old House and Home Again sprouted up from the ashes of a recession. So recessions and slumps are not always bad news. I think it is better to work with what you have rather than create immense waste in building new. Why knock down a perfectly healthy old home, fill up landfills, clogging up rural spaces, and spend millions building new?? The lost art of renovation may be making a comeback.

#1 A New Addition
According to Dave Ramsey, one of the best returns on your renovation investment is a new addition, such as a bedroom or family room. Such a renovation could give you an 83% return on your cost! I was stunned to read this. For one, I had thought that most homeowners were going “smaller” with their homes, not necessarily adding more square footage (and more maintenance and expenses) to the house.

#2 A New Kitchen
Additionally, the kitchen has always been the prime return investment winner in renovations. I was surprised to see it fall to #2 in Dave’s list (he said that a kitchen re-do can give you about 72% back). I suppose one of the reasons for the lower grade is because kitchens are one of the most expensive areas of the home to renovate. Yes, I would agree. Although, because we did our own work 100% of the time, our return will be much more than 72%. We spent approximately $13,000 to gut and restore the kitchen, dining room, and laundry room… we also insulated these rooms, which make them more energy efficient, and we also redid the entire electrical system and water supply system for the house. Not a bad deal.

#3 The Bathroom
I am not one to splurge on a bathroom. I like it to be a “get in, do your business, get out” kind of room. Dave says that renovators can easily allow the bathroom remodel to “get out of hand.” Appliances and fixtures ARE very expensive, and I guess people are tempted to install things like saunas, whirlpools, towel warmers, etc. I don’t like such luxury, so when we remodel our bathrooms, I don’t expect these to be a problem. But renovating the bathroom came in at #3, which homeowners recouping about 70% of their investment. That’s really still a terrific percentage!

One very important thing to remember when renovating is KNOW YOUR COMMUNITY. If you live in a wealthy area of McMansions, go ahead and build that davidoff cigar room or vaulted wine cellar. But if you live in “middle America” or a small town, you will never recoup your investments in the luxurious hot tubs, custom-made concrete countertops, and silk draperies. I tried to stay as basic as I could with our home. It is so easy to go overboard, especially when the “experts” and magazines are all enticing you to spendspendspend on their expensive products. I tried to keep a balance of getting products I really liked, products we really needed, and staying within the middle-income class of my region. Even so, I do think I splurged a little too much. :-p

And I am gratified to see that all our blood, sweat, and tears actually has value in the community and economy. I knew that our renovations would not only bring us more comforts and energy savings, but that it would boost our home’s value and possible return investment should we ever sell. It’s nice to see this confirmed.

I’m spending money like a drunken sailor. Actually, worse than that– I’m spending money like Congress. Oooo watch the dollars fly! OK, I KNOW we need the cabinets, the countertops, the lumber, the flooring… and I’m not going bananas buying the luxury items. But even the cheap stuff is expensive! I have never spent this much money before in my life, ever.

I have been finding some really great deals on stuff, though. I needed a pull-out trash bin system- you know, one of these things:

The larger ones at Lowe’s are about $300. Yes, THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS. For two plastic trash cans, metal drawer hardware, and the pieces of wood for it. WOW. Selling kitchen remodeling supplies is quite the racket, eh? I was not going to pay $300. I didn’t have the time to make my own roll-out thingie, either… so I found that exact setup on eBay. I won the bid! $117!!! It’s still a heck of a lot of money, but I’m glad I got it for so much less money.

I am loving my local Grossman’s Bargain Outlet store lately. I bought my cabinets from them (more on that later). I had to make two trips to get my cabinets, to two different Bargain Outlet stores. This is because they didn’t have all the cabinets in stock that I needed. And I just didn’t have the cargo truck equipment or van ladder racks to haul everything around at once. :S

Here are the cabinets I purchased:

Bargain Outlet was having a “Wheel-O-Discount” promotion when I bought them. You spin the wheel and get anywhere from 5% to 50% off your entire order. Wow! So i rang up a big bill, and spun the wheel!!! What did I get, what did I get?? 5%. I was pretty sad. I got an additional 10%, though, for signing up an account with the store… but I was pretty bummed.

Well, we had to go to Bargain Outlet again, and I bought up another big bill of stuff (not as much as the first bill, but pretty big). I asked my son to spin the wheel.

HE GOT 50% OFF!!!!

I couldn’t believe it! Why didn’t I have the kid do it for me the first time?! Oh well! I saved almost $500 off my order. I was so excited!!! The clerks are the store were all real sourpusses, though. LOL.

It is possible to buy building supplies online. So far, I have ordered wallpaper, a stove range hood, a dishwasher, a kitchen sink, gas space heaters, countertops, Tung oil, network equipment, trim molding, plumbing supplies, and cabinet hardware. Some of the best stores I have ordered from include:

Lumber Liquidators
DoItBest.com
HomeDepot
Lowes
eBay
PEXSupply.com
Buy.com
NorthernTool.com

These stores have been pleasant to deal with, have great prices, and their shipping and delivery is great. There is also NO WAY I could have purchased these things at the stores and hauled them home. I have only a minivan. It will hold 4×8 sheetrock and plywood sheets (yay!), but there are no van partitions to hold anything beyond that. So I have relied heavily on delivery. It costs a little (most of the time) but it has saved me endless labor (and saved my van from the heavy loads).

Once we finish the Sheetrock and the painting, the renovation will start to get interesting and more fun. The photos will have more interest, too. There are a LOT of loose ends to wrap up, though. I realized the other day– while the construction schedule ends right around the last week of August, I will be working on this project at least up until December. I still have lots of trim work, custom cabinets and pantry shelves to make, decorative accents to paint, heaters to plumb and install, a few interior doors to install, and more. Whew!

Well, this makes me feel better.

Courtesy of New York Times

Sometimes I could kick myself for buying a 155 year old home. Especially when I have to try and install square sheets of drywall on VERY unsquare ceilings and walls. NOT fun.

The New York Times has a cost calculator, comparing rental pros and cons with ownership pros and cons. Looks like buying a home gets you ahead in the finances than renting.

But not by much. :-p

Part of the reason for the less than stellar return rate, I think, is the severe drop in housing values and the severe rise in property taxes. I purchased my home for $62,5 over 13 years ago. It is now valued at $87,0 for taxation purposes, but I could never get that amount should I sell it right now. The market is bad, and no one wants a fixer upper; everybody wants new with fancy log furniture and etc. I do renovate it with the expectation that the market will improve, but I renovate mostly because the house needs the improvements, and we want to live comfortably and efficiently. Still, even though I have no intention of selling, it would be nice to know that my home is increasing in value as I improve it….