Buying Our New Old House-A Review part I

As most of you know, on Oct 15 Yankee Bill and I closed on our new house.

Buying a new house is an expensive proposition, no matter how you slice it. Some things are necessary expenses, some are discretionary. There are hundreds of ways to spend and save money when you occupy a new house, and the choices each family makes is dependent on their financial situation, their values, and their tastes. Today I’m going to discuss some of the discretionary choices we made that spent money.

#1-We moved to a bigger, more expensive house. Why? Check out “Our New House Philosophy” for the full rundown. This obviously cost us money-a lot of money. However we shopped around for the best mortgage price we could, put down a sizeable down payment (yeah investment!), plan on paying half our mortgage every two weeks (yeah for no prepayment penalty!), and of course paying off a big ‘ol chunk of the mortgage when we sell the other house.

#2-We had the entire downstairs, 860 sq feet, of hardwood floors professionally refinished at $1.90 a square foot. The floors were liveable, but the finish was very worn. If we did not have the capital to refinish the floors we could have moved right in and lived with them the way they were-however we felt that the floors would look better and be much better protected (ie last longer!) with a new finish. We briefly, very briefly, looked into refinishing the floors ourselves (and by ourselves I mean Yankee Bill-I would have been the helper). Everyone we talked to who had done it said it is a bear of a job, and easy to gouge the floor with the sander if you aren’t careful. We went with the professionals.

#3-We purchased cellular blinds for all 27 non-replacement windows in our house. This was after careful consideration of the dissenting viewpoint expressed by the Energy Doctor. The Energy Doctor did not say that the blinds didn’t help at all, it was just that in his opinion there were other things that would help more. Since we have the ability to pay for the purchase of the blinds (especially with the cellular blind sale at Lowes, as well as applying for a new Lowes credit card that had 10% off your first purchase and 0% interest on that purchase for a year) and I happen to like the look of them as an additional window dressing layer under regular drapes, we decided to go with it.

This decision cost us $2000, but will allow us to continue using the drapes that the previous owners left without worrying so much about energy retention (none of those drapes are lined in the downstairs!). We will also be able to wait to replace those drapes until we find ones we prefer on sale, or have time to make them (yeah sewing! most drapes are very simple to make!).

#4-We hired someone to paint all the ceilings. They were all in pretty bad shape, to include some pretty significant bubbling and peeling (cosmetic, not structural problems). Yes, if you had to you could have moved in and just lived with it like that-but we didn’t want to. We also wanted to get as much of that sort of thing done before we moved in as possible. Since both Yankee Bill and I have been pretty beat up physically from our previous life in the military (I left the military because of neck issues) the thought of cranking our necks around while up on a ladder made both of us shudder.

This cost us around $1200 for 13 rooms, to include the scraping, patching, sanding, painting, and caulking and painting the crown molding. 3 of the rooms he recommended using a special sand paint to camouflage the patchy look of all the patching and sanding. This paint has to be hand swirled on with a brush (incidentally giving it a cool plastered ceiling effect) so it took more time and added to the labor cost.

As a bonus the painter was a really nice guy, who lent us his scaffolding so Yankee Bill could paint the stairwell without killing himself, gave us advice on how to best patch and cover a few problem areas (hello, a shiny black stripe in one of the bedrooms), and even lent us his 3″ roller handle so we didn’t have to go out and buy one.

#5-We hired plumbers to install a disposal in the sink, change out the dishwashers, change out the faucet in the kitchen sink and fix the drain in the basement. None of these were necessary changes-and none of them are things that my very handy husband felt comfortable attempting on his own. We are switching the dishwashers around because we purchased a brand new dishwasher for the other house less than a year ago–and it is better than the serviceable one that came with this house (mine is a Bosch-men actually comment “Wow, you have a Bosch dishwasher” when they see it!). I also have grown used to having a disposal and my cool pull out faucet sprayer. I bought replacements for those two items at the same time that I purchased the cellular blinds, so they were also 10% off and 0% interest for the first year. Total purchase cost about $100. I’m unsure of the total installation cost since they are working as we speak.

#6-We hired an electrician to install baseboard electric heat in the kiddo’s rooms, install a ceiling fixture in the spare bedroom, create a new sub panel upstairs and outside on the barn, and check the ceramic knob wiring in the basement. Again, these are all discretionary items. We have a village electric co-op that makes electricity very cheap-our previous home was completely electric heat, and even with our hot-tub running all winter (in upstate NY even) our highest electric bill of the season was $160-and that was a one time thing! So with heat oil costs so high (they have us programed in at $200 a month all year based on the previous occupants-hopefully we’ll get an end of the year refund, and lower costs next year) it makes sense to supplement with electric.

Also, the thermostat is in the living room, which is also where the gas fireplace is. So when we run the fire and keep the pocket doors to the front of the house closed, that room stays quite cozy and warm. This is a good thing, however since that single thermostat controls the entire house, when you go up to the kiddos rooms, which are off an unheated stairwell and hall, they are freezing (remember-the thermostat is reading the temp in the den, and not kicking on). So rather than having to heat up the entire house in order to bring the temps up in those two rooms, it makes more sense (and will in the long run save more money) to install electric heat in those two rooms. Originally we were just going to have him install a good, grounded (most of them aren’t) switch in each bedroom and plug in a heater, but the electrician pointed out that a baseboard heater would be safer around the kiddos-no tip over hazard. Of course, if we weren’t able to afford this we could have just lived with the colder rooms-that’s actually what we are doing now, spending more time downstairs where it is warmer, and making sure the kids are covered up really well and wearing warm jammies when they go to bed.

The guest bedroom doesn’t have a ceiling fixture at all-just a switch that goes to an electrical outlet that was mounted on the ceiling (!?!). Yankee Bill is very good with electrical wiring, and can install new lights no problem (he already installed several, more on that tomorrow) but he wanted a licensed electrician to actually install the wires and box to code. Then he will actually put up the fixture. Again, if we had to we could have left it as it was, with the funky desk lamp looking fixture that they had screwed into the wall and plugged into the ceiling outlet.

In that same guest bedroom there is a big old (and I mean OLD) sub panel with fuses. Apparently only 2 of the 8 fuses actually GO to anything. . . so the electrician is going to take all that garbage out and mount a smaller flush style box with circuit breakers instead of fuses. As for the installation of a sub panel on the barn-Yankee Bill will be running electric out to our shed and to run the camper (which we sometimes use as guest quarters in the summer). All the wiring in the barn is very old ceramic knob stuff-and it would be dangerous to run all of that off of it-as well as not to code! So the new sub panel will go in, but YB will actually run the wiring out to the two sites.

#7-Speaking of the shed, we are having our shed moved down to the new house. When we moved into the old place, we purchased a pre-built shed. This puppy is the largest size shed you could put on your property without requiring a building permit. (two cars can be parked end to end in it-granted, no room would be left for anything else) At the time it was a good choice because we had so much less storage in that house-and this provided plenty of storage as well as a home for the motorcycles etc. When Yankee Bill looked into moving it he found a gentleman who can do it for just a little over $200. Considering that the shed cost several thousand dollars, it seems reasonable to move it.

I know, you are wondering why we need a shed when we have a barn. The fact of the matter is that YB inherited several antique cars from his father when he passed. Currently they are stored at his mom’s, but in the spring they will be moved into the barn here. Between those vehicles and the motorcycle the barn will be full, with no room left for the mower, weedwhacker, kids toys, garden stuff etc. (Yes, I suppose the garden stuff could go on the second floor, but the mower certainly can’t) Yet again, if we had to we could just consider the shed a loss and sell it as part of the property with the other house, but to us it is worth it to move it. We also spent a couple of hundred dollars to have a truckload of gravel delivered which YB raked into two pads, one for the shed, one for the camper.

#8-After much thought, we decided to go ahead and replace all of the old windows in the house with replacement windows. This will cost about $4000 and is scheduled for January. The intent is to have the old house sold by that point, which will provide the capital. Let’s face it, the windows are going to have to be replaced eventually. They are old (as in turn of the century) single pane glass that have been retrofitted with storm windows and screens. Most of them desperately need to be re-glazed. The heat is just pouring out of those puppies in the winter, and the winter (or at least heating season) can last anywhere from Oct to Mar here in upstate NY.

Our feeling was that the sooner we do this, the sooner that we will start saving on the heat bill, and with the way life in general is, the cost of replacing them isn’t going to get any cheaper over time. I was actually somewhat surprised at the cost-that is for purchase and installation of 26 non-standard sized windows. (yes, I know I said there were 27 old windows in the house. One window is stained glass-we are keeping that one and heat loss be damned)

We are using a local company that makes all of the windows on site, so there is no extra cost for “custom ordering” like there would be at Lowes, Home Depot etc. They will also be a “wood grain” looking vinyl rather than the white, which will blend better with the stained woodwork in the house. This company already did two windows in the house for the previous owners (there are two that were replaced in the living room) and the “wood grain” looks nice.

Whew, when you look at it that way, it really is a lot of money. Heck, when you look at it any way at all it’s a lot of money. However, other than the actual mortgage, we are not going into debt for any of these improvements-they are all coming out of the money from the investments that we cashed in specifically to cover down payment/closing costs and these improvements. The Lowes card purchase is basically an interest free loan, and with our finances will be paid off no problem by simply paying the no interest monthly payments. All of these changes either save us money in the long run, or increase our comfort. We truly feel that these are all things that we would have had to do eventually, so we simply bit the bullet and did them all at the beginning in order to enjoy their benefits for as long as possible.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, so we’ll be talking briefly about things to be thankful for. Then on Friday I’ll discuss the things we have do to save money